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It’s the fifth album from Seth Applebaum’s project, this time featuring audio clips from historic Apollo 11-to-Mission Control dialogue transmissions, and other vintage nods. The opening song “Eyes of Love” is the story of a landlocked lover whose heart is held hostage by a cosmonaut ready to take off into uncharted territory. From there we’re launched into orbit with the sounds of surf bands, big band brass, and sci-fi synth waves…

We’re pleased to see a new one from one of the funniest, most irreverent, most clever new singer/songwriters on the scene, Portland, Oregon’s John Craigie. This time he’s backed by a band we know called TK & The Holy Know-Nothings: Taylor Kingman (acoustic guitar, slide guitar, electric guitar, 12-string guitar, bass, vocals), Jay Cobb Anderson (pedal steel, harmonica, piano, acoustic guitar, organ, electric guitar, bass, vocals), Lewi Longmire (bass, piano, trumpet, organ, vocals), Sydney Nash (organ, piano, trumpet, trombone, alto sax, Wurlitzer, electric guitar, vocals) and Tyler Thompson (drums). Also featuring Bart Budwig (trumpet, vocals). Music fans who like a little dark humor in their folk, blues & rock, tune in!

It’s a new direction for our friends in Asheville’s Town Mountain, with covers of The Stones, The Kinks, Dire Straits, and J.J. Cale on this new collection. Town Mountain plays The Neighborhood Theatre on Saturday the 3rd, The Bijou Theatre in Knoxville on Thursday the 15th, and The Salvage Station in Asheville on Saturday the 17th.

With a mission to reclaim the immigrant soul of American Roots Music, the American Patchwork Quartet was brought together by Clay Ross, founder/guitarist with the South Carolina group Ranky Tanky. In the APQ he’s joined with other Grammy-winning artists: Falguni Shah, an eleventh-generation Hindustani classical vocalist, Yasushi Nakamura, an internationally acclaimed Issei jazz bassist, and Clarence Penn, a drumming protégée of Ellis Marsalis whose fibers were honed by African American church traditions. We hosted them in Studio B last May, and now we have their debut studio album, available February 9th.

A wonderful recent discovery of ours 2024 is this new one from Arkansas Americana musician Bonnie Montgomery. Raised on southern gospel, Texas swing, Delta blues, and Ozark bluegrass, Bonnie trained as an opera singer before launching her award-winning career in outlaw country (she was a perennial winner at the annual Arkansas Country Music Awards, 2018- 2020. "Opera and country have a lot in common", she notes. "They both talk about sex, lies, love, and murder. Opera's subject matter is pretty trashy, when you look at it. In my songs, I like to depict the big moments, the big energy, and build things to a crescendo. That happens in opera. It happens in country. And it's happening in my career, too, with River". Hopefully she’ll tour through our area soon. We’re at least on her radar: Bonnie emailed us last month to say “I got a call from my old high school sweetheart because he heard it on the radio in real time in Asheville - he was so excited he blocked two lanes of traffic with his dump truck while trying to call me - lol! So, we're already stopping traffic!”

She’s won four Grammys (including with the trio I’m With Her), and is now shifting her sound a bit on this new album with collaborations with Ruston Kelly, Natalie Hemby, and others.“On “Polaroid Lovers,” Jarosz reaches toward a broader audience while still maintaining her individuality. The songs are more plugged in, muscular and reverberant than her past albums, which were intimate and largely acoustic. But her particular perspective — at once clearheaded, thoughtful, vulnerable and open to desire — comes through.” - The New York Times / Jon Pareles

Bruce Cockburn is considered by fellow Canadians of his generation to be one of the nation’s greatest singers, songwriters and guitarists, on par with Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, and the late Gordon Lightfoot. But his familiarity is not nearly as strong with younger indie musicians and music fans, so Tompkins Square Records recruited well-respected indie artist James Toth, known for his work with Wooden Wand, to curate the 13th volume of its guitar series, Imaginational Anthem. Although there is a focus on Bruce as a guitarist, there are also vocal tracks on the album. The tribute will be released on April 5th.

Lake Street Dive announces their first album on Fantasy Records will be released June 21st. Their title track, “Good Together”, exemplifies the mood: “There’s a lot to be angry about in the world right now, a lot of pain and rage and divisiveness, but it isn’t sustainable to constantly live in that anger—you need something else to keep you going,” says drummer Mike Calabrese. “Joy is a great way to sustain yourself, and we wanted to encourage everyone to stay aware of that. In a way this album is our way of saying, ‘Take your joy very seriously.’” Alisa Amador made history in 2022 with the first-ever Spanish language song to win the prestigious Tiny Desk Contest. Then in March of 2023, she performed in Studio B with Emily Scott Robinson and Violet Bell, and her Argentinian folk song appeared on our latest Crowd Around the Mic compilation. Now we await her full-length debut album Multitudes with this first single, “I Need to Believe”. And we have the first new Indigo Girls song in four years, “What We Wanna Be,” recorded last November. The single features on the soundtrack to a new movie musical Glitter & Doom, which charts the romance between aspiring circus performer Glitter (Filipino star Alex Diaz) and struggling musician Doom (UK newcomer Alan Cammish), told through a bold reimagining of 25 iconic Indigo Girls songs, including “Closer to Fine,” “Power of Two” and “Get Out the Map."

We’re pleased to see a new one from one of the funniest, most irreverent, most clever new singer/songwriters on the scene, Portland, Oregon’s John Craigie. This time he’s backed by a band we know called TK & The Holy Know-Nothings: Taylor Kingman (acoustic guitar, slide guitar, electric guitar, 12-string guitar, bass, vocals), Jay Cobb Anderson (pedal steel, harmonica, piano, acoustic guitar, organ, electric guitar, bass, vocals), Lewi Longmire (bass, piano, trumpet, organ, vocals), Sydney Nash (organ, piano, trumpet, trombone, alto sax, Wurlitzer, electric guitar, vocals) and Tyler Thompson (drums). Also featuring Bart Budwig (trumpet, vocals). Music fans who like a little dark humor in their folk, blues & rock, tune in!

It was Washington, DC native Christopher Vrenios’ deep appreciation for the sounds coming out of Kingston, Jamaica that led him to produce and record with legendary reggae artists Sly and Robbie, The Itals, Augustus Pablo, Sugar Minot, and Don Carlos, the original lead singer from Grammy-winning group Black Uhuru. He also has co-written and recorded with fellow DC act Thievery Corporation. This cool new project features roots Reggae beats across an instrumental album that also employs the use of traditional Chinese instruments—a first for the genre.