Tag: Song Premiere

LISTEN: Jesse Brewster, “Amber Kinney”

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Artist: Jesse Brewster
Hometown: San Francisco, California
Song: “Amber Kinney”
Album: The Lonely Pines
Release Date: March 5, 2021
Label: Crooked Prairie Records

In Their Words: “This is the second song I ever wrote on mandolin as I’m relatively new to the instrument, but I love the different colors it gives me to work with. ‘Amber Kinney’ is set in a fictional town in 19th century Ireland, and is about a mistreated wife who finally gathers the courage to leave, under cover of darkness. Side note, this was largely written late night in the chill of the garage — the only place I could make noise at that hour as I hadn’t finished the studio yet.” — Jesse Brewster

Photo credit: Nino Fernandez

LISTEN: Ryanhood, “Appy Returns”

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Artist: Ryanhood (Ryan David Green & Cameron Hood)
Hometown: Tucson, Arizona
Song: “Appy Returns”
Album: Under The Leaves
Release Date: April 16, 2021

In Their Words: “I love instrumental music, having grown up on electric gunslingers like Joe Satriani and Eric Johnson, and later becoming infatuated with acoustic masters like Béla Fleck and Chris Thile. While most of our repertoire features vocals, we’ve been peppering our live concerts with instrumentals for years. I came up with the main theme for this one in a green room, just before a show back in 2016. I continued to tinker with it for years until I realized the main motif had some similarities to another instrumental of ours, ‘Appy Jam,’ which is a staple of our live set. I decided to lean into this resemblance and make it a full-blown sequel, referencing some of the rhythmic motifs and phrasings from the original, but taking the listener on a whole new journey. What made the song especially challenging to write was the fact that getting together to play-test it wasn’t always possible due to COVID-19. So I used music notation software to make ‘digital versions’ of each of our parts. This allowed us to practice playing the song (with our digital counterpart) for a couple of weeks before going into the studio and cutting our guitars together.” — Ryan David Green

Photo credit: Taylor Noel Mercado

LISTEN: Lauren Spring, “I Remember You”

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Artist: Lauren Spring
Hometown: Port St. Joe, Florida
Song: “I Remember You”
Album: I Remember You EP
Release Date: February 26, 2021

In Their Words: “‘I Remember You’ is about choosing to remember someone in a kinder light than what the relationship may have been in reality. If you chose pain, you feel pain when you remember it. If you choose love, then you’re flooded with love and nostalgia. I’ve had plenty of opportunities to learn that lesson and chose the more immature road for longer than I’d like to admit but I’m choosing love more and more and feel it coming back to me all the time now. I love the message of this song and am so glad to put it out in to the universe. It felt weird to celebrate the nostalgia of a past relationship and not honor the glorious human I love who puts up with my shit today. This line was for him: ‘Cracks in the story we learned to fill with something real.’ He’s my real. Here’s to ‘real’!

“My co-writer Scott (Feldman, Darkbloom Productions) wrote a lyric so ridiculously dope that it took me two months and 8.5 billion rewrites to feel like I had written the rest of the song anywhere close to the bar he set. (Jackass) ‘Ain’t nostalgia a funny thing, it paints a picture so carelessly. Prettier than it’s ‘sposed to be, that’s how I remember you.’ It became the chorus and I love it. That TikTok video of the guy skateboarding to ‘Dreams’ was everywhere when we were writing ‘I Remember You’ and when I listen back I definitely hear a Fleetwood Mac influence in there. Probably more Christine than Stevie, but still there. Crazy what you don’t even know what you’re absorbing sometimes!” — Lauren Spring

Photo credit: Shelli McMillan

LISTEN: Simon Flory, “Have Your Adventure”

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Artist: Simon Flory
Hometown: Virgie, Indiana
Song: “Have Your Adventure”
Album: Haul These Blues Away
Release Date: February 26, 2021

In Their Words: “‘Have Your Adventure’ was a saying of my late Granny, Mariel Mae Summers Flory of Catlett, Virginia. It was a reminder to get out and see the world, make up my own mind about it, and also her way of saying I could always come home. It was the kind of knowledge gleaned from a life tethered to the seasons on our family farm for 91 years. I wrote this song as a mantra of sorts — we haven’t had a shortage of hardship in America lately, or opportunities for an adventure. My Granny would hope you’ve found your own.” — Simon Flory

Photo credit: Brooks Burris

WATCH: The Wild West, “Better Way”

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Artist: The Wild West*
Hometown: Los Angeles, California
Song: “Better Way”
Release Date: February 26, 2021
Label: Blackbird Record Label

In Their Words: “When the idea of ‘Better Way’ formed, society was and still is struggling with the differences that divide us. If one does not take the time and compassion to honor differences and look at the commonality that unites us, it’s blinding and tears us apart. Lyrically the idea of being born with love and born without hate is at the root of ‘Better Way.’ Finding the way back to that innocence, compassion and understanding brings a hopeful lens for the future if we can hold onto it and lift each other up. This group of women does exactly that for each other.” — Manda Mosher

