Artist Bios

2022 Artist Bios:

Railroad Earth

A brother leaves this world too soon. A trip down U.S. Highway 61 ends in a deluge of biblical proportions. A retreat to the Big Easy results in its own flood of inspiration. A new chapter begins. These moments and many more fade in and out of focus on Railroad Earth’s seventh full-length album, All For The Song.

The celebrated New Jersey septet — Todd Sheaffer [lead vocals, acoustic guitar], Tim Carbone [violins, electric guitar, vocals], John Skehan [mandolin, bouzouki, piano, vocals], Carey Harmon [drums, percussion, vocals], Andrew Altman [upright & electric bass], Matt Slocum (organ and piano), and Mike Robinson (banjo, guitar, steel) chronicle the twists and turns of this journey through eloquent songcraft, bluegrass soul, and rock ‘n’ roll spirit.

“Perhaps, it represents the journey we’ve been on for twenty years as a band and as a family,” observes Carey.

“I will always remember these sessions as a time of healing and reflection,” adds Andrew.

“What threads the record together?” ponders Todd. “Nostalgia, sadness, and a lot of great moments to sing along to.”

For over two decades, Railroad Earth has captivated audiences with gleefully unpredictable live shows and eloquent and elevated studio output. The group introduced its signature sound on 2001’s The Black Bear Sessions. Between selling out hallowed venues such as Red Rocks Amphitheatre in Morrison, CO, they’ve launched the longstanding annual Hangtown Music Festival in Placerville, CA and Hillberry: The Harvest Moon Festival in Ozark, AR—both running for a decade-plus. Sought after by legends, the John Denver Estate tapped them to put lyrics penned by the late John Denver to music on the 2019 vinyl EP, Railroad Earth: The John Denver Letters. Beyond tallying tens of millions of streams, the collective have earned widespread critical acclaim from David Fricke of Rolling Stone, American Songwriter, Glide Magazine, and NPR who assured, “Well-versed in rambling around, as you might expect from a band named after a Jack Kerouac poem, the New Jersey-built jam-grass engine Railroad Earth has let no moss grow under its rustic wheels.”

In 2018, Railroad Earth bid farewell to founding member Andy Goessling who passed away from cancer. His shadow loomed over the process as the guys retreated to New Orleans for the first time to record.
“From the beginning, the vision was more than just the music,” states Todd. “We looked at this like a ‘destination’ record. Our past records were all made close to home or, in fact, at home. Andy’s passing was very much in the center of our thoughts and our hearts in the writing and recording of this album. Things were so shaken up that we thought it’d be a benefit to go away from all of the distractions and be together. In New Orleans, there is great food and there are great spirits to be shared. I’ll leave the music part of the equation for others to judge, but we surely succeeded in making the bonding part of the vision come to fruition!”

Another first, they recorded with Anders Osborne behind the board as producer. It might’ve been the gumbo, but the guys seamlessly absorbed the homegrown flavors of the Big Easy by osmosis, incorporating horns, blues harmonica, and the producer’s own perspective and guitar playing.

“His enthusiasm is contagious,” exclaims Carey. “There are five producers in this band, so a strong-willed voice from the outside is usually pretty essential. Anders was the voice.”

Todd agrees, “He brought a pure and striving soul, unforgettable laugh, rich palette of emotion, a great stash of guitars and amps, philosophical driftings, freedom, unguarded honesty, warmth, and love.”

The band paved the way for the album with “The Great Divide,” “It’s So Good,” and “Runnin’ Wild.” Beyond those initial singles, the record picks up steam on “Blues Highway.” Over dusty acoustic guitar, hummable fiddle, and a banjo pluck, Todd recounts a particular road trip down Rte. 61, which ended in “the most downpour of rain I’ve ever experienced.”

“We had a show in Natchez, so I decided to make my own adventure out of the trip,” he recalls. “I flew to New Orleans, rented a car, and drove up the Blues Highway like a tourist, stopping and touring the old plantations and blues honky-tonks. I was smelling the river and the refineries. On my return to New Orleans, I drove into what might’ve been a hurricane with intense and terrifying lightning to boot. In the dead of night, I gave up trying to inch down the road, pulled over, and waited it out. The trip seemed like a parallel for my life at the time and inspired the song.”

The epic “Driftin’ The Bardo” hinges on one of the final recordings of Andy on ukulele and high-strung guitar. It slips into a poignant piano-driven crescendo punctuated by cinematic strings.

“As we were recording it, ‘The Bardo’ came to represent Andy’s transition,” reveals Tim. “It was an emotional experience.”

Clocking over eight minutes, “Showers of Rain” unfurls as a “psychedelic excursion” complete with an improvised jam, guitar solo by Anders, a dreamy string section, and imagery “inspired by a strange 19th century novel called Green Mansions.”

“We all have those moments when we feel visitations and remember loved ones we’ve lost,” Todd observes. “In New Orleans, Andrew shared with us the night previous he’d had a visit from Andy in his sleep. At my house, we have a cardinal who taps on the window, and my wife think It’s her mom. These are the thoughts in the middle of the song where I ask, ‘Was that really you?’”

