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Over the last few years of taking the bluegrass, jamband, and live music worlds by storm, Billy Strings has been awarded Best Bluegrass Album at the 63rd GRAMMY Awards, Artist of The Year at the 2023 and 2022 Americana Music Awards, Entertainer of the Year at the 2023, 2022, and 2021 International Bluegrass Music Awards, Best New Headliner at the 2022 Pollstar Awards and Breakthrough Artist of the Pandemic at the 2021 Pollstar Awards among several other accolades. Now comes his first live album release!

We first met her thanks to her work in the trio the Stray Birds, but lately she’s been channeling her muse(s) in different directions, with various solo projects. “I’m not just making different music now. It feels like I'm breathing in a different atmosphere.” Originally from Pennsylvania and now based out of Nashville (and for a short time in West Asheville), we were pleased to host Maya and her band here in Studio B last month.

What does it mean to be a “Southern songwriter”? A few descriptions and parameters might come to mind, but American Aquarium front man BJ Barham has been expanding those stereotypes in his storytelling and soapbox sharing in ways that we can really get behind. As No Depression writes, “For the last two decades, (Barham) has seemingly willed his band to survive. Armed with an incisive pen and a love for Whiskeytown and Drive-by Truckers on one hand and Springsteen and Petty on the other, he gradually steered the rotating cast of his outfit from twentysomething dive bar revelry and heartbreak toward a more thoughtful, albeit scarred, maturity.” This is his/their 10th album, and 2nd in a row produced by Shooter Jennings.

Bassist and singer/songwriter Melissa Carper was listening to an interview/documentary a year or two ago in which Ralph Stanley proclaimed “I don’t think you can get this sound unless it’s borned in ya” when describing how he got his mountain music sound. She immediately jotted down “borned in ya” on a piece of paper. “I knew I had to write that song,” she recalls. It’s become an appropriate title track for her new album, once again produced by Dennis Crouch and Andrija Tokic. Carper has a natural way of evoking a timeless sound that somehow evokes those golden ages of classic country, blues and jazz, and this new one is no exception. Crouch, Chris Scruggs, Billy Contreras, and others provide wonderful backup musicianship here. Most of the songs were written by Carper, though her friend and fellow musician in the Wonder Women of Country Brennen Leigh co-wrote three with her.

It’s the band’s 11th record, their first since 2018’s pensive Critical Equation, and their third for We Buy Gold Records. They’re based out of Philadelphia, but singer Scott McMicken calls Asheville home nowadays. About the making of it, Scott says “There was an emphasis on creating something very soulful and live-feeling, which meant starting with all of us looking each other in the eye and connecting to the music. The idea was, ‘Let’s be loose, let’s not overthink.’ The more you can let go of that fear of being imperfect, the more you open yourself up to deeper expression.”

After pledges to not perform and/or record again, at least under his own name, we now have a new album that is most certainly a great Sturgill Simpson album! “Passage du Desir (“Pah-SAZH doo de-ZEER”) is fittingly wistful and forlorn, a romantic take on the fundamentals that have made bluegrass, Americana, and outlaw country such a key part of American music history” (Pitchfork)

The trio of Joe Bellanti, Corey Kertzie and Dave Ruch met in 1983 as members of a Buffalo, New York Grateful Dead cover band called Wild Knights. Then in 2020 they pivoted to this funky organ-based trio Organ Fairchild. Their latest album is an eclectic reworking of classics by Bob Marley, Leonard Cohen, the Beatles, and (of course) the Grateful Dead, among others.

This new album spawned out of demos that Johnny recorded in 1993 at LSI Studios in Nashville. John Carter Cash, who played guitar on the original sessions, and co-producer David “Fergie” Ferguson, stripped the songs back to just Johnny’s powerful, pristine vocals and brought in a handpicked group of musicians that played with Johnny, including guitarist Marty Stuart and the late bassist Dave Roe, along with drummer Pete Abbott and several others, to the Cash Cabin, where they recorded new parts for the songs and reinvigorated them. John Carter and Fergie also brought in a couple of special guests for some of the songs – Dan Auerbach on electric guitar on “Spotlight” and Vince Gill on vocals.

He’s the “mystery man” of country music with his trademark fringed mask and rhinestone jacket, though we have learned that he is a native of South Africa and was previously in a Canadian punk rock band! This new album might further the mystique behind just what his image, and direction are… It’s an eclectic blend of originals and covers here, with each song featuring a guest artist, from Willie Nelson and Margo Price, to bluegrass phenom Molly Tuttle, to EDM star Diplo, to Nathaniel Rateliff, to Beck!

Lee’s 11th studio album and first new collection of original songs in more than two years, and has 12 songs touching on soul, jazz, folk and pop stylings. He and his band recorded it together in a studio in rural upstate New York. “I really wanted us to be all in the room, making music together, listening to each other and responding to each other,” says Lee. “In this age where you can do everything at home and fly it in, there’s something really beautiful about getting in a room and starting at the top, the drummer counting in the song and everybody just playing. I would call it vulnerability.”