Christmas Break

For anyone who is following this blog. Details and postings will resume after Christmas.

12/14/04 Songwriter events

WILL KIMBROUGH. With ADAM HOOD. Kimbrough is Nashville’s Americana everyman who has found himself wrapped up in the music of almost every artist in town, from Todd Snider to, most recently, Rodney Crowell, through his immense skills as guitarist, singer, songwriter and producer. His own work draws on the intricate guitar lines of Richard Thompson, rough-and-tumble rock of the Replacements, down-home Delta blues and studied songcraftsmanship of Crowded House’s Neil Finn. Opening is South Alabama roots-rocker Hood. 9pm, 3rd & Lindsley, $7. Also, DREW KENNEDY and PETER DAWSON, 7pm, $5

* RAY HERNDON. McBride and the Ride member and longtime sideman to the likes of Kenny Chesney and Marty Stuart, Herndon had scored eight country hits before ever venturing out on his own. But on his 2004 solo debut, Livin’ the Dream, he didn’t exactly step out alone: Jon Randall, Lyle Lovett, Jessi Colter, and Clint Black all make vocal contributions to this star-studded disc. 7pm, Borders Books & Music (Nashville), free.

* DOUG JOHNSON, DARRELL BROWN, TY HERNDON and GARY BURR. Herndon is a certified country star and a respected writer. Burr is a Music Row hit machine, and Johnson scored NSAI’s Song Of The Year in 2003 for his Three Wooden Crosses. 9pm, Bluebird Cafe, $12. Also, JEREMY CAMPBELL, NOAH GORDON, GEORGE McCORKLE and SPADY BRANNEN, 6:30pm, free.

Open Mike/Writer’s Nights

DEBI CHAMPION’S WRITERS NIGHT. With host DEBI CHAMPION featuring RALPH MURPHY, RAY SISK, MISTY LOGGINS, TIM STANLEY, TIM HAYNES, MICHELLE MOLNER, ASHLEY FILIP, CHRIS HUDSON, DIANNA JONES, BOB MOGAN, STEVE LIBBY, SHANE JONES, JASON EUSTICE, BILL GOFF, BRYAN WYNICK, SHANNON CAIN, JOHN RUSSELL, BOB TURK, DAMON SMITH, CRAIG WINQUIST and SCOTT JARMAN. 6pm, Commodore Sports Bar & Grille, free.

OPEN MIKE WRITERS NIGHT. With host CHET O’KEEFE. 8pm, Douglas Corner Cafe, free.

Q’S PHAT TUESDAY OPEN JAM. 8pm, Boardwalk Cafe, free.

LEE RASCONE’S WRITERS NIGHT. With STEVE FRAME, MERSAIDEE SOULES, TREVA BLOOMQUIST, TIM MATTHEWS, BRANDON RICKMAN, plus other special guests. 6:30pm, Nashville crossroads, free.

* SHORTSETS. With host COLE SLIVKA featuring CARRIE MILLS, DANA COOPER and TOM KIMMEL. One of the city’s most consistently cool writer’s nights, featuring tunesmiths who primarily dwell outside of the Nashville mainstream. 8pm, The Family Wash, free.

12/13/04 Monday Night Songwriters Events

WRITERS NIGHT. With host DAVID WARREN REED featuring JIMBEAU HINSON and TOMMY BARNES. 7pm, Boardwalk Cafe, free.

MIKE HENDERSON BAND. With MICHAEL RHODES, JOHN JARVIS and PAT O’CONNOR. With limber slide guitar work and hotter-than-Texas six-string solos, Henderson is known as one of Music City’s top blues cats. His guitar playing and songwriting skills have resulted in work with top-shelf talents like Mark Knopfler and Trisha Yearwood. 9:30pm, Bluebird Cafe, $7.

Also, OPEN MIKE NIGHT hosted by BARBARA CLOYD, 6pm, free

MOKE CAMERON’S WRITERS NIGHT. With CHARLIE BROWN, SCOTT CARTER and TOM WORTH. 6:30pm, French Quarter Cafe, free.

OPEN MIKE WRITERS NITE. With host LORI JOHNSON. 8pm, The Sutler, free.

WRITERS NIGHT. With host DAVID WARREN REED featuring JIMBEAU HINSON and TOMMY BARNES. 7pm, Boardwalk Cafe, free.

12/10 Friday Night!!!!

DAVE OLNEY. This looks like the place to be. A charter member of the songwriting pantheon that includes Guy Clark and Townes Van Zandt, Olney weds historical and philosophical referents to common human concerns, balancing a dark view of power and greed with gentle love songs. Phenomenal folk-country songwriter Olney is what some would call an artists’ artist. Even if you haven’t heard of him, we can almost guarantee that some of the singers and songwriters you like are big fans of his. 9pm, Bongo After Hours, $10.

PHILLIP KYLE, ARLIS ALBRITTON, GREG POPE, & JOHN GRIFFIN IN THE ROW: 6:30 pm, Bluebird Cafe, $10 late show

GARY NICHOLSON W/TOM HAMBRIDGE, COLLIN LINDEN, & WHITEY JOHNSON: 9:30 pm, Bluebird Cafe

CHRIS KNIGHT. With THE COAL MEN and STACIE COLLINS. Raw and rough, Knight writes real-life tunes about the rural life around him growing up in the coal-mining town of Slaughters, Ky., and performs with an unpretentious and convicted voice. His music has been embraced by the burgeoning Americana movement, but they used to call what he sings country music. 9pm, Mercy Lounge, $10, 21+.

MONROE APPRECIATION NIGHT. Hosted by ROLAND WHITE and featuring THE CHERRY HOLMES FAMILY, LARRY STEPHENSON BAND, ROLAND WHITE BAND, LEROY TROY, KATHY CHIAVOLA, PATTY MITCHELL, JT & PAUL GRAY, THE SIDEMEN, PAT ENRIGHT, DAVID GRIER, JON WIESBERGER and SHADD COBB. There’s no better place to have a Bill Monroe tribute night than Nashville, and no better venue for it than Station Inn. Where else could you corral a lineup like this, which includes pickers who actually played with Big Mon himself? 8pm, Station Inn, $12.

ALLEN SHAMBLIN. With TIM JOHNSON and RORY LEE. Shamblin is the kind of songwriter you hope young tunesmiths aspire to emulate. He’s had hits you can hang your hat on, like Bonnie Raitt’s I Can’t Make You Love Me, John Michael Montgomery’s Life’s A Dance and Keith Urban’s Where the Blacktop Ends. One of his songs has even been turned into an award-winning children’s book, Don’t Laugh at Me, which was featured on Reading Rainbow. Shamblin will almost certainly bring along copies of his very first CD, Sunrise, which features 11 narrative tunes collected to form a loose concept record. 6:30pm dinner, 8pm show, Puckett’s After Hours, $12 show only, $27.95 dinner and show.

THE JACK SILVERMAN ORDEAL. This looks good too... and it's free. Wicked guitarist Silverman winds his way through John Scofield covers and like-minded, extended originals. His stellar " ordeal " often includes horn player Jim Hoke, trombonist Roy Agee and drummer Tommy G. 9:30pm, The Family Wash, free.

DEBI CHAMPION'S WRITERS' NIGHT FEAT. JIMMY PAYNE, KARG BROTHERS, CHRIS CAVANAUGH, KARLENE WATT, SHANE JONES, & MORE: 6 pm, Commodore Lounge

BRANDON GUNTER: 7 pm, Murphy's Loft Cafe
In 2000 Brandon wrote and produced all 13 tracks of his first record in 12 years, War About Love. The project is a testament to the passion and intensity with which Brandon approaches his life and relationships and views the world around him. Since the release Brandon has built a loyal and die-hard following of people drawn to the honesty and passion infused in Brandon's music and live shows.

OPEN MIC: Maybe an early start to the evening trying your christian songs out on the crowd. 7 pm, 23rd Psalm Cafe Kudos to MTSU Jazz faculty members Aliquo (on sax) and Simmons (trumpet) for taking the lead in establishing a regular gathering place for aspiring players who want to test the waters and for vets who just want to sit in and cook.

Radney Foster

For singer/songwriter Radney Foster, the choice was easy. Throughout his career, he has always taken the path less traveled…and in the process opened up a whole new world. With his first studio album in four years, he’s done it again. Another Way To Go is a revelation and is already being held up as the album of his career.

Foster has long walked a fine line. By marrying smart lyrics with undeniably memorable melodies, he’s been able to garner both critical raves and commercial success. One look at the folks who have covered his songs, from the Dixie Chicks and Tanya Tucker to Hootie and the Blowfish—and you realize this guy is not easily categorized.

As one half of the duo Foster and Lloyd, Radney recorded three groundbreaking albums for RCA, becoming one of the first acts to be played simultaneously on Country and College radio. The duo broke through in the late 80’s, a rare time in Nashville’s history when Country radio welcomed other innovative acts like Lyle Lovett, Nanci Griffith, Steve Earle and Dwight Yoakam. Foster and Lloyd’s "Crazy Over You," went straight to number one, making them the first duo in history to top the charts with their debut single. Meanwhile, their albums were appearing in the Top Ten on the College chart, sharing common musical ground and press accolades with Rank and File, Lone Justice and the Blasters.

When the duo split up, Foster recorded two solo albums for Arista Nashville, which yielded hits like "Nobody Wins" and "Just Call Me Lonesome." With 1998’s See What You Want To See, Foster pressed past Nashville’s limits and found a whole new audience with hits like "I’m In," and "Folding Money." In many ways, his foray into a pop sound freed him to turn back to his roots, which he did with the live acoustic album, Are You Ready For The Big Show. That set produced the number one song of 2001 on the Texas Music Chart, "Texas In 1880" (with special guest Pat Green).