The album culminates on the wistful “All For The Song” as the final refrain, “All of the heartache, all that’s gone wrong, all for the moment, all for the song,” rings out before a harmonica passage.

“It’s a bit painful to contemplate or talk about, to be honest—as are a couple other tunes on this record,” confesses Todd. “The song says way more than enough, I believe.”

In the end, Railroad Earth brings listeners closer than ever on All For The Song.

“We want audiences to connect to the album,” Carey leaves off. “We hope they’re as moved by the music as we were making it.”

Beats Antique

You can’t know Beats Antique until you’ve been a part of its journey, and experienced the act as an entity with a life of its own. A stage show that demands more music; music that needs costumes, ships and masks and shadow dances; an audience that comes for art, and takes away stories to feed their imagination.

Commitment to the full performance art form is how Beats Antique fuses musical worlds, pulling on global sounds for experiments on the fringes of cinematic cabaret, informed by electronic mash-ups and inspirations who have joined them on the journey such as Les Claypool, Alam Khan, The Glitch Mob, Too Many Zooz and the Preservation Hall Jazz Band.

The Floozies

Yonder Mountain String Band

With their latest album, “Get Yourself Outside,” Colorado-based Yonder Mountain String Band once again echoes out into the universe their place as not only a pioneering jam-grass act, but also one of the most innovative groups in the live music scene — something the groundbreaking ensemble has proudly held high for the better part of a quarter-century.

Artistic collaboration and musical discovery—remain a thick thread of inspiration and ambition within Yonder Mountain but it’s the fans and fellow musicians they’ve met and collaborated with along the way that have made this bountiful journey something they’ve never taken for granted.

From selling out Red Rocks Amphitheatre at a time that was unheard of for string acts, to performing for tens of thousands at festivals like Bonnaroo, Yonder Mountain was the initial spark in an acoustic inferno decades ago that endures headlong into the 21st century.

Karl Denson’s Tiny Universe

 Fresh off the road with The Rolling Stones, Karl Denson AKA “Diesel” is back out on the road with his “Tiny Universe” as they prepare to celebrate 25 years of funk. Lenny Kravitz alum and cofounder of the seminal boogaloo revivalists The Greyboy Allstars, Karl Denson‘s Tiny Universe will be bringing their world renowned live performance to select cities this summer!

Also catch Karl Denson’s David Bowie 2 hour tribute this year at Hangtown!

Molly Tuttle

One of the most compelling new voices in the roots music world, Molly Tuttle is a virtuosic multi-
instrumentalist and singer/ songwriter with a lifelong love of bluegrass, a genre the Northern California-
bred artist first discovered thanks to her father (a music teacher and multi-instrumentalist) and
grandfather (a banjo player whose Illinois farm she visited often throughout her childhood). On her new
album, Crooked Tree, Tuttle joyfully explores that rich history with bluegrass, bringing her imagination to
tales of free spirits and outlaws, weed farmers and cowgirls, resulting in a record that is both forward-
thinking and steeped in bluegrass heritage, and which has earned her the 2022 International Bluegrass
Music Association award for Female Vocalist of The Year.
“I always knew I wanted to make a bluegrass record someday,” says the Nashville- based Tuttle, who
began attending bluegrass jams at age eleven. “Once I started writing, everything flowed so easily:
sometimes I’ve felt an internal pressure to come up with a sound no one’s heard before, but this time
my intention was just to make an album that reflected the music that’s been passed down through
generations in my family. I found a way to do hat while writing songs that feel true to who I am, and it
really helped me to grow as a songwriter.”
Her debut release for Nonesuch Records, Crooked Tree, which earned five IBMA nominations, is co-
produced by Tuttle and bluegrass legend Jerry Douglas (who also plays Dobro throughout the album);
her studio band also includes esteemed musicians like Ron Block (banjo, guitar, harmony vocals), Mike
Bub (upright bass), Jason Carter (fiddle), Tina Adair (harmony vocals), and Dominick Leslie, a mandolinist
who also performs in Tuttle’s live band, Golden Highway, along with banjo player Kyle Tuttle, fiddle
player Bronwyn Keith-Hynes, and bassist Shelby Means. The album features such illustrious guests as
Gillian Welch, Margo Price, Billy Strings, Old Crow Medicine Show, Dan Tyminski, and Sierra Hull.
Crooked Tree marks a departure from the eclecticism of Tuttle’s critically lauded 2019 full-length debut
When You’re Ready and 2020’s … but i’d rather be with you (a covers album that masterfully reinterprets
everyone from FKA Twigs to Karen Dalton). Each track showcases Tuttle’s guitar technique, for which
she was the first women ever named Guitar Player of the Year by the International Bluegrass Music

