Rachel Alix is a singer/ songwriter, arranger, and producer from Boston, MA. She is one half of the electro-pop duo Enta Tenta, and plays bass with the all girl rock group “The Manettes”. Rachel competed on the Emmy award-winning TV show Community Auditions: Star of the Day, where she won the 2013 Grand Champion title. She also released her own EP in 2014 and multiple singles since then, and most recently won a scholarship competition for Vocal Writing at her college.
Artist Category: Singer/Songwriter
Tom Pirozzoli
Ryan Lee Crosby
With an intercontinental band, singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Ryan Lee Crosby blends essences of American folk-blues and North Indian raga into meditative songs of impermanence, compassion and joy. Crosby’s music is a pleasing mix of improvised and composed material, performed on traditional and modern instruments. Through his recordings and performances, Crosby hopes to inspire peace, openness and respect – for tradition, for culture, for each other and for one’s self.
River Music, Crosby’s sixth full-length album, will be available on LP and CD on 10/10/18, co-released by Germany’s CosiRecords Schallplatten and Seattle’s Knick Knack Records. The result of years of study and practice, River Music integrates blues from the hill country of North Mississippi with textures of North Indian Hindustani classical raga music. Crosby performs on electric 12-string guitar and chaturangui (the 22-string Indian slide guitar designed by Pandit Debashish Bhattacharya) and is joined by fretless guitar, tabla, harmonica and calabash (West African percussion). The raga influence is heard through the band’s hypnotic, almost trance-like motifs, and the blues seeps through Crosby’s dynamic vocals and masterful, single-line guitar melodies.
Crosby describes himself as a ‘seeker’ within the music: producer and listener, performer and enthusiast, teacher and student. Crosby’s music-making is an inward process: creativity through meditation, devotion and discipline, but it is also oriented around community-building. As a bandleader, Crosby is guided by the potential of music to connect the internal to the external, the individual to the group, and to bridge seemingly disparate cultures and traditions.
Ryan Lee Crosby has been nominated for two Boston Music Awards and was named “Best Singer/Songwriter” in the 2006 Boston Phoenix/WFNX Radio Music Poll. He composed and performed the film score for the award-winning documentary Racing the Rez (2012, broadcast nationally on PBS). Crosby tours Europe annually and select US regions. He currently lives in Medford, Massachusetts and performs regularly in the greater Boston area.
Sarah Eide
In an industry that can often feel over saturated with stale soundscapes, lifeless lyrics, and predictable patterns, Sarah Eide’s music cuts through the clutter. Bursting out of any genre’s box, her music deftly weaves influences of roots, folk, jazz and pop, creating a singular sound that is uniquely her own. Songs that are thoughtful, quirky, and honest, are matched with a signature musical style that is equal parts complex and catchy. With skillful piano playing and a powerful voice, these songs are what pulls her audience in and keeps them coming back.
Eide’s newest release, “Dream on Hold” (May 6, 2019) is a heart-throbbing album that depicts the unique, modern challenges of a real woman experiencing motherhood for the first time. Music from the album has been featured on The Bluegrass Situation, For Folk’s Sake, NYS Music and more, with critics calling it “an enthralling Americana storybook” (CITY Newspaper). Sarah will be celebrating the release of this album with some guest musicians accompanying her.
Greg Klyma
Greg Klyma is a road-tested troubadour and relentless songwriter. He was an Iguana Fund grantee in 2017. With the release of Never Knew Caroline a couple summers ago, Greg had an epiphany about all the unrecorded songs still in his notebooks. He has challenged himself to release 3 albums in 2019. He also printed his first book of lyrics as a companion piece to FAKE SONGS – his first exclusively digital album. On July 25th, we’ll hear songs from Caroline, FAKE SONGS, Maybe the Ocean, as well as a sampling of what’s to follow.
Katie Matzell
Katie Matzell is an up-and-coming singer and songwriter from Portland, Maine who released her debut EP at the start of 2018. MaineToday called the debut “fierce and dazzling,” adding that Matzell’s vocals are “sweet, full and gorgeous” with a “richness to them that make the songs burst all the more.” The Deli Magazine said “Matzell’s voice, both effortless and simple, floats above a sea of washy keys and pocket grooves, calling comparisons to not only her influences of the past (Bonnie Raitt and Aretha Franklin), but to her contemporaries — Norah Jones and Emily King immediately come to mind.” Matzell was nominated by the New England Music Awards in 2018 for Female Performer of the Year. Matzell is hard at work on new music for a 2019 release.