Now, with Another Way To Go, Foster has come full circle; not afraid to push boundaries—yet happy to let his roadhouse roots show.

"I really laid my heart on the line with See What You Want to See because of the emotional upheaval in my life--I had been through a divorce and had to deal with my young son moving to France. All of those hard times make for good music. Now that I’m happy and married and recording again, I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to plow the same kind of emotional field. The challenge was to find a way to do it on songs about joy and about struggle—to paint with the whole palette." One listen to the powerful songs on this collection and you know Foster has hit his mark. The intensity of emotion is still there, but there is an exuberance and sense of freedom to this album that was never captured before.

Each song plows fresh territory, yet together they form a cohesive whole, from the jangly pop of "Real Fine Place To Start," to the heartfelt tribute "Everyday Angel," the bold challenge of the title track, to the greasy funk of "I Got What You Need" and the sweeping cinematic feel of "Again." Though Foster covers a wide range of styles, he never strays from the Texas singer/songwriter storytelling tradition, evident in the campfire introspection of "What Are We Doing Here Tonight," the devastating honesty of "Disappointing You" and the tender, bittersweet "Scary Old World," which Radney co-wrote with legendary songwriter Harlan Howard just before his death.

"When I first learned the craft of songwriting, I operated from the school of "you grab a hook, you write a song," Foster says. "But more and more, I don’t write songs that way. These songs were born out of telling stories about life. That’s what I’m always trying to find -- a little piece of the truth." Indeed, Foster’s greatest talent is his uncanny ability to take a peek inside your soul… and tell the story better than you could yourself.

The story he’s telling here is that if your heart’s in the journey, there’s always another road to take—a message that comes through loud and clear, even before he brings it home with the album’s closer. "I named the album Another Way To Go because for years I was told that you had to follow a certain formula to be a success," says Foster. "In fact, it’s just the opposite. It’s often when we break the rules that the most creative music is made."

Steve Earle

This is an artist you must listen to…Steve pulls no punches and gives me much hope…If I were a rock star, I would be Steve Earle." - Michael Moore

It can be kind of defeating, trying to write a standard music industry bio of Steve Earle. For someone not yet 50 (not until January of 2005), Steve has managed to amass quite a bunch of bio. Also problematic for the bio writer is the fact that the many details of Steve’s hectic existence can not simply be set down in any semblance of reductionist order. You know: the usual Behind the Music melodramatic list of boxes to be checked: born, grew up semi deprived/disaffected, got break, made records, piled up money for his handlers, went to pieces, came back, found God/humility, etc. etc. This isn’t to say that Steve Earle hasn’t touched those bases at least once or twice, or that his tumultuous life and times are not chock full of drama, melo and not. But good luck trying to crush his highly particular world into a row of checked boxes

For those who don’t know, Steve Earle has been, for the past two decades, one of the more compellingly engaged figures on the American cultural landscape. Steve is the author of best-selling works of fiction (“Doghouse Roses”), a playwright, and a well-known speaker and presence in a variety of left-leaning populist movements. But it is in his persona as an exceedingly thoughtful, yet fun, country rocker that most people know him, and rightly so. His contribution to the merging of progressive country to the wider rock audience remains huge. Indeed, there is every reason to believe that the entire genre of “alt. Country” would not exist without Earle’s ground-breaking extension of what used to be called “folk-rock.” His recorded work, from the classic 1986 Guitartown onward through such excitingly heartfelt/redemptive works as Copperhead Road, I Feel Alright, El Corazon, Transcendental Blues, to the current The Revolution Starts…Now, represents an extraordinary catalogue of deeply personal music which compares favorably with such esteemed heroes as Neil Young, Bruce Springsteen, or even Bob Dylan.

Few artists have been able and/or willing to put themselves so consistently on the line, or to forthrightly speak their minds as Earle has, while continuing to maintain a commercial presence. On the heels of the controversial Jerusalem, which featured the much discussed “John Walker Blues,” a song which confounded Fox Newsies and other Patriot Actors by daring to actually imagine the so-called “American Taliban” as a human being, The Revolution Starts…Now, which features such no punch-pulling tunes as “F the CC” (an ode to the Federal Communications Commission) and “Rich Man’s War” might just turn out to be Earle’s most popular work. This could be due to the kinky inclusion of numbers like “Condi, Condi”, the singer’s tribute to what he calls “the extraterrestrial hotness” of the current Star Trek-ish National Security Advisor.

“I’ve been waiting all my life to sing a line like `skank for me, Condi’” says Earle, which more or less sums up his approach to the surreal quality of today’s political landscape.

Then again, much of Steve Earle’s sojourn through the vicissitudes of these millennial times has had the smack of the alt.---country and otherwise ---about it. As rock narratives go, Steve’s journey from wiseass garage player to wiseass (but wise) national figure is difficult to match. The back story, with its James Deanish archetypical aspect, is well-known to fans. Steve is from Texas, of course, where he was brought up in the don’t-blink town of Schertz, outside of San Antonio. It wasn’t the easiest childhood, most of all for Steve’s parents, the charming, more than occasionally exasperated Jack and Barbara Earle. Much of this upset owed to the fact that Steve, the oldest of five, was a poster child for the sort of individual who nowadays gets diagnosed ADHD (with a heavy accent on the hyper) and given mountains of Ritalin. Back in the 1960’s however, people like Steve were just called noncompliant badasses. School, as Steve says, “didn’t take.” Bored in English class, less than clueless in math, he was out of there by 8th grade. Much of his time then was spent in the local candy store playing pinball, a daily preoccupation until an iconic moment when, on the verge of an extra silver ball, the future songwriter saw his father’s reflection looming in the machine glass.

“If you’re not going to school, you better be helping around home,” said Jack Earle, a large, forceful man who spent several decades as an air traffic controller. He tried, Steve said, but with a head full of ideas driving him insane and a still-extant weakness for the romance of the road, at age 14 he found himself in Houston, living with his cousin, the knock-around musician, Nick Fain. Already a proficient guitarist (his Mom says one of her fondest early memories was of Steve winning a talent contest before he got thrown out of school), he taught himself the bass. He also began what would become an epic career as an ingester of illicit drugs. Richard Pryor said he once snorted half of Peru. Steve Earle would eventually perform similar feats in East Texas and Tennessee, albeit with poppies and needles. It was a lucky thing that, in addition to playing his guitar, he had a natural talent for crushing vast, soul-searching narratives into four or five verses with catchy bridging choruses.

Always looking for grown-ups (using this term loosely) who could teach him something he actually wanted to know, Steve joined up with many of the Texas troubadour legends of the time, people like Guy Clark (for whom he played bass), Jerry Jeff Walker, and the inimitable Townes Van Zandt. Most influential would be the dissolute Van Zandt, a world-class songwriter and self-destructive force, whom Earle calls----in one of his most quoted one-liners--- “a really good teacher and really bad role model.” The two men bonded in a hell-bent symbiosis of art and madness. One time, in an attempt to cure his drinking, Van Zandt had himself tied to a tree by the younger Earle. The truly demented thing was they both imagined this as a potentially effective treatment regimen. (It wasn’t: Van Zandt would wind up drinking himself to death). Never one to stint in the pursuit of anything, Steve, in addition to his drug use, would start marrying women in record fashion. In the words of one of his greatest songs, “Fearless Heart” he “fell in love a lot”. By the time he hit 40, he’d already been married an impressive six times, to five different women (Lou Anne Gill twice), which added up to two children and a hell of a lot of alimony.

In the midst of this cosmic thrashing, Steve Earle found the time to write hundreds of tunes, many in the employ of various Nashville song-writing combines. After a false start as a would-be rockabilly cat, he found his true groove after hooking up with Tony Brown and MCA to release Guitartown in 1986. Achingly honest in its multi-faceted mini-sagas of battered, betrayed rednecks, Guitartown, which contains the all-time fave title tune along with other enduring gems like “Hillbilly Highway”, “Someday” and “Goodbye’s All We Got Left”, sold like gangbusters, reaching number 1 on the country charts. To anyone’s way of reckoning, a new star was born. But Steve, oppositional in his way, did not quite view stardom in the same way as most of his ardent Nashville corporate enablers. From the beginning it was clear he would not be Garth Brooks, or even Bruce Springsteen, the blue-collar champion he is most often compared with.

He would not wear a cowboy hat. He would not appear on the cover of his Guitartown follow-up, Exit 0, without his band, the Dukes. Eventually the disc, which includes such all-time Steve tunes as “I Ain’t Ever Satisfied” and “The Rain Came Down”, came out without any cover picture, which in Nashville is akin to repeal of the Magna Carta. By the time of Copperhead Road, a hard-rocking masterwork that features one of Steve’s numerous tattoos for cover art, it was obvious: this boy was not made for country music, at least the kind of country music which rolled off the rack in Nashville. He was a junkie and a pain in the ass. He talked back and burned bridges. He forgot to show up for Fan Fair. He got into fights with the police, in Dallas no less. His days were numbered.

After the release of the brutally underrated The Hard Way, Steve Earle entered his own kind of personal Hades. Fired by MCA, he pawned most of guitars and moved to South Nashville, the black side of town, where he would spend the most of the next four years living the life of a street hustling drug addict, albeit one with some serious royalty checks still pouring in. Hanging with some local losers, playing Dr. Dre’s The Chronic over and over again, Steve Earle became one more of country music’s casualties. Every so often there would be Bigfoot-like sightings of him in the industry rags, usually looking gaunt and sneering. People wrung their hands about what a waste it all was, since Steve could have been such a massive star. Eventually, after a number of literally hair-raising car crashes and near death experiences with nasty drug providers, Steve got himself fitted for a bright orange jumpsuit in the County Jail where he’d stay for four months.

