2024 International Blues Challenge Band Winner, 2025 Best emerging artist album blues music award for revelation
“Piper & the Hard Times combine the sensibility and flair of vintage blues bands with the entertainment savvy and edge of modern rockers … one of America’s premier new blues groups.” (Ron Wynn/Nashville Scene)

Piper & the Hard Times delivers intense, eclectic and rhythmically dynamic blues-based music flavored with R&B, soul and rock. The band has an instrumental prowess that enables them to improvise with flair, while still creating music that has a melodic appeal that can immediately connect with audiences who want both a high degree of musical competence and songs with strong grooves and catchy hooks. In January 2024 they took top honors in the band division at the prestigious International Blues Challenge held in Memphis, Tennessee. The core of the band, Al “Piper” Green, Steve Eagon, and Dave Colella have been playing and writing together for over 20 years. Over the course of three days in February 2024, Nashville-based Piper & the Hard Times held court in the legendary Ronnie’s Place at Soundstage Studios in Nashville to record Revelation. The album features a collection of 12 original songs deeply anchored in the blues from the New Orleans-flavored groove of “Trouble Man” to the Texas shuffle “The Hard Times”, the funk-rock “Heart for Sale”, and the slow ache and emotion of “Twenty Long Years.”

One of America’s premier blues-roots artists, Piper & the Hard Times has been delighting audiences across the South for nearly 20 years.. When you listen to their new album, you’ll hear poignant, inspired “from the soul” music from these talented players who love making music together. You can hear that energy and vitality in Revelation which debuted at #1 on the Billboard chart the week of August 27th, 2014.

Piper states, “I’ve never been prouder of anything we’ve ever done. The new album captured us in every way imaginable”