Audrey Ryan
Audrey Ryan is a Boston-based singer-songwriter indie rock artist best known as a “one-man-band” multi-instrumentalist using loops on guitar as well as accordion, ukulele, drums, vibraphone and other unique instrumentation. Her music is often described as ethereal, eclectic, and uniquely authentic in its originality. She has toured globally sharing the stage with Suzanne Vega, They Might be Giants, Josh Ritter, Sam Amidon, Beth Orton, Glen Hansard, Grace Potter, and Ra Ra Riot to name a few.
It’s been five years since Audrey has released a new record which coincides with when she started a family. Two kids later, Audrey is back to share a collection of new songs recorded with Steve Brodsky (Cave In, Mutoid Man). This material includes some of her trademark one-man-band loop songs as well as accordion and vibraphone compositions. Over ten years after releasing Dishes & Pills the record featuring “Later Alligator” that was featured on the TV show Glee, Audrey has written the sequel song “After a While Crocodile” in this new collection. The song “Dear Dave” is a tribute to her friend the late Dave Lamb of Brown Bird who passed away of Leukemia a little over five years ago when Audrey was pregnant with her daughter. Lastly, her song “Coyote” is a written from the perspective of an illegal immigrant youth which is a reflection of her work in hospitals as a crisis clinician.
Her album release show at Club Passim Thursday, June 20th is a celebration of her emerging from early parenthood into making music and sharing it again.
Port Cities
In the brief period of time since Port Cities unleashed their award-winning incendiary debut—a wildly self-assured collection of sparkling, rootsy pop that showcases the Nova Scotia trio’s devotion to songwriting—the band’s been hard at work bringing it to the masses. They’ve continued to explore and evolve their ambitious pop sound, melding diverse musical backgrounds to create an alchemy that’s part art, part songwriting science, and all magic: the nimble dynamism of Breagh MacKinnon’s smoky, jazz-indebted delivery, Dylan Guthro’s simmering and soulful R&B swagger, and Carleton Stone’s razor-sharp, romantic rock ‘n’ roll. It’s a chemistry that’s been perfected during the 100+ dates they’ve toured in the past year in Canada, the UK and Germany that is reflected in their newest release, Montreal.
Alana Davis
Kate Lee & Forrest O’Connor
Americana duo Kate Lee & Forrest O’Connor have earned national recognition as co-lead singers and primary songwriters of the O’Connor Band, a bluegrass group they co-founded along with O’Connor’s father, seven-time CMA Award-winning violinist Mark O’Connor. They wrote the majority of the band’s debut album, Coming Home, which debuted at #1 on Billboard’s Top Bluegrass Albums Chart and won a GRAMMY Award in 2017.
Both independently and as part of the O’Connor Band, Lee and O’Connor have collaborated with Paul Simon, Zac Brown, Kenny Loggins, Clint Black, Bela Fleck, Jerry Douglas, Dan Tyminski, and many others. Their music has accumulated more than half a million streams on Spotify, and they have performed at the Grand Ole Opry, the Ryman Auditorium, and Fenway Park, as well as some of the most prominent festivals and performing arts centers around the country.
Lee and O’Connor were introduced in 2014 by Nashville-based arranger Kris Wilkinson (Tim McGraw, Lady Antebellum, Brandi Carlile), who believed their powerful, expressive vocals and writing sensibilities would align. O’Connor, a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Harvard and former Tennessee State Mandolin Champion, shared a love of ‘60s classic rock, ‘70s folk rock, ‘90s country, bluegrass, and modern pop music with Lee, a Belmont graduate and violinist who frequently backed up stars ranging from John Legend and Kelly Clarkson to Keith Urban and Carrie Underwood at the CMA Awards and CMA Country Christmas shows. They soon began performing together as a duo, and their first EP, The Demonstration, reached #13 on the iTunes Singer-Songwriter chart with no label or promotion campaign. After performing for three years with the O’Connor Band, they’re excited to focus again on their duo project with the help of a backing band featuring two-time national mandolin champion Isaac Eicher, GRAMMY Award-winning bassist (and Doctor of Music) Geoff Saunders, and country vocalist Mallory Eagle.