Association, as well as her voice—an instrument that shifts from warmly understated to fiercely soulful
with equal parts precision and abandon, occasionally treating the listener to some high-spirited
yodeling.
Recorded live at Nashville’s Oceanway Studios, Crooked Tree simultaneously honors the bluegrass
tradition and pushes the genre into new directions, particularly in its lyrical content. To that end, the
album’s freewheeling yet incisive title track references a bit of wisdom once shared by Tom Waits.
“There’s a quote where he talks about how a crooked tree might look strange, but in the end, it’s still
growing strong after all the other trees get chopped down,” says Tuttle. “I wrote that song partly
thinking about all the clear-cutting of forests where I grew up, but it also encapsulates how I feel
sometimes with my music. It’s about carving your own path, taking the road less traveled, and not being
afraid to do the unexpected.”
Tuttle, who names female bluegrass pioneers like Hazel Dickens among her most enduring touchstones,
sings the praises of wild- hearted women throughout Crooked Tree. On the album- opening “She’ll
Change,” for instance, her vocals take on a breakneck momentum as she pays homage to the type of
woman who fully owns her unabashed complexity. “I’d just covered ‘She’s a Rainbow’ by the Rolling
Stones on my last album, and I wanted to write my own song that gives me that same feeling of
celebrating femininity,” notes Tuttle, who co-wrote “She’ll Change” with Old Crow frontman Ketch
Secor.
Haunting and hypnotic, “The River Knows” quietly subverts the classic murder ballad, while “Side
Saddle” (featuring Gillian Welch) is a defiant anthem of resistance. “It’s about being a cowgirl, but it’s
also about how I sometimes feel about being a female guitar player, where I just want to be taken
seriously for what I do instead of having this extra attention on me as the only woman in the room,”
Tuttle explains.
And on “Castilleja,” Tuttle delivers a moody and mysterious outlaw song spotlighting her talent as a
storyteller (from the chorus: “I promised you the gold in California/ On a painted horse with reins of
silver thread/But if I can’t steal your heart Castilleja/I’ll ghost this world long after I’m dead”). From song
to song on Crooked Tree, Tuttle proves her gift for introducing a contemporary sensibility to a musical
tradition many decades old. One of the album’s most piercing and timely tracks, “San Francisco Blues”
(featuring Dan Tyminski) takes the form of a sweetly sorrowful waltz, its lyrics threaded with delicate
commentary on the ravages of late capitalism. “It’s about how the Bay Area used to be such a thriving
artistic scene, but now it’s become almost impossible for musicians, or really most people at all, to
afford to live there,” says Tuttle.
A more lighthearted but no less gripping portrait of the modern world, the gorgeously scorching
“Dooley’s Farm” (featuring Billy Strings) reimagines The Dillards’ bluegrass classic “Dooley”— this time
casting the title character as a cannabis farmer (sample lyric: “He’ll meet you in the back of the woods at
midnight/Bring a lantern cause it’s hard to find/He’s got a strain that’ll punch your lights out/Old
Dooley’s gonna blow your mind”). “In the original version Dooley’s a moonshiner, so Ketch and I thought
it would be fun toupdate his story and make him a different kind of outlaw,” says Tuttle, who co-wrote
about half the songs on Crooked Tree with Secor.
In many ways her most personal work to date, Crooked Tree took shape as Tuttle revisited her earliest
childhood memories, at one point returning to her grandparents’ beloved farm. “My family doesn’t own
the farm that my father grew up on anymore, but my grandma and I drove out there last spring and

walked around and reminisced about the old times,” she says. “As a kid growing up in the suburbs of San
Francisco, I loved being in this completely different landscape and spending so much time out on the
porch, just talking and playing music and watching the lightning bugs at night.”
Although Tuttle started out on violin, she took up guitar at the age of eight and found immense
inspiration in the music of the seminal bluegrass artists whose records her father constantly spun at
home. “I very clearly remember sitting on our couch with my guitar, flipping through songbooks and
singing songs by the Stanley Brothers and Bill Monroe,” says Tuttle, who ventured into writing her own
songs at age fifteen.
After high school, she headed to Berklee College of Music in Boston, studying in the American Roots
Music Program with a focus on guitar performance and songwriting. Upon moving
to Nashville in 2015, Tuttle began working with a diverse mix of musicians in the Americana, folk, and
bluegrass communities, continuing to refine the skills that have earned acclaim from the likes of The
Bluegrass Situation (who noted that “her playing is rhythmically complex, technically precise, and
remarkably fleet, as though there are two sets of hands running up and down the frets”).
For the final track to Crooked Tree, Tuttle chose an autobiographical piece called “Grass Valley,” a lilting
and luminous number that looks back on the formative bluegrass festivals she attended with her father
as a child. “It definitely has the most personal details of any song on the album, and for that reason I
didn’t know if it fit,” she says. “But then Jerry Douglas really encouraged me to include it, and during the
recording process I got the idea to have my dad sing on it too—and now it’s one of my favorites.”
Not only a colorful glimpse into her musical upbringing, “Grass Valley” echoes one of Tuttle’s most
closely held missions behind the making of Crooked Tree. “My hope is for people to someday play these
songs around the campfire at bluegrass festivals,” she says. “I’d love for people to learn the songs and
play them with their friends and make them all their own. That feeling of sharing music is what I’ve
always loved most about bluegrass, and that’s the feeling that I wanted to create with this album.”