To say Earle was “a different man” when he got out of prison is stretching it some. According to almost everyone who knows him well, he was the same person: still a guy who rarely shut up (Steve himself says, “I’ll talk the ears off a wooden Indian”), still a guy with a head full of ideas. Kelley Looney, the bass player who has been a Duke longer than anyone says, “with Steve, things are always changing, but you kind of get used to that.” There were differences though. Mostly, Earle was straight, off junk and in a program, going to meetings nearly every day. Secondly, he was ready to play again.

For his second act, Steve went on a hot streak rarely equaled in American pop music. There was Train A-Comin’, a classy, quietly smoldering all-acoustic album of many of his older songs. This was followed by the searing rockers, I Feel Fine and El Corazon, two albums which, to these ears at least, represent some of his truly best stuff, song-by-song. There was still a country feel, but the canvas had widened, deepened. Rarely had his voice sounded better. It had a lived-in quality akin to the blues, or even the great Hank.

The material was shifting too. Few hit records provided more canny social commentary than Guitartown, but now Steve, who points to his air traffic controller father’s firing by Ronald Reagan as a major step in his own radicalization, was more overtly political. For Steve it didn’t make sense to march against the death penalty without singing about it as well. In this he was picking up the mantle of many passed-on heroes, like Woody Guthrie. The occasional protest tune on records like Transcendental Blues have become whole scale political disks like Jerusalem and The Revolution Starts…Now.

There are some who might wish Steve keep his rabble-rousing music to himself and simply turn out entire albums of tunes like “Fearless Heart.” Steve is sympathetic to this point of view. But for now he feels little choice. As an American patriot, what was someone with a songwriting gift like his to do in the age of Bush? “We’re in trouble, it isn’t anything you want to just sit by and pretend isn’t happening,” says the artist about his response to the current American place in the world.

It isn’t anything you really want to argue with either. Because first of all, Steve Earle has been around. He has done his requisite hard traveling for his position as a cultural bard. He is no dilettante in what he loosely calls “The Revolution”. Indeed, he is a renaissance man of the Revolution, a process which doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with AK-47s in the street or little red books written by Mao. The Revolution is a way to think, a way to live. Being up front in that number takes a little ego, that’s for sure. But it takes learning too --- life learning and book learning. Mostly, though it takes heart. Heart is something Steve Earle, who still “falls in love a lot”, has plenty of.

David Olney

David Olney is a singer-songwriter. But in his case, perhaps the term should be capitalized. And maybe underlined and printed in bold type as well.

To wit, the late Townes Van Zandt, a songwriting icon himself, rated Olney as "one of the best songwriters I've ever heard," listing him as one of his favorite music writers alongside Mozart, Lightnin' Hopkins and Bob Dylan. Olney's songs have been recorded by the two singers best known for showcasing the work of the finest contemporary songwriters - Emmylou Harris and Linda Ronstadt - and have earned him the sort of rare praise that is generally reserved for the work of geniuses. For as Dave Ferman of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram raves, "David Olney is as good as it gets. Period."

For confirmation of such heady praise, one only need to turn to The Wheel, Olney's new release on Loudhouse Records and his 11th studio album. Like many Olney records, it has a thematic thread subtly weaving through the work, this time one of circularity and motion, as he explores a broad palette of modes, moods and characters that crackle with the immediacy and emotional depth of reality transformed into music. With a musical and lyrical touch that ranges from the shattering surprise of a sucker punch to the piquant delicacy of a kiss, Olney forges the lowdown with high art within the craft of the popular song, creating virtual literature you can hum along with. Both on his own and in collaboration with folk and pop legend Janis Ian, Oscar nominee Gwil Owen and respected literary figure Bland Simpson, David Olney proves the transformational power of the well-written song.

The Wheel brims with the literate vividness that has inspired critics to compare Olney alternately to an author, painter, playwright and screenwriter. "His songs are rich with complex characters, unpredictable plot twists, and grand tragedies; they dramatize the brutality of evil and the quiet dignity of goodness," wrote Michael McCall in the Nashville Scene. Similarly, Jim Ridley noted in New Country how "David Olney has a distinctly American voice. There's a swagger, a generosity and a wiseguy wit in his writing that we associate with our national character, an appreciation for the underdog and the outlaw." Philadelphia Inquirer critic Nick Christiano compares Olney to "an American Richard Thompson," observing how he "ranges from brooding chamber folk to bluesy, down-and-dirty rock while writing piercingly intelligent and empathetic tunes that immediately engage both the head and the gut." It's those qualities as well as what the Star-Telegram's Ferman calls Olney's "astounding" and "magnificent" performing style that have made Olney the toast of musical cognoscenti across North America and Europe.

A longtime resident of Nashville, a songwriters' city if there ever was one, Olney was reared in Lincoln, Rhode Island. A love of musical expression came early; he recalls as a youngster the exhilaration of singing at the top of his lungs on quiet Sunday mornings as he rode his bike along his paper route. At the age of 13, he got his first guitar, and was soon digging down into the origins of contemporary American folk by listening to and learning from Woody Guthrie and Leadbelly. "Folk music was so immediate and self-contained and you could just jump in and do it," Olney recalls.

But even though "folk was the way I chose to do music," at the same time Olney tapped into the broad and rich veins of musical vitality found in the 1960s. "Rock'n'roll and soul and the British Invasion and pop music in general was the background music to all our lives. After a while, it all runs together. Buddy Holly, John Lennon, Chuck Berry, the Memphis Jug Band, Charlie Poole, Jimmy Reed, Otis Redding and Bob Dylan all hit me where I live. Oh yeah, and Ray Charles. They are all folk singers. They are all rock stars."

Attracted to the mysticism of the American South as a counterpoint to the Yankee rationalism of his home turf, Olney headed to the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill where his brief tenure as a student was soon overcome by the allure of making music. His college experience did offer its creative benefits in making the acquaintance of his now longtime friend Bland Simpson, the celebrated Southern author, musician (The Red Clay Ramblers), historian and storyteller.

During a subsequent stint living in Atlanta, Olney had a "world-changing moment" when he opened a show for Townes Van Zandt in nearby Athens. "His music knocked me on my ear," explains Olney. "He could write folk songs and make them contemporary, completely new. And he wasn't afraid of poetry - he was completely fearless that way."

Olney eventually landed in Nashville, where he comfortably fell in with such like-minded types as Guy Clark, Steve Earle and Rodney Crowell. He chose the city for its Southern locale and the music industry there, which proved to be in an entirely different solar system from the one that Olney worked and created in. "I thought I was gonna get famous real quick and that didn't happen," he recalls. "But I was having a real good time, and I was getting real productive with my writing."

Olney soon "had it in mind that would be fun to start a little band, a country and folk kind of thing. Then we played our first gig and it got real loud," he says with a laugh. The group, David Olney & The X-Rays, released one superb album, Contender, on Rounder Records and helped jump start Nashville's non-country live music scene.

After the band ran its course, Olney went solo and never looked backwards. Over what is now some two decades since of writing songs, making albums and performing, he's amassed a highly impressive and distinctive body of work. Along the way, he's inhabited in song such real life characters as Omar Khayyam, John Barrymore, T.E. Lawrence, John Dillinger, Barabbas and Jesse James as well Bob Ford, the man who shot and killed James. Likewise, Olney's creativity has crystallized such diverse points of view as the members of a baseball team at play, the donkey that carried Jesus into Jerusalem, a caterpillar transforming into a butterfly, and the sinking of the Titanic from the perspective of the iceberg. He can just as easily convey the feelings of such outsiders as drunkards, murderers, pool hustlers and gamblers as compose elegant love songs that swoon with genuine romance. And he sets it all within song structures that make such flights of imagination tangible and accessible, drawing from folk, country, blues, rock and R&B to create a rich American musical gumbo.

Although Olney's musical journey has skirted along the margins of popularity and the music industry, "It's been great, really," he says of his career. "When you're 20 years old, you just want to be famous so badly, and I think it can be a real disaster artistically. There's a certain freedom in working in the fields of obscurity that I really enjoy. The writing of the songs and getting out and playing in front of people is really the kick for me, and actually always has been the kick.

"At this point, the main obligation I have is to the song," Olney concludes. "It's no longer a job or something external to me. Making music and writing songs is like being right handed. It's just the way it is."

Nanci Griffith

Nanci Griffith travels well. Her musical journey has taken her from folk and country roots, to her own brand of "folkabilly"; from Austin’s Hole In The Wall bar to New York’s Carnegie Hall, Nashville’s Grand Ole Opry and London’s Royal Albert Hall; from an eight-year-old girl in Texas learning to play guitar from a television instructor to a woman of the world, visiting and performing in Vietnam, Cambodia and Kosovo in support of the abolition of landmines. Today, the journey of one of the most admired and acclaimed of singer-songwriters--a career marked by a beautiful voice, brilliant songwriting and uncommon emotional commitment--continues.

The torchbearer of a music that brings together folk and country, the female sensibility of a new genre that embraced the likes of Lyle Lovett, Dwight Yoakam and Steve Earle, Griffith has penned such classics as "Gulf Coast Highway" (a notable duet by Emmylou Harris and Willie Nelson), "Love At The Five And Dime" (a Grammy nominated hit for Kathy Mattea) and "Outbound Plane" (a hit for Suzy Bogguss). In turn, she was the first to record Julie Gold’s Grammy winning classic "From A Distance." She has also been honored with five Grammy nominations, three as a solo artist (winning once) and twice for performances on albums by The Chieftains (winning once).

Born in 1953 in Seguin, near San Antonio, Griffith grew up in Austin. She learned to play the guitar from a Saturday morning PBS series hosted by Laura Weber and began writing her own songs because she found that easier than learning how to play those of other people. Her first professional gig was at Austin’s Red Lion club on a Thanksgiving holiday evening when she was 14. Later that year, singer-songwriter Tom Russell heard her singing around a campfire at the Kerrville Folk Festival and became her earliest champion.

