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!

This Seattle-based R&B and jazz-rooted band has their fourth album now. Expanding on the album’s theme, frontman Tom Eddy notes “These aren’t ‘Love Songs’ in the most obvious sense. They deal with the middle stages, the hinterlands of love and life together - figuring someone out and what they need, learning how to communicate, and examining your own faults. We set out to write music that felt more grown, a little wiser. The songs that emerged all pointed in the Love Direction.”

It’s just Steve and his acoustic instruments on this live album recorded while on tour last year. He’s currently on a similar tour this summer of 69 shows, including one for WNCW fans last month here at Isothermal Community College’s Foundation Performing Arts Center.

Get to know this great new bluegrass band if you haven’t already! They formed out of jamming together at Grass Valley, the annual Father’s Day Bluegrass Festival held in California’s Sierra Nevada foothills. Mandolinist/singer AJ Lee and guitarist Sullivan Tuttle had been in a band together from ages 8 and 10, respectively, and guitarist Scott Gales and Lee first shared the stage when he was 11 and she was 4. City of Glass, is a California affair, through and through. Lee & Blue Summit brought in Lech Wierzynski, of the California Honeydrops, to produce; they tapped Bay Area steel guitarist Mikiya Matsuda for a couple of tracks; plus they had Californian banjo player, and instructor, Luke Abbott lend five-string to a number. Their next show in our area is on August 31st, at the Earl Scruggs Music Festival.

With her honest, emotional lyrics, here equally honest, emotional vocal delivery, and her wonderful band of Matt Smith (pedal steel and electric guitars), Rick Cooper (bass/vocals), Evan Martin (drums/vocals), and Kevin Williams (keys/vocals), it’s no wonder Amanda Anne Platt has kept Asheville in the national music spotlight these past dozen or so years. Get to know this new one on Mule Kick Records, which will be officially released on August 9th.

Jeff Tweedy and Wilco are big fans of the LP: the “long play”, full album release of a dozen or so songs that capture some semblance of where they’re at at the time of recording, whether with an actual theme, or just a vibe. So it’s a bit unusual to see a new EP of just 6 songs, which are previously unreleased tracks from the Cousins sessions. There’s a bit of a summertime theme here. Enjoy!

Do you remember Madeleine Peyroux’s wondrous 2004 classic Careless Love, which evoked the Parisian streets where she came of age as a singer, and seamlessly blended originals alongside sublime covers from the likes of Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen? Well she’s back with her 9th studio album, and back in top form, with themes on this album ranging from the confessional to the political, from whimsy to yearning. In every note, Peyroux digs deep, making for another sensuous, sinewy, deeply rich release.

Introducing some soul-jazz-funk musicians that may need no introduction: guitarist Eddie Roberts (The New Mastersounds), organist Robert Walter (The Greyboy Allstars), bassist Chris Stillwell (The Greyboy Allstars), and drummer Zak Najor (Karl Denson’s Tiny Universe, and formerly Greyboy Allstars). They first met in the UK in 1996, and have played with each other in various formations over the years since. Now we have this official collaboration of 8 great grooves, courtesy of Color Red Records, released on July 26th.

They’ve become international stars lately, and this year they play some of the most coveted stages in the country: Colorado’s Red Rocks, L.A.’s Greek Theatre, NYC’s Madison Square Garden, The Late Show With Stephen Colbert. But we still remember their 2010 debut jazz-folk CD in a two-tone cardboard sleeve, and gigs at smaller venues like the Flat Rock Music Festival and the WNCW Air Studio… They’ve always been quite the tight, collaborative band, and this time they’ve perhaps gelled even further, by writing together in drummer Mike Calabrese’s Vermont home. “In the past we’d written pieces of songs and shared them with each other and built them up from there, but we always had the space to listen and reflect in total privacy,” details singer Rachael Price. “At first it was terrifying to write together in the same room, but as soon as we got started it felt so fun. We very quickly realized, ‘Oh, we need to do this again and again.’”

We’ve got the band’s 4th studio record, courtesy of Stax/Concord/Fantasy Records. Produced by Brad Cook (Waxahatchee, Bon Iver, Kevin Morby) it blends both sides of Rateliff’s immense talent: emotionally potent, vivid storytelling and the rugged, R&B revivalism that has powered the band to worldwide acclaim over the past decade.