A native of Pendleton, Indiana, Williams grew up listening to '80s metal, eventually gravitating toward classic country when he was in his late teens. He enrolled in Nashville's Belmont University after graduating from high school, but he soon dropped out of college and began gigging in the Music City, sometimes drifting back to his home state of Indiana, sometimes getting down to Texas. Williams wound up leading his own band and their constant gigging brought them to the attention of Julian Raymond, a producer who also worked A&R at Big Machine Records. He signed Williams separately from the band, taking him into the studio with a star-studded backing band that included J.T. Corenflos, Matt Rollings, and Victor Indrizzo to record his debut album. The resulting Better Than Myself was released in August 2017.

I've always heard things a little different, and in musical terms "incorrect" in my head since the day I picked up a guitar. Although I am always trying to learn and sharpen my tools, I have also been looking for a team that wasn't there to "correct" me but help deliver what I hear in my head. I found that team. For the very first time, I can slap my names on songs ready for the world to hear and feel, "Yup, this is me, this is what I hear in my head and if you like these songs then you like a genuine part of me and well we should get a beer."

From the true southern city of Macon, Georgia, and a family steeped in oral tradition, JB Strauss meshes music with storytelling in effortless fashion.

Influenced by the heavy, electric style of bands like The Allman Brothers, Credence Clearwater Revival, and Lynyrd Skynyrd, along with poetic and witty writers like John Prine, Gram Parsons, and Jim Croce, it is fitting that JB borrows from the notion that ‘everything that rises must converge.’

Also noteworthy are the years JB spent with family and friends on Georgia’s Golden Isles. His music is redolent of the intricacies and depth of life in the marshes and intracoastal waterways and leans on their life-giving elements to feed the soul when the rivers of home run murky. As JB followed in both of his grandfathers’ footsteps, achieving a law degree all his own, he learned the stories hidden beneath the surface of life in the South. The musical result? The ability to deftly balance the human qualities of contradiction with spiritual redemption. “These songs are part of the foundation of who I am as a person and now as an artist,” JB says.

In “Man Possessed”, the title song of his debut EP, out everywhere December 5th, JB speaks of his grandfather’s life as a Judge and “…how that life wore him down like river over stone…he became a man possessed with moving on.” Another tune, “Piss Ant Hill”, which will be released as the first single on 11/22, is a humorous, yet poignant tale of a man whose fatal mistakes land him in Georgia’s Reidsville Prison. With no one to claim him when he dies, the subject’s destiny becomes a date with a pine box on prison land reserved for the unclaimed.

As JB launches his artist career, one can expect honesty and intensity, truth and salvage. His presence on-stage is paramount to the experience and fans will feel it immediately when they step into one of his shows. “Man Possessed” represents just the first chapter of a long musical journey ahead. Indeed, it’s harvest time for JB Strauss.

Few artists have a voice you can spot from note one. Leah is one of them. Born in Sandy Hook, KY, Blevins discovered her passion for expressing words, stories and life experiences through song at an early age. She has refined her passion for song writing in her sophomore EP, Walk Home (2018). Heavily influenced by church hymns and country and rock legends Emmylou Harris, Loretta Lynn, Dolly Parton, Stevie Nicks, and Janis Joplin, Leah’s distinct country, bluesy songwriting and voice differentiates her from the ordinary singer/songwriter in Nashville. Her debut EP Runnin', produced by Ken Coomer, and released in 2015, introduced Leah to the world and captivated listeners with her rich voice and touching lyrics. In Walk Home, Leah is stepping into new territories, redefining country music in her terms.

Note for note, Marc Ford ranks as one of the world’s preeminent guitarists. Even so, his songcraft commands the utmost respect. Keyboardist Johnny Neel once said: “Marc Ford’s an actual genius. He has the best guitar sound I’ve ever heard.” Ford’s career began in Los Angeles during the 1980s. His group, Burning Tree, captured the essence of his guitar virtuosity and songwriting. He joined the Black Crowes in late 1991. Ford toured and recorded on three of the Crowes’ finest albums--The Southern Harmony and Musical Companion, Amorica, and Three Snakes and One Charm. Ford’s tenure in the Crowes found the group operating at a zenith. He rejoined the Crowes in 2005-2006 when they toured and released The Lost Crowes--two albums the band never released when he was a member. In 2002, Ford released his first solo album, It’s About Time. Ford’s following solo albums included Weary And Wired (2007), The Fuzz Machine (2010) and Holy Ghost (2014). Artists he produced include Ryan Bingham, Pawnshop Kings, Steepwater Band, Chris Lizotte, Phantom Limb and Republique du Salem. Marc Ford exists as a musical architect of the highest order. Through his career Marc Ford has performed and recorded with Izzy Stradlin, Gov’t Mule, The Jayhawks, Federale, Widespread Panic, Blue Floyd, Booker T. Jones, Ivan Neville and Heartbreaker Mike Campbell. It’s harvest time for Marc Ford. Over the years he’s created his own stellar sound that meets all the rigid standards of excellence.