She would play the local club circuit, at first with her parents as chaperones, throughout high school and college and her first jobs as a teacher. Graduating from the University of Texas with an education degree, she taught kindergarten and first grade in Austin during the ‘70s even as she held a five-year Sunday night spot at the Hole In The Wall.

In 1978, she debuted on album with the locally released There’s A Light Beyond These Woods. In 1982, Poet In My Window was issued via another hometown indie. Her third album, 1985’s Once In A Very Blue Moon, was released by the nationally distributed Philo/Rounder label and the following year she formed The Blue Moon Orchestra, her backing band.

Her breakthrough finally came with 1986’s Grammy nominated Last Of The True Believers. Featuring Griffith’s signature songs "Love At The Five And Dime" and "The Wing And The Wheel," the album was Grammy nominated. When Mattea covered "Love At The Five And Dime" for her Walk The Way The Wind Blows that same year, the recording reached #3 Country. It was also Grammy nominated for Best Country Song of The Year (a songwriter’s award) and won a BMI Award for Griffith, whose first two albums were now re-released by Rounder. Major labels quickly came courting and Griffith joined MCA. Her 1987 major label debut, Lone Star State Of Mind, was helmed by MCA Nashville executive and renowned producer Tony Brown, who had signed Earle and Lovett as well as Griffith (she also co-produced the album). Along with the Country Top 40 title track, the Country Top 30 album introduced "From A Distance," which reached #1 in the U.K. and Ireland, places where Griffith has been a major star ever since. Five years later Bette Midler would have a smash hit with the song, though it is Griffith’s version that was used twice to awaken astronauts on space shuttle missions.

Hailed by Rolling Stone as "the Queen of Folkabilly," she followed with 1988’s Little Love Affairs, again Top 30 Country, which was graced by "Outbound Plane" (co-written with Russell), the Top 40 Country "I Knew Love" and a duet with Mac McAnally, "Gulf Coast Highway" (co-written with Danny Flowers and long-time Blue Moon Orchestra pianist James Hooker). That year also brought the live-in-Houston One Fair Summer Evening. The next year found her singing "The Wexford Carol" on the Grammy-winning A Chieftains Celebration.

Controversy ensued with the poppier sound on 1989’s Storms, produced by Glyn Johns (The Beatles, Rolling Stones, Eagles, The Who), and 1991’s Late Night Grande Hotel, produced by the British team of Rod Argent and Peter Van Hook. Though the albums drew a wider audience, Griffith decided to return to her roots as well as move to Elektra Records. Meanwhile, her performances on The Chieftains’ An Irish Evening: Live At The Grand Opera House, Belfast helped that 1992 disc win a Grammy and her "Outbound Plane" went Top 10 Country for Bogguss from the latter’s Aces album.

Her Elektra debut, 1993’s Other Voices, Other Rooms, won her the Grammy for Best Contemporary Folk Performance. Her interpretation of songs written by other artists, the album included Bob Dylan’s "Boots Of Spanish Leather," a song that Dylan the previous year requested she perform at his historic Madison Square Garden 30th anniversary concert. After Griffith’s 10th studio album, Flyer, the following year, her momentum suffered when she was treated for breast cancer in summer 1996, which caused her to exit from a tour with The Chieftains.

In 1997 she celebrated 10 years with The Blue Moon Orchestra on Blue Roses From The Moons, and in 1998 released Other Voices, Too (A Trip Back To Bountiful), the sequel to Other Voices, Other Rooms. She also published her first book, Nanci Griffith’s Other Voices -- A Personal History of Folk Music, a companion to the Other Voices albums. And again she battled illness as she underwent treatment for thyroid cancer. A renewed Griffith took a fresh look at her recording career in 1999 with The Dust Bowl Symphony, featuring her best-loved songs performed with the London Symphony Orchestra at the famed Abbey Road Studios.

In January 2000, she traveled to Vietnam and Cambodia with the Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation (VVAF), tracing the steps of her ex-husband and still friend Eric Taylor, a veteran of that war and a songwriter for Griffith, Lovett and others. The next year she returned there and also visited Angola and Kosovo for the VVAF. In addition, Griffith has supported the VVAF, along with the U.K.-based Mines Advisory Group and the Campaign For A Landmine Free World, in their efforts to locate and remove existing landmines and to rehabilitate the victims of landmines with counseling and prosthetic limbs, helping them to regain their independence and self-respect as well as mobility. Clock Without Hands, her first album of new songs in four years, arrived in 2001, and the live Winter Marquee (which briefly returned her to Rounder) in 2002. The latter included a duet with Russell on Phil Ochs’ "What’s That I Hear," the theme song of the TV show that taught her how to play guitar and in fact the first song she learned to play.

The new millennium also brought three new retrospectives, including 2002’s two-CD The Complete MCA Studio Recordings, which marked the U.S. debut of "Stand Your Ground," an impassioned anti-war statement she recorded during Gulf War-era sessions a dozen years earlier for Late Night Grande Hotel.

In 2003, more than 20 years after Griffith left her Texas home for Nashville and became one of the brightest lights in a new generation of artists merging country with folk and pop music, she made her first appearance at the Grand Ole Opry.

2004 has brought her return to a Universal Music label, the newly formed New Door Records, and the release of her new studio album, Hearts In Mind.

The title of her debut album has proved prophetic: There is indeed a light beyond these woods--and it’s Nanci Griffith.

12/9/04 Songwriter events

JOSHUA IRWIN. Irish-inflected folk-rock singer-songwriter. 9:30pm, PM Cafe, free.

BILL LLOYD, RUSTY YOUNG, MARSHALL CHAPMAN and DANNY FLOWERS. A stellar and unconventional in-the-round featuring former Foster & Lloyd member and Nashville power-pop pioneer Bill Lloyd; founding Poco member Young; Chapman, who has written for Emmylou and Jimmy Buffett and shared the stage with everyone from John Prine to the Ramones; and Flowers, best known for his classic hit Tulsa Time. 9pm, Bluebird Cafe, $10. Also, DANI CARROLL, KELLY ARCHER, DANIELLE PECK and SARA CHURCH, 6:30pm, free

PAM BELFORD, RICHARD FLEMING, ADAM HILL and MICHAEL LUSK. What a cool concept. All four of these songwriters are staffers at Nashville Public Library, so why not put on a show at their beautiful workplace? Belford has penned some big ones, including a No. 1 hit for George Strait. Fleming has scored cuts with the Box Tops, Koko Taylor and George Thorogood. Hill has been receiving high praise for his challenging, dark Americana album, Willingness. And Lusk is a seasoned session vet who has been writing for and producing numerous Nashville artists. 6:30pm, Nashville Public Library (Downtown), free.

GOSPEL MUSIC ASSOCIATION UNSIGNED WRITERS NIGHT. With host CHRIS RICE spotlighting former winners of GMA’s talent competitions from Music in the Rockies and GMA Academy. 7pm, Curb Cafe, Belmont University, free.

12/8/04 songwriter events

Good Lord to the Devil

Tonight at The 5 Spot

A versatile twosome equally at home with country blues, avant-pop and the occasional murder ballad, Good Lord to the Devil are steeped in the traditions of country and folk songwriters like Ronee Blakley and the Louvin Brothers, while bringing perspectives to the genre that aren't just confined to the "Ode to Billie Joe"/"Ballad of Georgie" tradition of tragedy-bound queer songs. Jon Freeman and Ryan Breegle are a couple of badass guitar players with a knack for taking the sacred, the slutty and the delirious and meshing them together in acoustic epics that are deliciously queer in all senses of the word.

--By Jason Shawhan

* PAT ALGER, TONY ARATA and CHRIS CAVANAUGH. Alger and Arata have more in common that cool names that start with A - they both have written massive hits for Garth Brooks, including The Dance, Thunder Rolls and Unanswered Prayers. 9pm, Douglas Corner Cafe, $5.

* AMERICANA TONIGHT! With folk singer-songwriter MELISSA GIBSON (8pm); seriously talented Nashville Star finalist JENNIFER HICKS (8:30pm); self-described " swampy Southern soul " acoustic combo BLUE MOTHER TUPELO (9pm); former Southern Culture on the Skids member celebrating the release of solo effort Well of Mercy, MICHAEL KELSH (9:30pm); and earthy, roots-rock songstress BILLIE JOYCE (10pm). 8pm, The Sutler, $5. Also, Universal Music Showcase featuring THE UNRECOUPED and I.T., 6pm, cover TBA

ANNIE MOSHER, CHELEY TACKETT, LISA CARVER and AMY SPEACE. 2002 New Folk winner at the Kerrville Folk Festival Mosher makes classic country and Americana and is a regular with the Girls With Guitars. 8pm, Radio Cafe, free.

* ALAN RHODY, TIM KREKEL, WOOD NEWTON and RON HELLARD. Rhody has had cuts with the Oak Ridge Boys, Ricky Van Shelton and penned a country yuletide tune, Christmas to Christmas. 9pm, Bluebird Cafe, $8. Also, NEIL THRASHER, BO ALLEN and LANE TURNER, 6:30pm, free

* JOHN SIEGER. With PHIL LEE and GREG TROOPER. Wisconsin songwriter Sieger was a member of Twin Tone Records band The R&B Cadets and Warner Bros. act Semi-Twang (whose sole recording was produced by Mitchell Froom and Jerry Harrison), and has gone on to have his songs covered by the likes of Dwight Yoakam, Tommy Conwell, Etta James and the BoDeans. Two excellent Americana locals, Lee and Trooper, make this a night not to be missed for any self-respecting roots-rock fan. 8pm, The Family Wash, cover TBA.