The Mother Hips

Hope. Warmth. Companionship. Few things in this world can conjure up such sensations quite like the sight of a glowing lantern in a darkened window.

“The glowing lantern is a universal symbol for sanctuary,” says Mother Hips co-founder Tim Bluhm. “That’s what we wanted this album to be: a warm safe place to get in out of the dark cold night.”

Written and recorded through the heart of the COVID-19 pandemic, Glowing Lantern is indeed a work of great comfort, even as it grapples with the profound anxiety of these troubling and uncertain times. The songs here are weighty, abstract ruminations wrapped in unflagging optimism, bittersweet streams of consciousness delivered with a jaunty confidence in better days to come. Bluhm and fellow co-founder Greg Loiacono produced the album themselves, and the juxtaposition of darkness and light in their stark lyrics and buoyant arrangements reflect a tension familiar to anyone who’s ever struggled to find their footing or make sense of the inexplicable. At the heart of it all, though, is a distinct sense of camaraderie, a feeling of closeness and brotherhood that the band has ironically only come to rediscover as a result of the past year of isolation and lockdowns. Glowing Lantern is as collaborative a record as The Mother Hips have ever made, and it’s impossible not to feel the joy, gratitude, and friendship radiating out of it like a beacon in the night.

Founded 30 years ago while Bluhm and Loiacono were still just students at Chico State, The Mother Hips caught their first big break before they’d even graduated from college, when legendary producer and industry icon Rick Rubin signed the band to his American Recordings label. In the decades to come, the group would go on to release ten critically acclaimed studio albums and cement themselves as architects of a new breed of California rock and soul, one equally informed by the breezy harmonies of the Beach Boys, the funky roots of The Band, and the psychedelic Americana of Buffalo Springfield. Hailed by the San Francisco Chronicle as “one of the Bay Area’s most beloved live outfits,” the group’s headline and festival performances became the stuff of legend and helped earn them dates with everyone from Johnny Cash and Wilco to Lucinda Williams and The Black Crowes. Rolling Stone called the band “divinely inspired,” while Pitchfork praised their “rootsy mix of 70’s rock and power pop,” and The New Yorker lauded their ability to “sing it sweet and play it dirty.”

The Brothers Comatose

Whether traveling to gigs on horseback or by tour bus, Americana mavens The Brothers Comatose forge their own path with raucous West Coast renderings of traditional bluegrass, country and rock ‘n’ roll music. The five-piece string band is anything but a traditional acoustic outfit with their fierce musicianship and rowdy, rock concert-like shows.

The Brothers Comatose is comprised of brothers Ben Morrison (guitar, vocals) and Alex Morrison (banjo, vocals), Steve Height (bass), Philip Brezina (violin), and Greg Fleischut (mandolin, vocals). When they’re not headlining The Fillmore for a sold-out show or appearing at Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival, the band is out on the road performing across America, Canada, Australia, and hosting their very own music festival, Comatopia, in the Sierra foothills.

Polyrhythmics

Now on their sixth full-length album and twelfth year performing, Seattle’s Polyrhythmics take the sonic exploration of past albums, combined with mad scientist experiments testing the tunes on the road, and rolled them into 2020 releases Man from the Future and the companion EP Fondue Party.

Rich with bold brass and hypnotic percussion, Polyrhythmics; latest studio work continues to showcase the instrumental eight-pieces impossibly tight grooves and virtuosic musicianship as they tear through a singular blend of funk, soul, psychedelic rock, R&B, progressive jazz, and Afrobeat.

Now, the band emerges from the pandemic to return to the road with a new arsenal of original songs in their diverse catalog to conjure up the next chapter of fiery and infectious live performances as they embark on a 2nd decade as a touring collective.

Polyrhythmics are:
Ben Bloom: Guitars, Grant Schroff: Drums, Nathan Spicer: Keyboards, Jason Gray: Bass, Scott Morning: Trumpet, Elijah Clark: Trombone, Art Brown: Sax and Flute, Karl Olson: Percussion.

Ryan Montbleau Band

For as long as he can remember, Ryan Montbleau’s been a seeker. From the jungles of Peru to the volcanoes of Hawaii, from the beaches of Costa Rica to the streets of Brooklyn, from the backseat of a 16-passenger van to backstage at Carnegie Hall, the acclaimed singer/songwriter has spent much of his life crisscrossing the globe on a perpetual search for meaning, purpose, and understanding. It’s a quest that’s guided him both personally and professionally over the years, one that’s come to define not only his music, but his very sense of self. And yet, listening to Montbleau’s ambitious new multi-part album, Wood, Fire, Water, and Air, there is a profound sense of satisfaction in sitting still, a recognition that perhaps all those spiritual treasures he’s been chasing for so long were closer than he thought.