For all the moonlighting he's done in other genres over the years, Carl Nichols always comes back to the blues. At various points in his career Nichols has played gospel (despite being an atheist), West African music (despite being born and raised in Milwaukee) and, as one half of the acclaimed folk duo Nickel & Rose, Americana (despite having some deep reservations about that genre's long history of appropriating black music without always welcoming black musicians). None of those gigs, however, extinguished his desire to play the kind of traditional, acoustic blues he grew up admiring.

Maybe on some level he's pathologically drawn to spaces where he's an outsider. As a twentysomething black musician, Nichols is all too aware that the modern blues scene doesn't look much like him, but he never outgrew his childhood love of the music. "It seemed cool to me when I was young," he says. "You'd just hear people like Lightnin’ Hopkins or R.L. Burnside, and they just seemed cool. That's why anybody gets into music, because it speaks to them."

And it continues to speak to him, so much so that he’s tabled Nickel & Rose just as the duo was establishing itself as a major folk festival draw to pursue his dream of returning the blues to its songwriter roots. "I think a lot of what's been lost in the blues since the early '60s is the black experience, so I try to sing about that," Nichols says. "I can't escape racial realities, but I'm also aware that my audience is different than me, so the way they receive my message is different. I have this nostalgia for an era where blues musicians sang about their experiences to their own people, but that audience isn't there now."

It’s a challenge, he admits, but there's power in crossing racial and generational divides. And on a personal level, he sees Buffalo Nichols as a form of justice for the music he's always loved. "I want to redeem the blues after all the experiences I went through when I was younger," he explains. "When I first started getting into the blues, my mom would take me to blues shows, and inevitably there'd be some old white guy there who would try to take me under his wing and explain 'the rules' of the blues to me. It chased me away."

I always related to the blues," Nichols concludes. "I grew up in abject poverty. I experienced racism. And when I would sit down with a blues record, I could hear that in the songs. Now I want to be that person that I never got to see on stage."

For well over a decade, Cody Jinks has devoted himself to making music that’s equal parts uncompromising and empathic, often giving voice to those who exist on the margins of modern life. Since first emerging as a solo artist in the mid-2000s, he has steadily advanced from playing nearly-empty bar rooms to independently building a following so dedicated, that he is now known as the biggest independent country artist on the planet.

Sunny Sweeney is the party and the morning after. She’s the quip that makes you laugh and the truth that makes you cry, the devil that’s egging you on and the angel whispering that you aren’t alone. But those compelling contradictions aren’t what’s most interesting about Sweeney: it’s the depth and brazen authenticity she brings to all her roles that grabs you and won’t let go.

“I’ve grown up doing the bar scenes, and you have to have drinking and partying songs there-–you have to,” Sweeney says. “Now, my songs are still about the same things, but I feel like they’re more mature versions.”

Sweeney’s salty wisdom and Texas-hewn soprano have never sounded stronger than they do on Trophy, her anticipated new album. Sunny Sweeney's wit and honesty has always defined her stone-cold country have blossomed into confessional, complex songwriting for grown-ups, still whiskey-drenched and honk-tonk-ready. Drugs, death, the ex-wife, drinking, devotion, and longing for a child: it’s all here, raw and real.

American Singer/Songwriter from Monticello, Arkansas by way of Nashville, Tennessee, Ward Davis has had songs recorded by Trace Adkins, Willie Nelson, Merle Haggard, Wade Hayes, Sammy Kershaw, Bucky Covington, Jimmie Van Zant, Buddy Jewel, Carolina Rain, The Roys, and more. Most recently, Ward Davis co-wrote “I’m Not The Devil” with Cody Jinks, with whom he subsequently toured with nationwide. With over 250 shows per year under his belt as both a headliner and support act, Ward Davis’ already popular live show is growing at exponential rates.