Marc Alan Barnette

Marc-Alan Barnette-17 Year Veteran of the "trenches" of Nashville as a singer-songwriter, Barnette has songs recorded by Grammy award winning artist Shelby Lynn; CMA award winner, John Berry and CBS Television Movie-of -the week and Video "another Pair of Aces," starring Willie Nelson & Kris Kristofferson.

Marc-Alan Barnette has written with some of Nashville's hottest writers:

Kim Williams -"Ain't Going Down Till the Sun Comes Up"

Jim McBride - "Chattahoochie"

Jimbeau Hinson - "Party Crowd"

Jerry Vandiver - "For A Little While"

The Kinleys- "Please"

John Ims - "She's In Love With The Boy"

Barnette performs regularly at the world-famous Bluebird Cafe, Douglas Corner, The Broken Spoke, Frank Brown
Songwriter's Festival, and NSAI's Tin Pan South. He has opened concerts for PATTY LOVELACE, CHARLIE
DANIELS BAND, TOBY KEITH, RICOCHET, GARTH BROOKS, AND TANYA TUCKER.

More about Marc-Alan Barnette:
* Moderator and guest speaker for the Nashville Songwriters Association International (NSAI) Nashville
Thursday Night Seminar

* Active in NSAI's Adopt-a-Shop Program, mentoring work shops throughout the country. Teacher for the Songwriters
Guild of America (SGA).

* Judge for The John Lennon Songwriting Contest and NSAI Aspiring Songwriters's Contest

Jimbeau Hinson

Jimbeau Hinson cut his musical teeth in honky tonks, barn dances and local radio and TV shows in and around his native state of Mississippi.
His first break came at the age of fourteen when he met Loretta Lynn. She introduced him to her manager and publishers the Wilburn Borthers, who signed Jimbeau on the spot.
Doyle Wilburn added him to their show and he toured with such acts as Hank Williams, Jr., Kitty Wells, Charley Pride, Faron Young, Wanda Jackson, and everybody who was anybody at the time.
So it was only a natural graduation from High School to Nashville and the fine finishing school of hard knocks.
He moved from his first contract at Sure-Fire Music to his first record deal at Chart Records, winning his first ASCAP award at the age of seventeen.
From there he began to tire of the road and decided to concentrate on his career as a songwriter. Securing recordings by Lynn Anderson, Carol Channing, Brenda Lee, and others.
In the early seventies his path crossed with, the then Gospel Group, the Oak Ridge Boys.
There he signed on as manager of their publishing company and was instrumental in their switch from the gospel to the country field.
From their phenomenal success, a leading independent publishing company arose, Silverline/Goldline Music.

Some of his hits include, "I’M SETTIN’ FANCY FREE" by The Oak Ridge Boys, "HILLBILLY HWY." by and with Steve Earle, "TRAIN OF MEMORIES" by Kathy Mattea, "BROKEN TRUST" by Brenda Lee, "HARMONY" by John Conlee, and "PARTY CROWD" by David Lee Murphy.

Jimbeau now resides with his wife, Brenda Fielder, on their ranch forty five minutes outside of Nashville.
There he mentors a host of young writers and a legion of the hottest, most successful tunesmiths on the planet.
He can currently be seen and heard not only around town in the writer’s rounds, but in simular venues around the country.
One favorite annual trek is the Songwriter Festival in Gulf Shores, Ala. that’s always held the 3rd & 4th weekends of November, including the week between. You will find him and his buddies at the Barfoot Bar all ten nights of the festival.

New events:
Oak Ridge Boys title cd track and first single "COLORS" co-written with Rocko Heermance. A moving tribute to the American Flag. NOMINATED FOR A GRAMMY!

"STONES" recorded by Tracy Lawrence.
Co-written with Jon Michaels and Kim Tribble.


Jimbeau's Discography
PARTY CROWD - DAVID LEE MURPHY
FANCY FREE - OAK RIDGE BOYS
HILLBILLY HIGHWAY - STEVE EARLE
TRAIN OF MEMORIES - KATHY MATTEA
STONES - TRACY LAWRENCE & TY HERNDON
GOTTA GET YOUR HEART RIGHT - LEE GREENWOOD
HILLBILLY HIGHWAY - RICKY SKAGGS
BORN THAT WAY - DAVID LEE MURPHY
RED ROSES - REBA MCENTIRE
WHEN YOU GIVE IT AWAY - OAK RIDGE BOYS
HARMONY - JOHN CONLEE
BLONDE AMBITION - RODNEY CROWELL,
BILLY BURNETTE,& THE GOLDENS
BROKEN TRUST - BRENDA LEE
I'M ON YOUR SIDE & AFTER ALL - PATTY LOVELESS

Along with others recordings by: Tammy Wynette, Porter Waggoner, Rita Coolidge, Connie Smith, Carl Perkins, and many more.

Jerry Hager

Nominated for Sensored Magazine's 2004 Starving Artist Award and one of America’s most expressive singer/songwriters, Nashville native Jerry Hager’s musical influences date back to his early youth in Detroit. His father was a gospel singer from Charleston, WV in the early 60’s. After relocating to Michigan, Clifford Hager was accompanied by Jerry on the road through most of Jerry’s childhood. After a few failed attempts at learning the guitar under instruction, the young apprentice found that he could learn to play on his own, by listening instead of just exercising. That is how Jerry Hager plays, writes & produces – by listening.

Jerry Hager attended The Recording Institute of Detroit in the late 1980's. There he learned from old school Motown & Holland, Dozier Holland engineers & producers about audio & music. Soon he was working as an engineer on projects of George Clinton, Martha Reeves, Jad Fair & Half Japanese.

During that time, Hager was able to experiment with his music as well. He created & recorded music that he now admits was so over-produced that he lost control of it. But not long after, Jerry was approached by the music directors of a B-horror film from Troma Entertainment (Toxic Avenger, etc.) titled Frostbiter – Wrath of the Wendigo, which starred Ron Asheton of Iggy & The Stooges. They bought 5 experimental recordings, which he had created years before, & contracted Hager to co-write a promotional song for Ron Asheton & Elvis Hitler. He co-wrote & played Bitchin' Babes with Detroit producer Steve Quick. Jerry can also be seen in the music video if you don't blink.

Not very long after, Jerry Hager discovered the power of acoustic music. "I guess that was penance for the Bitchin' Babes thing." Jerry assembled an acoustic trio in Detroit & performed in Ann Arbor & Lansing. Just before leaving Michigan, he found himself living on the couch of guitarist, Kevin Killeen, as most great artists do at some point during their career. Finding an old 8 track reel to reel in the basement, Jerry recorded what turned out to be Gentle Man, his first CD. It remains to this day one of Hager's favorite projects. With its contemporary pop sound, the first track, River Café, was well received on college radio in Lansing & Detroit. Woods has since been covered by Boston folk singer, Carl Cacho. The album's I’ll Be With You Someday ranked number 3 on the Americana chart mp3.com.

In 1993 Jerry relocated to Nashville. Concerned that his music didn’t fit in either a Country or Folk genre, he soon discovered that his music had been easily welcomed as Singer/Songwriter, Americana & AAA. Hager was very well received. He found that in Nashville he learned a great deal about playing, performing & most of all, what he wanted out of his own music. So he founded The Union Buffalo, a six-piece band supporting Jerry’s unique pop-oriented Singer/Songwriter style.

The Union Buffalo found themselves busy with a faithful following. The show was dynamic & the songs were emotional. But the vortex of other projects drew Jerry back into the studio as producer & engineer. He had started recording a Union Buffalo project but was unable to spend much time on it due to the massive amount of time dedicated to other artists. Hager worked with many regional artists like Hayseed, The Evinrudes, Joe Nolan, Tom Mason & The Boomgates. Then Jerry found himself playing bass guitar regularly with The Boomgates for a couple of years.

After the split of The Boomgates in 1999, Hager finally decided to finish the recording project that he started in 1994. And it took another two years to do that. After he was able to assemble songs that were recorded over a long span of time, Miles From Brushy was finally released through www.bluebourbon.net. The album’s Sail, Have You Near & Finally Up each charted in the Americana top 10 on mp3.com. The final song on the album, I Walk Slow, has been covered by Hayseed on his most recent release, Home Grown. Thanks to a suggestion from Lucinda Williams, Hayseed’s version includes Hager’s original bed tracks.

Returning to Nashville from New York in 2003, Jerry Hager has revisited the stage & is scheduled to appear with The Union Buffalo in support of Miles From Brushy & to showcase eleven new songs from the forthcoming album, to be released this Christmas on which pre-production has already begun. The first releases, Believing & 9 Days, each topped the Americana chart at #1 on AudioStreet.net & #5 on the first day out on mp3.com! 2004 presents a long roster of projects on which Hager is playing & producing, including Paul Zografi & Joe Nolan, with whom he recorded Plain Jane & co-produced King. Jerry Hager looks forward to a very productive year supporting Miles from Brushy & the new project.

Sarah Siskind

"Sarah Siskind started making records earlier than many people begin collecting records. As a girl growing up in Winston-Salem, N.C., in a family of bluegrass and Celtic musicians, she was encouraged not only to play piano and sing, but to do what too few young students are given the freedom to do: make up her own music.

Much of it was instrumental, which she often played during services at her church. But there also were songs, and she was playing and singing regularly in coffee houses and song contests in her early teens. Home schooled, she had extra time in the afternoons, and she filled many days playing piano at a mall food court to make money to buy a four-track tape recorder, a rudimentary version of what is found in full-size studios.

Her first album-length cassette came out when she was 14. Another project followed at 17, a six-song CD just a few years later.