“My whole adult life has been this journey of trying to figure out where home is,” Montbleau reflects. “I think I’ve finally found it.”

Set to roll out across four distinct EPs, Wood, Fire, Water, and Air marks Montbleau’s first studio release since putting down permanent roots in Burlington, Vermont, where he recently purchased a house after more than two decades of living on the road. While much of the material here was written in fits and starts over the past several years, it’s clear that the desire for stability was very much on Montbleau’s mind even before he settled on the banks of Lake Champlain, and the songs reflect a maturity and self-awareness that can only come from the difficult work of rigorous self-examination. Montbleau is quick to credit therapy for his growth of late, but he sings about more than just himself here, mixing sly humor and deep revelations as he meditates on the ties that bind all of us perfectly imperfect humans together. Taken as a whole, it’s a broad, insightful collection balancing boisterous rock and roll energy with intimate folk introspection, a sprawling, magnetic record all about listening, letting go, and living life.

“I’ve been through a lot over these past few years,” says Montbleau, “and I’ve experienced some monumental shifts in my perspective. The only way for me to write about it was to just get as honest and vulnerable as I could.”

Honesty and vulnerability have been hallmarks of Montbleau’s career since the early 2000’s, when he first began performing around his native Massachusetts. In the years to come, he’d go on to collaborate with artists as diverse as Martin Sexton, Trombone Shorty, Tall Heights, and Galactic, and rack up more than 100 million streams on Spotify alone. Along the way, Montbleau would share bills with stars like Tedeschi Trucks Band, Ani DiFranco, The Wood Brothers, Rodrigo y Gabriela, and Mavis Staples, but it was his ecstatic headline shows—often more than 200 of them a year—that solidified his reputation as a roots rock powerhouse and an inexorable road warrior. NPR’s Mountain Stage compared his “eloquent, soulful songwriting” to Bill Withers and James Taylor, while Relix celebrated his “poetic Americana,” and The Boston Herald raved that “he’s made a career of confident, danceable positivity.”

That positivity would serve Montbleau well on the long and winding road to Wood, Fire, Water, and Air. Work on the record first began in the summer of 2019 at the gorgeous Guilford Sound studio in southern Vermont, where Montbleau and producer Adam Landry (Deer Tick, Rayland Baxter) laid down basic tracks with a rotating cast of players. At the time, Montbleau had little idea what he was getting himself into.

“I honestly didn’t know what this project was going to be for a very long time,” he explains. “All I knew was that I had a bunch of songs I was really excited about, and that I wanted to take a new approach to recording them.”

For much of his career, Montbleau had worked fast and loose in the studio, capturing music as raw and organically as possible. This time around, though, he found himself craving a bolder, more fully realized sound, and by the time he finished basic tracking in Guilford, it was clear that his work had only just begun. What followed was a yearlong odyssey of adding, subtracting, revising, and reimagining, as Montbleau and mixer/engineer James Bridges fleshed out the sessions with a broad array of instruments, textures, and colors.

“It took a long time for me to get to a place where I could trust myself enough to stretch out like this,” says Montbleau, who experimented with synthesizers and drum machines and added piano and mandolin to his repertoire for the project. “I’d always kind of deferred to other people’s expertise in the studio, but learning to trust my ears and get my hands dirty with the music was a totally empowering experience.”

As the songs took shape, it became clear to Montbleau that there were discrete themes at work within the larger collection, both sonically and emotionally. Rather than release the entire 15-track record all at once, then, he decided he would unveil the album more deliberately over the course of four separate EPs, each inspired by an element of the natural world. First up: Wood, a rustic, earthy trio of tracks taking stock of just what it means to be human in these bewildering times. Songs like the playful “Perfect” and soulful “Ankles” wrap weighty ruminations inside deceptively lighthearted packages, and the spare, stripped-down arrangements make for an ideal bridge between Montbleau’s earlier work and the more adventurous sounds to come on the album’s second installment, Fire. Infused with an infectious energy and feel-good pop optimism, Fire showcases the rock and roll side of Montbleau’s personality, celebrating the joy and liberation that comes with learning to live in the moment.

“The songs on Fire were a chance for me to just let loose and have fun,” says Montbleau. “They were an opportunity to not overthink things for a change, to trust my gut and follow what felt good.”

The arrival of Water quickly cools things down, though, bringing the music back to Earth with a more sober, meditative quality. Montbleau wrote several of the tracks while doing medicine work in Peru, and the healing, regenerative nature of that trip is obvious on songs like the dreamy “Forgiveness,” which features extensive keyboard contributions from avant-garde icon John Medeski. By the time we reach the album’s final chapter, Air, Montbleau seems to have found peace within himself, coming to terms with the transient, fleeting nature of our existence. “Just know that you are not alone,” he sings on “The Dust,” “and that’s all you get to know now.”