*The Wild West: Tawny Ellis (vocals, lap steel, omnichord); Amilia K Spicer (vocals, guitar, mandolin, keys); Pi Jacobs (vocals, guitar); Manda Mosher (vocals, guitar, harmonica); Heather Anne Lomax (vocals, guitar); Deb Morrison (vocals, bass guitar)

Photo credit: Jason Willheim

LISTEN: Lonesome River Band, “Love Songs”

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Artist: Lonesome River Band
Hometown: Floyd, Virginia
Song: “Love Songs”
Release Date: February 19, 2021
Label: Mountain Home Music Company

In Their Words: “‘Love Songs’ is another great song written by our friend Adam Wright. It tells the story of a songwriter who has had bad experiences with love and can’t find ways to be positive about it. The lyrics depict the songwriter’s frustration: ‘They say write in what you know / And all I really know is the losin’ and the leavin and the left.’ Adam puts a comedic twist to selling sad songs, and Brandon Rickman, our guitarist and vocalist, portrays it in his unique way.” — Sammy Shelor, Lonesome River Band

Photo credit: Anthony Ladd

LISTEN: Ian Fisher, “Winterwind”

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Artist: Ian Fisher
Hometown: Ste. Genevieve, Missouri
Song: “Winterwind”
Album: American Standards
Release Date: February 19, 2021

In Their Words: “My hometown of Ste. Genevieve, Missouri, is a four-and-a-half hour drive from Nashville. My pilgrimages there were always made more romantic by snaking alone in a car down the country roads along the Mississippi. A winter or two ago, I had the radio off listening to the wind rush around with my left hand hanging out of my open window like a wing and this song came to me. I fumbled between the seats and found a broken pen and a crumbled gas receipt. I pressed both firm to my steering wheel and wrote the bulk of this song at 55 mph nearing Paducah.” — Ian Fisher

Photo credit: Andreas Jakwerth

LISTEN: Beth Lee, “Birthday Song”

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Artist: Beth Lee
Hometown: Houston, Texas, now residing in Austin
Song: “Birthday Song”
Album: Waiting on You Tonight
Release Date: February 12, 2021

In Their Words: “I wrote this just before my birthday in 2018 for a songwriter game I am a part of, given the prompt ‘close my eyes.’ I sent it to Vicente Rodriguez, my friend and eventual producer, on his birthday a couple weeks later, and he loved it. It seemed apropos that we ended up booking studio time the week of his and guitarist James DePrato’s birthdays the following year. The song came together quickly in the studio with some minimalistic percussion, James’ guitar magic, some hand claps, and my favorite finishing touch, the glockenspiel. It was the first song we really finished and I remember thinking, yeah, this is going to be a good record.” — Beth Lee

Photo credit: Eryn Brooke

LISTEN: Anya Hinkle (Feat. Graham Sharp), “What’s It Gonna Take”

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Artist: Anya Hinkle featuring Graham Sharp
Hometown: Asheville, North Carolina
Song: “What’s It Gonna Take”
Release Date: February 12, 2021
Label: Organic Records

In Their Words: “On May 26th, 2020, my neighbor Graham Sharp and I had planned to get together to do some songwriting. On that day, we had all woken up to the new reality, the first day without George Floyd in this world. ‘What should we write about?’ we asked each other, and we began to process the horror of his death through a song. We asked, what’s it gonna take? How can we speak to the brokenness of our country and our complicity in that? As we watched the nation convulse, we continued to write, trying to comprehend the pain we saw on display in the soul of our country and in ourselves.

“When we went into the studio to cut the single, we asked a master of the sacred steel, DaShawn Hickman, and gospel singer Wendy Hickman to join us in asking ‘what’s it gonna take?’ Bringing in their voices was an important part of processing the difficult summer, building trust and beauty through song. Only by listening to Black voices are we going to know what it is gonna take. We are still so divided and will remain ignorant until we can absorb what it’s like to be Black in America.” — Anya Hinkle

Photo credit: Rose Kaz

LISTEN: Lindsay Lou, “Bell Suite” & “Alright Sweet”

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Artist: Lindsay Lou
Hometown: Nashville, Tennessee
Songs: “Bell Suite” & “Alright Sweet”
Album: The Suite Sweets
Release Date: February 12, 2021
Label: Alright Sweet Records

In Their Words: “I wrote all the elements of The Suite Sweets during a time when I was practicing with a lot of Immersion Composition Society (ICS) writing lodges. I was dedicating hours to the practice of writing as uninhibitedly as possible, and sometimes I would come out with partial songs that I would go back later to finish. I noticed that there were common themes among them, so I decided to try a smash-up of the two songs that mentioned bells into one song, and a smash-up of the two songs that mentioned being alright into another song, and I was pleasantly surprised by the outcome. It seemed that the Suites had a sort of emergent property, which was greater than the sum of their parts. I made these particular tracks as demos, but loved the raw energy so much I knew I wanted to share them with the world when the time was right. There is the deep thread of my personal journey with mental health in ‘Alright Sweet’ and of the complexities of love in ‘Bell Suite,’ so I can’t imagine a better way to bring them to you than with the benefit show I’ve put together for Valentine’s Day weekend in support of Backline: a music industry-specific resource for mental health and well-being.” — Lindsay Lou

Photo credit: Scott Simontacchi