As a result, Siskind, now 24, worked through most of the trial and error of learning how to record before preparing what amounts to her official debut as a ready-for-prime-time artist. But listening to Covered, a 12-song collection featuring the backing guitar of Bill Frisell and vocals of Jennifer Kimball, one wonders if she's ever erred in her musical judgment.

The independently released project exudes intelligent, emotional atmosphere and moody electricity. Indeed, it is one of the finest albums of any genre to emerge from Nashville this year, and a genuine contribution to the singer/songwriter canon, thanks to its startling originality."

-Craig Havighurst, The Tennessean

Julie Lee

The life of Nashville-based singer/songwriter Julie Lee has always been a lesson in assemblage art. She grew up in Maryland on a steady diet of family stories, jazz and folk music, learning early the connection between history and the creative act. The raw ability of music to convey and preserve story mesmerized young Lee, as she watched the world change amidst the timelessness of Ella Fitzgerald and James Taylor.

Later, after earning an art degree, Lee delved into the world of visual art, and found a creative home in the hammering together of rusty junk sculptures. Taking wood and metal relics of history, Lee reassembled them into something new and beautiful: timelessness and change as sculpture. The old and new altogether. Continuity.

By this time, Julie Lee had relocated to Nashville, and was writing music as well as creating visual art. Her Northern roots replanted, she was experiencing for the first time the music of the South: bluegrass and blues and Gospel sat alongside her experience of jazz and folk. "Blues, bluegrass, and jazz to me are very similar," Lee discovered. "It's all a basic structure, and people veer off of that to create these amazing melodies with dissonance."

With a smooth, lilting voice, which gracefully slips across the borders of musical genre, Lee began to experiment with her songwriting, assembling melodies and stories like a patchwork quilt. "I've gotten more interested in other people's stories, and more into writing about my family" she says. "My mother is really into genealogy, and the more I've gotten her to share with me what she knows, the more it's inspired me to do my homework there--to write something true about these people." Listening to the stories of her neighbors, reading biographies at the library, "I try to put myself in that person's shoes and take on another character's voice as my own. I use their vocabulary, and the style with which they'd articulate themselves."

The result of Lee's experimentation with story and song is an ever-growing collection of timelessness and change. Her music is homespun and raw, marrying together the traditional melodies of her musical roots with something new, yet warmly recognizable to the listener's ear. After three self-produced CDs, all recorded in Nashville's historic Downtown Presbyterian Church, the evocative music of Julie Lee is beginning to turn the heads of the music world. Recently, she has supported such artist as Alison Krauss, Vigilantes of Love, and Pierce Pettis.

In 2002, Lee signed a publishing/production deal with Brumley Music, and is set to release her first studio recording, Stillhouse Road. The project, produced by Andy West and Mike Porter, is a culmination of her love for history and creativity. Featuring some of the most talented players in Nashville, Stillhouse Road is a quilt of bluegrass, jazz, blues, and folk. And, much like the appeal of a quilt, Julie Lee is not afraid to let the seams show. A neat, overproduced, perfectly-packaged CD is not what she had in mind. Rather, she wanted to preserve the freshness and intimacy found on her previous recordings. With the talents of such collaborators as Alison Krauss, slide guitar player, Colin Linden (O Brother, Where Art Thou soundtrack, Bruce Cockburn), and bluegrass artist, Dave Peterson (1946), she pulls it off beautifully.

The music of Julie Lee is not simply about nostalgia. "Harlan Howard once said that songwriting is about 'three chords and the truth'. That pretty much sums it up--I long to encourage people--to say something of importance," Lee admits. And the songs of Stillhouse Road do just that. Whether singing with guest vocalist Vince Gill about her own family during the prohibition on the title track, or exploring the deepest implications of faith in songs like "Your Love", each song carries with it a common thread of a time-tested hope, and the possibilities that love can afford. These are the stories proclaimed by her mother and father and Bible, neighbors and biographies. Hope perseveres and many waters cannot quench love. "I gain wisdom from other people's stories," Lee says. With Stillhouse Road, she has offered wisdom gleaned; the kind of wisdom that makes you want to know your own story better.

Stephen Simmons

Stephen Simmons was raised in the small town of Woodbury, Tennessee. His mother was a schoolteacher and his father held a factory job (In his family, they were the first generation that didn’t work the farm). Humble and soft-spoken, Stephen at first seems to exemplify this rural, Church of Christ upbringing. As a songwriter, however, his vision is much more complex. The songs on his new recording, Last Call, tell stories of country life’s dark side and serve to remind listeners how it feels to stand at the intersection of piety and sin.

"When you’re raised in the Church of Christ, if you’re sensitive at all, it leaves you with a lot to struggle with," says Stephen, who now lives in Nashville. "You grow up to see that there are gaps and holes in what you’ve been taught; there are questions where there are not supposed to be questions. On the one hand, I was exposed to small community religious life, but on the other, I was exposed to my wild-ass relatives. This record is an attempt to get all those contradictions out."

It would be a mistake to categorize Last Call as strictly alt.-country or Americana. Though it has a lot in common with those genres, the record has a wide variety of influences, from the Small Faces to Gordon Lightfoot. At its essence, Last Call represents both sides of a struggle--the tension between last call for alcohol and last call for your soul.

Take, for example, the words of the conflicted drunk in the album’s title track: "Last call for all you sinners/ I thought I heard the bartender say/ And I took it kinda’ hard/ Though I’m sure he didn’t mean it that way." And there’s the desperate lawman of "Bow Down," whose life on-the-take has deadly consequences: "I took the money that I made from the farm/ Got a little place and a brand new job/ With a county patrol car/ But word sure does get out fast when someone can be had/ And say what you wanna’ say but there’s a price for every man... Pray Jesus ain’t around, man/ To see me bow down."

Stephen understands the conflict between rural simplicity and the opportunities and temptations represented by the city; this tension runs throughout Last Call's sixteen tracks. Songs such as "County Lines," a straight-up country rocker, describe the gravitational pull of rural areas such as Cannon County, TN, where Stephen was born and raised: "County Lines/ Run in funny ways/ But once they draw ‘em up/ They don’t ever change/ They say you can’t go back/ So don’t even try/ Take one more step/ And kiss your County goodbye.

Last Call, which was recorded in Nashville by producer/engineer Eric Fritsch (Scott Miller, Carter Little, Rowland Stebbins), is the follow-up to Simmons’ self-released acoustic debut, Stephen Simmons Live: Five Song Sampler, which was much praised by Nashville’s music critics. The Nashville Scene’s Bill Friskics-Warren, for example, says Simmons is "a singer-songwriter of marked depth and commitment, (he) recalls a more subdued Steve Earle, a more grounded Ryan Adams and any aggregation of three-named Texas troubadours you'd care to recall." Last Call features performances by some of Nashville’s most in-demand players, including guitarist Kenny Vaughn, bassist Dave Jacques, drummer Paul Griffith and cellist David Henry.

"At times I feel like I’m being deadly serious, but at the same time being tongue in cheek," says Stephen, who admits that Last Call is mostly about "lying, cheating and drinking." That said, his vision of life in Tennessee’s less populated regions is not nearly as dark as it might seem. "This is not so much a record about saints, as it is one about sinners," he says. "But I truly believe that there’s salvation out there for everyone. In that sense, I guess it's really a record about all of us."

Richard Douglas

Richard Douglas' self-titled solo debut blands a unique songwriter approach with touches of indie rock and trip-hop culminating in a catchy ride on the dark side. His distinctive and diverse vocals conjure up images of Tom Waits meets Beth Orton meets Tom Petty - moody, memorable and brutally honest.

Born and raised in Tennessee, Richard was raised in a musical family, heir to a rich tradition as the grandson of renowned opera tenor Miguel Fleta. Richard moved to New York City in 1987 to pursue a visual arts career and moved to Brooklyn in 1993 and he began to focus on music, forming the ciritically respected Audio Poolside and Five Stories Down. Recently Richard has turned an eye inward and honed his craft, working with many talented Brooklyn-based musicians.

The result, "Richard Douglas", is a beautifully molded montage produced by Tony Maimone (bass - Pere Ubu, Frank Black, UV Ray) and Joel Hamilton (guitar/fx - Shiner; engineer - Sparklehorse). Incorporating acoustic and electric guitars, drums, percussion, synth, violin and several guest female vocalists along with Richard's aesthetic, this record is dreamy and infectious.

The Family Wash

I just discovered the web site of a songwriter haven to visit. I haven't been there yet, but the artist lineup is impressive. This place has a hot lot of songwriters of a progressive country/rock/folk/americana flavor.

http://familywash.com

Arthur Godfrey

I think I wrote my first song when I was twelve. That would make the year 1967. My dad had bought me my first guitar as I had been singing in the choir the previous two years and he could tell I was serious about music. The Beatles had also been tearing up America and the world with their songwriting and music for the past three years. I used to put my older sisters' Beatles records on and knew I was listening to something very cool and special. As I grew older and continued writing songs and playing in rock bands through out high school and college I became much more aware of the songwriters of my generation. John Lennon was at the top of my list. Like millions of people around the world and most certainly songwriters and musicians, John became part of the fabric of our hearts and souls. His life became part of our lives, one couldn't help it, it came naturally.

I entered some songs in a few of the bigger song contests, including the John Lennon Songwriting Contest. I didn't win any at that time but received some positive feedback and constructive tips on improving my song writing. I continued writing and reentered the John Lennon Songwriting Contest in 2001 and was awarded the Grand Prize in the folk category for my song "Simple Man". Besides the money and prizes that come with the award, I had the opportunity to perform my song that year at the annual Maxell Song of the Year Event in Cleveland at the "Rock and Roll Hall of Fame". It was an unbelievable experience to play there and to be recognized by my peers but most importantly to be connected to the John Lennon Songwriting Contest family and in almost a personal way, to John himself.