“Even though COVID kind of upended everything with my career, this past year has been a rare chance for me to stay put for a while and focus on what really matters,” says Montbleau, who recently invited his girlfriend and her daughter to move in with him in Burlington. “I feel like I finally have a real family life now, and I’m living on stable ground for the first time.”

That doesn’t mean the hunt for purpose and meaning is over. Ryan Montbleau will always be a seeker, and that’s alright. As Wood, Fire, Water, and Air so beautifully demonstrates, sometimes the search is its own reward.

Ordinary Elephant

“Keep kind all that rises from your chest to your tongue. Don’t ever let your words undo the work you’ve done,” sings Crystal Damore on “Worth the Weight,” a song that beats at the heart of Ordinary Elephant’s potent new album, Honest. In the song, it’s a two-line enjoinder from an adult to a kid. In life, though, it’s a mission statement for ourselves as much as for others. And the work that Crystal, along with her husband Pete, has done on Honest is both filled with kindness and worthy of praise.
Interestingly, if not ironically, in order to accomplish this new work, Crystal and Pete had to set aside the work they'd done previously, as a veterinary cardiologist and a computer programmer, respectively. The two met at an open mic in College Station, Texas, in 2009 and soon moved to Houston together. With her on acoustic guitar/lead vocals and him on clawhammer banjo/harmony vocals, the work of music continued on the side as both had full-time jobs, until they threw all caution to the wind and hit the road in an RV.
Leaving the stability of a day job and the security of a career didn’t come easily for Crystal. “It took a lot of time — and help from Pete — for me to get to the point that I was okay with leaving the career I spent my whole life in school working toward, to the degree that I was leaving it,” she admits, adding, “to be okay with the fact that it may not be what other people want, but it was what I needed, and that was the important part.”
Bitten by the creative bug at an early age, Crystal had set most of that aside to focus on school and work: “Living on the road, before doing music full-time, gave my creative side the breathing room it need to come back out.”
And, boy, has it ever come out now that they’ve both committed fully to Ordinary Elephant. In song after Honest song, the Damores take on what it means to follow your heart and eschew all the expectations, assumptions, and limitations projected upon you by others. They also use their own life experience to point out that the “safe” route can be anything but safe, as they do in “Rust Right Through.”
“I had a safe job and was on a safe life trajectory, financially,” Crystal says, “but those things were like a safety rail you reach for — a habit, a comfortable familiarity… something you’re expected to reach for. I was letting those things hold me up instead of learning to stand on my own. And one day, down the road, I would retire, and that job and those people who I thought I needed to please, would fall away, and I’d be left with me, not having lived the life I truly wanted or felt called to. That is not safe to my well-being.”
Another track that takes aim at playing it safe is the spirited bounce of “Jenny & James.” It’s the story of an interracial couple, though, really, it’s the story of any non-traditional couple targeted with shunning and shaming for being in love. As Crystal notes, “The safe; route of pairing up with someone of your same race and opposite gender is not safe to the well-being of many.”
The choices we make are not always easy or safe, but they are important. The songs on Honest speak, again and again, to being our truest, best selves, no matter who we are or where we come from. Indeed, every of us has a heritage, a legacy, a story, of which we are a part, for better and for worse. Each moment and memory a lesson leading us to who we will be.
The album's spunky opener, “I Come From,” looks back at the things in our upbringing that are worth holding on to. The more sober “Scars We Keep,” on the other hand, tosses out the things that must be cast aside. In it, Crystal sings, “These times are hard, and it’s harder to heal, when where you were born decides what you fear. It’s time to be a brother, not my father’s son. I was born to be a bigot, but that don’t mean that I am one.”
As Pete explains, “Detangling tradition from any particular negative aspect is complicated, and sometimes impossible. But it’s necessary to change the tradition for it to live on and, hopefully, preserve its core as our culture tries to correct its failings.”
Pete grew up in Austin, Texas, in a big Italian family who gathered for big Italian meals, and he’s quick to admit that we all live in bubbles of our own making or choosing. “I can only imagine growing up in a toxic environment,” he offers. “Without the perspective gained from travel and experiencing other cultures, it’s nearly impossible to realize how toxic your world actually is. I can’t fault anybody not overcoming. I’m not in their shoes. I know I can’t change them by telling them they’re wrong, but I do know that people can change when they see new things.”
People can also change when they hear new things, as a fan did when Ordinary Elephant played “Scars We Keep” on the main stage at Kerrville Folk Festival in 2018. Around 2 am, a man walked up to them in the campground, tears in his eyes, and said, “I want to thank you for that song you did tonight … You changed my point of view.” Their response: “That is why we do this. Songs speak, and they can heal.”
Songs can also draw our attention to people and problems that we might not otherwise notice, as in “The War,” which takes on both the travesty of what war does to service members and the tragedy of what society does to returning veterans. It also connects the dots between different kinds of trauma and loss. For the song’s protagonist, the war never ended.
“It caused him to lose his significant other, his home, his ability to maintain a job, and drove him to become an alcoholic,” Crystal says of the character. “The narrator represents the majority of the population, in that he does not know, first-hand, the experience of war, but the story shows him having compassion for this veteran and understanding that some choices are made for you and this can lead to an inability to make good choices for yourself down the line.”
Much like Patty Griffin and Gillian Welch, taking on the male perspective as a female singer/songwriter is something that Crystal does with ease and equanimity, though the reverse is not something that happens very often. Pete theorizes that, “In a historically male-dominated world, there’s not been a lot of practice on the male side of idolizing women, or even being encouraged to empathize with their situations. Also, the expectation for men to be masculine is tightly woven through our culture and the everyday lives of men. A hesitation, conscious or not, would certainly present itself before performing a song on a big stage that’s overtly from a female perspective, especially for a man who’ not very secure.”
For Crystal, though, it’s just about telling the story in the truest, kindest way. “I think part of it could also have to do with empathy,” she says, adding, “and empathy can take the form of telling someone else’s story in song, no matter what gender that person is.”
Which brings us back to “Worth the Weight” and its stunning chorus: “You will wonder if it’s worth the weight, the worry that wears you down. Half your life spent figuring out how to make the other half count.” Honest is worth so much more than its weight, and Ordinary Elephant makes every kind word count as it rises from their chests to their tongues.

