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Southern California R&B singer and rocker Nick Waterhouse returns with yet another winner, his 6th. It was recorded by Marc Neill in his studio in tiny Valdosta, Georgia, with a small crew not much different than the way Chess and Sun Studios sessions were made. “Many of the stories in the record come from that feeling of plasticity,” says Waterhouse. “What is memory? What is time? What is love between two human beings like in this imaginary city? It’s Cubist. A listener sees the angles of my life – and inexorably, my career – reflected in this work from all sides at once. I started thinking again about my university days, about modernist writers like Virginia Woolf, Christopher Isherwood, Hart Crane, or Ford Maddox Ford; about memory and how it betrays you; what you can see and what you can’t.”

Drawing influence from late ‘60s/early ‘70s funk and soul, Hot Mustard puts a new twist on a classic recipe in this 2nd album of theirs. Hot Mustard is the beat-oriented instrumental recording duo of Jack Powell (guitar) and Nick Carusos (bass). It’s a hot recording out of Johns Island/Charleston, SC. Spiking the punch is Big Brass Beats, the all brass horn section out of Brooklyn, NY, featuring Jordan McLean (trumpet/flugelhorn) of Antibalas and Dave "Smoota" Smith (trombone).

Scott is one of the two co-founders of Philadelphia indie-rock psychedelic-pop band Dr. Dog, and you can hear their same great DIY ethic on this solo debut from the singer/guitarist/drummer. Fans of Asheville’s Floating Action might especially connect with this, too. And in fact, Scott now lives in Asheville! After building his own home studio, then recording others like Big Thief and Michael Nau, Scott threw everything into this collection of 13 songs. “Such an incredible spectrum of emotion passed through me while making this album. There was this lightness and un-self seriousness. I feel like music and life cruises at that spot: everybody was so wholeheartedly invested and open.”

On Common Nation of Sorrow, Baiman explores American capitalism and the devastation it manifests, while finding hope in these stories as a mechanism for activism. Baiman produced and recorded the album in her hometown of Nashville, with such songs as one from beloved Cumberland River former resident John Hartford, but she also brought in one of Portland, Oregon’s most noted names in that city’s music scene, Tucker Martine, to mix it. We enjoyed interviewing her in Studio B just last Wednesday, and hope you caught it (check out the video on our Facebook page.) She performs in Charlotte on Friday the 7th.

We bookend our New Tunes at 2 series this week with two releases out of Seattle that capture the mood of today’s world, in heartfelt ways. This first one happens to also have some of the tightest, catchiest, FUNNEST songs of the year so far!

This is not to be confused with his 2014 release of the same name, and there’s not a whole lot of info out yet on this, other than JD has expressed some extreme praise over the original versions of these tunes from Art Neville, Big Al Downing, Iggy Pop, and The Pixies.

Margo Timmins et al are back with a collection of covers that have inspired them over the years. Artists ranging from David Bowie and the Stones to Gram Parsons and Gordon Lightfoot; Neil Young and Bob Dylan to Vic Chesnutt and The Cure.

It’s been a decade since this Vermont singer/songwriter last released a full-length album, though she’s kept herself busy with new motherhood, collaborations like Bonny Light Horseman with Josh Kaufman, and of course Hadestown, her smash Broadway hit that’s won numerous Tony, Grammy, and other awards. Beautiful compositions here, that Julian will feature between 8 and 9pm.

She’s been a federal prosecutor, a Starbucks, White House and military attorney, an Army Airborne veteran, and an activist. But here she digs into jazz, Americana, and “soul-grass” with these songs that cover race relations and the pandemic in these modern times. Janus is named after both the Roman god, and the Seattle singer’s mother.

It’s been a decade since this Vermont singer/songwriter last released a full-length album, though she’s kept herself busy with new motherhood, collaborations like Bonny Light Horseman with Josh Kaufman, and of course Hadestown, her smash Broadway hit that’s won numerous Tony, Grammy, and other awards.