I entered again in 2003 and again won the grand prize in the folk category for my song "Amen", but this time I was also awarded the “Maxell Song of the Year. A few things I do know are; that John Lennon was one of the most influential songwriters in my life and to win a song contest that is endorsed by his family is deeply personal to me. When you get involved with the John Lennon Songwriting Contest family you actually feel their concern for you as a human being and songwriter. After the awards are over you still stay involved with the organization playing music and getting support. The staff is ready and willing to help you with press and promotion. I have also played with the John Lennon Educational Tour Bus as a past winner.

Another thing I know is I stayed true to my commitment to myself to work on my song writing and acted upon it by entering song contests, not just to win but to stay active and keep writing. As songwriters we have stories to tell. it's up to you to decide how far you want to take it. As John said...."you may say I'm a dreamer but I'm not the only one"....and I know I'm not, since many thousands of songwriters enter the song contest that honors his name".

Respectfully,

Arthur Godfrey

John Sieger

When you think Milwaukee and you also think songs, the little search engine that is your brain should automatically put John Sieger at the top of your list. His songs have been performed by over twenty of the best artists in the country, spanning a wide range of music styles from country to rock and soul with a norteño artist thrown in for good measure. Not only that, John has also made records with his bands The R&B Cadets [Top Happy on Twin Tone Records], Semi-Twang [Salty Tears on Warner Bros. Records] and as a solo artist with releases on smaller labels [Quiver on Recession Records and El Supremo on Faux Real].

His career began in the humble home of the Nash Rambler, Kenosha, Wisconsin. Smitten with Beatle-mania and Bob Dylan in high school, he formed a bunch of bands that concentrated heavily on original songs. This, of course, was exactly the wrong path to pursue in a heavily cover-band oriented scene, but this did not deter John or any of his bandmates. It was there that he fell in with Michael Feldman, a high school English teacher with a wicked sense of humor and now the host of Whad' Ya Know? on Public Radio International. They began a writing jag that continues to this day. Mike's witty lyrics and John's way with a melody were a match made in heaven.

After knocking around Kenosha for a while, John found his way to Milwaukee and his first taste of popularity with the well regarded R&B Cadets. If you are at all familiar with this sparkling sextet, you will recall packed dance floors and an unsurpassed songbook of soul classics mixed in with John's songs. The band included John's brother Mike, a great singer in his own right, Robin Pluer, Milwaukee's singing sweetheart and Paul Cebar, the funky, music-obsessed leader of The Milwaukeeans. During this period John won several WAMIs, (a very scaled-down Milwaukee version of the Grammys, but satisfying none the less). One group of admirers, The BoDeans, put his song The Strangest Kind on their debut record.

After the Cadets came to a somewhat uncomfortable end (don't worry, they've all kissed and made up as evidenced by sporadic reunion gigs), John fell in with Mike Hoffmann, and soldiered on with Semi-Twang, which included his brother Mike Sieger, in addition to Bob Jennings and Bob Schneider of the Cadets. They recorded one album for Warner Bros., Salty Tears, produced primarily by Mitchell Froom with a couple of tracks produced by Jerry Harrison. A very popular disc, at least with critics, sales of this record were so phenomenal that they dropped the band a year later, pretty much a standard record biz move. One positive development was John's introduction to a couple of producer/artists who snapped up his songs for artists like Dwight Yoakam, [I Don't Need It Done], Jerry Harrison [Rev It Up], and Tommy Conwell [She's Got It All, Do Right]. At about this time Etta James recorded Salty Tears, although the record got shelved. (If any of you out there in cyber space have a copy of this, please contact the management!)

As it seems to happen in so many stories, Nashville beckoned with the promise of big songwriting bucks. So John and his family, the lovely Linsey, his wife, and Sam, [also lovely and three-years-old] headed south. After six years of painful courtship, John and Nashville broke up, citing irreconcilable differences (John liked good country music and Nashville was more of a Fogelberg-obsessed locale). The move was not in vain, for it was there that John met and collaborated with many great writers including Robbie Fulks, Greg Trooper, Phil Lee, Joan Besen, Joy Lynn White, Gwil Owen, Gurf Morlix, and many others. He garnered one mainstream country cut, Let Me, written with and performed by Eric Heatherly. And his songs wound up on a bunch of independent label releases [see Discography].

Back in Milwaukee, John is keeping busy with a couple of bands, a fine Cajun outfit called Big Nick and The Cydecos and the aforementioned R&B Cadets. He is also at work on a new record, Seedy, a collection of songs written immediately after the 9-11 tragedy, and a new batch of Sieger-Feldman collaborations scheduled to be recorded with The Morells, the best roots-garage band in the world. John is also presenting a series of songwriting clinics in the Southeastern Wisconsin area.

Kris Kristofferson

A member of the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame, Kris Kristofferson helped rejuvenate the Nashville's creative community in the late 1960s and early 1970s with the classics "Help Me Make It Through the Night," "Me and Bobby McGee," "For the Good Times" and "Lovin' Her Was Easier." Hundreds of recording artists have performed his songs. As a concert performer, Kristofferson toured for many years, releasing numerous albums with his long-standing backup band, the Borderlords.

Born June 22, 1936, in Brownsville, Texas, Kristofferson began his music career in the mid-60s when he ended scholarly pursuits in favor of songwriting. The son of an Air Force general, he was a Rhodes scholar, a helicopter pilot and might have been an English Lit professor at West Point, but he gave it all up for a shot at selling some of his songs. Encouraged by a meeting with Johnny Cash, he moved to Nashville in 1965. He pitched songs while working as a night janitor at Columbia studios, emptying ashtrays and pushing a broom.

His turning point came in 1969. Nashville was still the bastion of conservative country music, but a new generation of renegade writers and performers (he and Willie Nelson among them) were bucking the establishment. Cash gave him his break by recording "Sunday Morning Coming Down," which won the Country Music Association's song of the year trophy in 1970. Roger Miller sang "Me and Bobby McGee," and Ray Price recorded "For the Good Times," which won song of the year at the Academy of Country Music Awards in 1970.

He made his recording debut at the same time Janis Joplin's version of "Me and Bobby McGee" went to No. 1. Sammi Smith reached the national Top 10 with "Help Me Make It Through the Night," which won the CMA's single of the year and a Grammy for best country song in 1971. Five subsequent albums, including The Silver-Tongued Devil and I and Jesus Was a Capricorn (which included the hit "Why Me"), went gold. His recordings with then-wife Rita Coolidge won the pair two Grammy awards. In 1973, "From the Bottle to the Bottom" was named best country vocal performance by a duo or group, and "Love Please" garnered the same award in 1975.

He started a movie career in 1971 when he co-starred with Gene Hackman and Harry Dean Stanton in Cisco Pike. He became an instant box-office draw, starring opposite such stars as Jane Fonda, Ellen Burstyn and Burt Reynolds. He also starred with Barbra Streisand in the classic film A Star Is Born in 1976. While making approximately two films a year, he continued to tour and record.

In the mid-80s, he joined Cash, Nelson and Waylon Jennings to form the Highwaymen. The supergroup's single, "Highwayman," was named the ACM's single of the year for 1985. His 1990 solo album, Third World Warrior, demonstrated his concern for human freedoms. Texas-based indie label Justice Records released A Moment of Forever in 1995. In 1999, he re-recorded some of his best-known tunes for The Austin Sessions, released on Atlantic Records. He teamed with Nelson, Jennings and Texas songwriter Billy Joe Shaver for Honky Tonk Heroes in 2000.

Tom Verlaine and John Doe led the list of rock musicians contributing tracks to 2002's Don't Let the Bastards Get You Down: Tribute to Kris Kristofferson. In 2003, he released another concert album, Broken Freedom Song: Live From San Francisco. The Americana Music Association presented him its 2003 Spirit of Americana Free Speech Award. Cash received the organization's inaugural award in 2002.

Kristofferson has feature roles in at least three films scheduled for release in 2004 -- Blade III (with Wesley Snipes), The Wendell Baker Story (with Luke Wilson and Will Ferrell) and Silver City (directed by John Sayles).

Jerry VanDiver

Talent, passion, and persistence are woven through the fabric of Jerry Vandiver’s 19-year songwriting career. Originally from Kansas City, Missouri, Jerry began his professional pursuits when he moved to Nashville in the fall of 1984. Since then, he has been an exclusive staff writer on Music Row for Dick James Music, Little Big Town Music, Malaco Music, and Talbot Music.

Recordings

Jerry’s first major label cut, “Don’t Waste It On The Blues”, recorded by Gene Watson, reached #5 on the country charts in 1989, winning him an esteemed ASCAP Award. In 1991, Wild Rose climbed the charts to #20 with Vandiver’s penned hit, “Go Down Swingin.”

Since then, he has had two songs recorded by Tim McGraw; “It Doesn’t Get Any Countrier Than This!”, featured on McGraw’s platinum 5 CD (“Not A Moment Too Soon”), and “For a Little While”, (reaching #2 on the country charts) on the quadruple platinum 1998 CMA Album of the Year “Everywhere”, winning Jerry a BMI Award. “For A Little While” was also included on McGraw’s triple platinum “Greatest Hits” CD. Thanks to Tim, Jerry has songs on over 13 million records and two of his song titles are hanging on the wall in the Country Music Hall of Fame.

Jerry collaborated with Arista Recording Artist and 2001 ACM Horizon award winner Phil Vassar on “Athens Grease”, which is also Vassar’s current video release from his CD “American Child”.

Lee Greenwood, Barbara Mandrell, Ronna Reeves, Cleve Francis, David Lee Garza, Woody Lee and others including Warner Bros.’ newcomer Dusty Drake have recorded songs written by Jerry.