Aj Lee & Blue Summit

AJ Lee and Blue Summit made their first appearance in Santa Cruz in 2015. Led by singer, songwriter, and mandolinist, AJ Lee, the bluegrass band has performed all over the world, but finds home in California’s Bay Area. In 2019, they released their debut album, Like I Used To. Their second full length project, I’ll Come Back, came out August 2021 – with national touring in support of the record ongoing.

Although falling loosely under the bluegrass label, AJLBS generally plays sans banjo, with Sullivan Tuttle and Scott Gates on steel stringed acoustic guitars, AJ on mandolin, Jan Purat on fiddle, and Chad Bowen on upright bass – a configuration effectively used to create unique space and texture in the arrangements not as commonly found in the music of their peers. Drawing from influences such as country, soul, swing, rock, and jam music, the band uses the lens of bluegrass as a vessel through which to express and explore the thread that binds and unifies all great music.

Marty O’Reilly

Explaining Marty O’Reilly’s music is like describing a dream. It feels familiar, but at the same time unchartered. His songs sound bluesy but not blues, folk but not folk, soulful but not soul. Marty’s voice is beautiful and unique, his lyrics stark yet lush over gritty electrified guitar, melding beautifully into genre-defying music within the vast definitions of Americana. One can hear an urgency and complexity in the songs, expressing something elemental and perhaps contradictory: love and anger, joy and pain, real and imagined.

The live performance is at the core of Marty’s projects. On stage, whether accompanied by a band, or alone, he enters a trance and the music is born again as something new every night. It’s what his followers call “magic”. He goes from raw gospel blues to cinematic epics, from heavy driving grooves to delicately arranged folk songs. Marty leaves the stage out of breath and sweaty, his audience in awe. It’s hard to describe, impossible to categorize. Yet people who know the music will try to explain it to you, just as you might struggle to explain a dream in the morning. The details might slip away as you recount them, but the feeling remains.

Sway Wild

San Juan Island, WA-based indie folk-rock power duo Mandy Fer and Dave McGraw are back at it with a new sound, and a new name: Sway Wild! Their exceptional vocal harmonies, coupled with Fer’s pioneering electric guitar work, have become a vehicle to carry them around the world, sharing stages with the likes of Iron & Wine, Lake Street Dive, Gregory Alan Isakov, and Watchhouse. Sway Wild’s infectious sound explores the corners of rock, pop, funk, prog, worldbeat, and folk, but at its nucleus it is undeniably a music full of joy. It can squeeze the heart in your chest, it can draw tears from your eyes, and it can force you to get up and move your body; over and over, it somehow manages to do all three at once. Mandy Fer also tours as the lead guitarist for Grammy nominated Allison Russell and recently performed with Brandi Carlile and Jason Isbell.

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Boot Juice

Boot Juice hails from the Hills of the Sierra Nevada Mountains in Northern California. The band features electric and acoustic guitars, three vocalists, bass, drums, saxophone and trumpet. Inspired by the likes of The Band and Railroad Earth with an intensely energetic show reminiscent of Talking Heads, Boot Juice has been gaining buzz with their vibrant performances and party-sparking reputation. Shifting effortlessly between driving bluegrass and americana into cosmic rock’n’roll and swing. They deliver three part vocal harmonies and dynamic instrumental arrangements with a sultry dose of blues and soul. The collective effect leaves crowds little choice but to shake it down on the dance floor.

Boot Juice has been kicking around the west since 2017, leaving audiences happy, and dance floors sticky. They have kept an ambitious tour schedule, hitting the road in their 96’ International school bus, constantly adding to their ever-growing resume of festival and club appearances. Founding members Connor Herdt (acoustic guitar and vocals) and Evan Daly (electric guitar and vocals) have been friends since childhood. The two have been playing music together since their teenage years, combining their respective passions for americana and rock’n’roll songwriting with a desire to create a big sound that feels right at home in a barroom or on a large festival stage. Brett Worley (bass wizard) not only holds down the low end, he is also Evan’s cousin and has been touring with the band since the beginning. Brett’s melodic bass style has become a signature of the Boot Juice sound. Jess Stoll (vocals and artwork) joined the band shortly after, bringing another lead and backing voice to the group for deeply layered harmonies. She wears many hats for the band, acting as the artistic director for all of the band’s design concepts and providing the vision and drive necessary for a big production. Billy D. Thompson (drums) has been a staple of the Sacramento music scene for the past decade, graduating from Sacramento State University with a degree in Jazz Drum Performance. Billy brings his soul and funk influence into the Americana realm, adding yet another dimension to the band’s sound. In 2019 Boot Juice came into its full current lineup with the addition of its horn section. Caleb Sanders (alto and tenor saxophone) and Micah Marmorstein (trumpet) bring an infectious energy and tight horn harmonies to the stage, making it tough not to dance. It’s not uncommon to see these guys hanging off the rafters or running into the crowd by the end of the night.

Boot Juice plays music that will attempt to bring you to the street corner, the river side, or the open highway. They released their debut LP album, Speaking in Tones, in May 2019 and followed in March 2021 with their second record, Shifting gears. The group is currently tracking its third LP, which will be released in 2023.

Lowdown Brass Band

The LowDown Brass Band is a uniquely strong representation of Chicago Music culture. This talented all horn band leans heavily on dancehall and street beat rhythm, with the energy of conscious hip hop, jazz, reggae, and soul. 

LowDown maintains a constant performing and touring schedule throughout the globe. Recent performances include a opening run with Galactic, Bon Jovi, The Montreal Jazz Festival, World Music Fest, Vancouver Jazz Fest, Lagunitas Beer Circus, Chicago Jazz Fest, Frendly Gathering, Alaska’s Salmon Fest, Chicago’s Do-Division Fest, Wicker Park Fest, Wakarusa, and Cotai Jazz Fest,

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LowDown is currently touring their last two albums “The Reel Sessions” & “LowDown Nights”, created during the pandemic. These albums dive deeper into their unique sound and show how the collective continues to push the genre further into the future and beyond.

Ashleigh Flynn & the Riveters

With what PopMatters describes as “tenacious swagger,” critically acclaimed singer songwriter Ashleigh Flynn recently dialed up the volume and debuted an all-female rock band as a nod to the“Rosie the Riveter” archetype from WWII.

Ashleigh Flynn & The Riveters’ inaugural LP hit the streets in 2018 featuring a sound that hearkens back to early Stones, ‘70s psychedelic country rock, and alternately charms like a Sunday afternoon front porch session. Since releasing on Flynn’s label, Home Perm Records, the Oregon-based band has barnstormed the Western US – steadily building their audience and live sound along the way.

The Riveters released “Live from the Blue Moon” in June 2021 from an inspired performance at Oregon Country Fair, and are poised to continue honing their craft as a band of highly adept song assemblers who put on one hell of a show.

The band will take their unique brand of Americana back out on the road as COVID19 permits, having been invited to perform at High Sierra Music Festival 2022, Oregon Country Fair, among a host of others in Summer 2022; and are currently recording their sophomore album with guitarist Nancy Luca (Bo Diddley, Mike Campbell) in the producer chair.

The Sweet Lillies

Broken Compass Bluegrass

Sweet Sally

Sweet Sally is Lucy Khadder (15) and Sophia Sparks (14). They have been performing together for nearly four years both as a duo and with their band, Birches Bend. Their impeccable musicianship and vocal harmonies as well as intelligent songwriting are far beyond their years as they share choice covers, fiddle tunes, and originals.  

Emcee Joe Craven

  Joe Craven, the “Old Rugged Crossdresser of Hangtown” is also a sound farmer, music producer, educator, carnival barker, and former museologist. For over 40 years, Joe has made a living playing forward folk tradition by reworking it and playing it forward as new music. Joe has recorded and played with Jerry Garcia, David Lindley, David Grisman, Alison Brown, Howard Levy, Vassar Clements, Rob Ickes and many other innovative artists. He is a featured artist/educator in the PBS television series, Music Gone Public, and Joe has created music and sound effects for commercials, soundtracks, computer games and contributions to several Grammy-nominated projects. He’s the Executive Director of Vocáli Voice Camp, WinterTunes and RiverTunes Roots Music Camps in California. He’s a recipient of the Folk Alliance Far-West Performer of the Year Award and the Swannanoa Gathering’s Master Music Maker Award. Joe has also been a Master of Ceremonies at music festivals, including Delfest, Telluride, Wintergrass, High Sierra, Grand Targhee Bluegrass, Live Oak and others. He also a poet and eulogist. He sleeps occasionally.                                                “Joe Craven is magical” – San Francisco Chronicle