Media

The October 2003 issue of Music Row Magazine features an article on Jerry in its “Writer’s Corner”. He has also been interviewed on News Channel 5 Plus’ “Words and Music: A Showcase For Nashville Songwriters” hosted by Harry Chapman, and has appeared live on “Songwriter Sessions” (WPLN Nashville, TN), “Live From Studio One” with Dave Carter (WETS Johnson City, TN), and WDAF (Kansas City).

Industry Involvement

As an accomplished songwriter, in 2002 Jerry traveled with the Nashville Songwriters Association International (NSAI) and a team of 50 other professional songwriters to meet with Congressional Representatives and lobby on behalf of songwriter legislative issues. As a steering committee member of the Songwriters Guild of America (SGA), he was recently appointed Chairman of its “Pro Pitch-to-Producer” Committee. He is a current candidate for the SGA National Board of Directors 2003-2004 election.

Performance

Since winning the title of “New Folk Finalist” at the 1993 Kerrville Folk Festival in Kerrville, Texas, Jerry has become a regular performer at the Frank Brown International Songwriters Festival, held each year in Gulf Shores, Alabama and has been invited to perform six years in a row in Nashville’s annual Tin Pan South Festival as a part of “The Bald and The Beautiful” (performing in-the-round with some of Nashville’s most popular hit songwriters). He also makes regular appearances at Atlanta’s Swallow at the Hollow, The Balsam Mountain Inn in Balsam, North Carolina, and various house concerts around the U.S.

Locally, Jerry can be heard playing at the Bluebird, Douglas Corner, and French Quarter cafés, as well as the Country Music Hall of Fame Songwriter’s Theater, SGA’s “Songmania,” and benefit performances such as the Bluebird Café’s Senior Citizens Series, and their Annual Alive Hospice Benefit.

Jerry released his own CD in 2001 entitled “Don’t Try This At Home.” Band leader and Academy of Country Music Musician of the Year nominee Jonathan Yudkin assembled a team of A-list Nashville players for this critically acclaimed acoustic CD, which also features the Grammy award-winning Fairfield Four (as seen in the movie, “O Brother, Where Art Thou?”).

Educational

Jerry co-authored a songwriting workbook with Gracie Hollombe entitled, Your First Cut - A Step-by-Step Guide to Getting There (now in its 3rd printing). Known as “The left-brain book for write-brain people,” Your First Cut is designed to guide, encourage, and enable the aspiring, serious songwriter toward the goal of achieving his or her first cut. (For more information, visit www.yourfirstcut.com.)

Since its first printing in 2002, Jerry’s book tour has taken him to over 20 U.S. cities, presenting workshops sponsored by the Austin, Memphis, Seattle, Portland and Arizona Songwriters Associations, and regional chapters of the Nashville Songwriters Association International. He has taught at colleges such as the Belmont University School of Music, the Blair School of Music at Vanderbilt University, the Berklee College of Music in Boston, MA, and MusicTech College in St. Paul, MN.

Community Service

Acknowledging those songwriters who came before him and helped him succeed, Jerry gives freely to those following in his footsteps. He enjoys teaching at NSAI’s “SongCamp”, ASCAP’s “Song Source” and “Music Business 101” workshops, as well as the SGA’s “Building a Songwriting Career” program and the Nashville New Music Conference.

As one of NSAI’s original “Adopt-a-Shop” mentors, Jerry offers guidance to two NSAI regional chapters in his home state. He provided feedback to aspiring songwriters through NSAI’s Song Evaluation Service for four years, and has been a panelist and educator at their Spring Symposiums for the past five years.

Jerry also generously donates his time to many online songwriting communities, including Tunesmith.com and SongU.com. He is a favorite guest teacher of the Country Music Hall of Fame’s “Senior Citizen Words & Music Program” and also mentors school-age children as a volunteer for the Hall of Fame’s “Words & Music Children’s Education Program.”

Affiliations

Jerry Vandiver is affiliated with the following organizations:
National Association of Recording Arts & Sciences (NARAS)
American Society of Composers and Publishers (ASCAP)
Songwriters Guild of America (SGA)
Nashville Songwriters Association International (NSAI)

Jerry resides in Nashville with his cat “Girlfriend.”

David Lee Murphy

/>When David Lee Murphy describes his new album, he repeatedly returns to the same words: fun, rockin', rowdy, good-times. "For me, that's what music is all about," the veteran country-rocker says. "Whether I'm writing, recording, performing or listening to music, the whole experience for me is about enjoying yourself, getting away from the real world and having a good time."

His commitment to a good time is obvious throughout the new CD, Tryin' To Get There, the acclaimed rabble-rouser's first album since signing with Audium Records. On it, he takes up where he left off with such earlier hits as the rowdy anthem "Party Crowd," the stirring "Dust on the Bottle", the hooky "Every Time I Get Around You", and the soulful "Road You Leave Behind".

If anything, Murphy has raised the stakes: His raucous songs rock with more swagger, and his neon-lit honky tonk tunes show more wisdom and soul. "I’ve always been about edgy, blue-collar, working-class country that’s done with heart and soul," Murphy explains. "It’s rockin’, it’s fun and it’s real. It’s about what people do in their lives, especially when they’re in the mood to live it up a bit."

As usual, the tall dark-haired, blue-eyed singer sets his own musical direction. His independent, in your face, no holds barred attitude is right where the current country music pendelum is returning. Murphy says, "There’s a whole world of people out there who’ve always loved the rowdier side of country music. They’ll respond to your music if it’s hard-hitting and honest."

His new album certainly speaks to those kinds of fans. "I might be a little loco, baby, but a little bit crazy’s all right," he sings with a wink and a grin in "Loco." That same spirit runs through such red-dirt stompers as "I Like It Already," "Same Ol’ Same Ol’," "She Always Said" and "Mama’s Last" - all of which are about colorful characters who indeed are a little loco.

"There’s no denying that this is a rockin’ party record," Murphy says with no apologies. "They’re just wide open songs for all those beer-drinkin’, hell-raisin’ kind of country fans. I make music for all those folks inside and outside the city limits who like to let their hair down on the weekend." I want folks to come to a show and have a good time. For me, it's not a great show unless people loosen up and get a little crazy."

That sentiment, of being a little crazy to keep from going insane, is something Murphy shared with Waylon Jennings, one of the singer’s heroes, mentors and friends. Murphy and Jennings co-wrote the title cut, "Tryin’ To Get There," which shows off the singer’s soulful side. "I’ve learned along the way that we’re all looking for the same thing," Murphy sings, "And I’m trying to get there the best I can."

He’s understandably proud to feature one of their collaborations on his first album since Jennings’ untimely death. "I have a lot of respect for guys like Waylon, Johnny Cash and Johnny Paycheck - so many of those guys that we’ve lost in recent years," Murphy says. "Waylon had a huge impact on me, and being able to write songs with one of my heroes and to get to know him was a real big deal. That song is real special to me."

Another theme running through the album is the presence of women who stand up for themselves - women who go for what they want and don't take any gruff. "I like strong women," Murphy explains. "I just like women, period. I like smart women. I like women who are independent. I always have. A lot of the female characters in my songs are a little bit sassy and I like that. A lot of the women in my life are that way too."

He also got the chance to make a record with a lot of ol’ musician friends backing him in the studio. "I love these guys because they’re not afraid to lean on it and hit it hard," Murphy says. "I like for the players in the studio to play like they’re a little bit pissed off. Sometimes in Nashville the sessions don’t sound very aggressive. But the players I had all know me and my music and they weren’t shy about letting it fly. That’s why the record sounds so rockin’."

Similarly, Murphy’s lets his personality show in his vocals. "I just sing it the way I feel it," he notes. "I don’t worry so much about whether the pitch is perfect. It’s just gotta feel good. It also makes a difference if you write what you sing, because the language is your own. You write in your own meter and in the rhythm that works naturally for you, and I think that makes the song work better." Murphy wrote or co-wrote all twelve songs on the record.

Meanwhile, Murphy has stayed successful as a songwriter in recent years. Hank Williams Jr., Brooks & Dunn, Chris LeDoux, Montgomery Gentry, Trick Pony, Aaron Tippin and a host of others have recorded his songs. "I knew I was gonna make another record someday, so I’ve been holding back songs that I felt would work best for me and that would stand the test of time," Murphy says. "I’ve taken the time to write and record the record I wanted to make. And now I’m chompin’ at the bit to get back out there and play these songs live."

The timing certainly is right, and fans no doubt will raise a glass and toast his return. "I wanted this to be a record that, when people hear it, they wanna turn it up loud," he says. "I want them to try and blow the speakers out of their cars. I want them to put this record on when they’re in the mood to party. That’s when I know I’ve succeeded."

Jeffrey Steele

Jeffrey Steele is a top grade, totally successful, hotly in demand, can’t write ‘em fast enough Songwriter! In the last 3 years over 200 of his songs have been recorded by some of Nashville’s biggest stars: Tim McGraw, Faith Hill, Trace Adkins, Montgomery Gentry, Collin Raye, Diamond Rio, LeAnn Rimes, Rascal Flatts, Randy Travis, Lonestar, Jamie O’Neal, and just about every act in country music.

Songs like, “The Cowboy In Me,” “Chrome,” “I’m Tryin’,” “When The Lights Go Down,” “These Days,” “My Town,” “Speed,” “Unbelievable” and “Big Deal,” are just a few of Steele’s hits! Recently awarded by B.M.I. for over 17,000,000 airplays, you will be hard pressed to find a CD without a song
credit of his…or two!

Jeffrey moved to Nashville in 1994 after the success of his group Boy Howdy to pursue his passion for writing and producing, and has had 10 years of hits since then with no sign of slowing down. Born in Burbank, California, the last of 5 kids, Jeffrey’s upbringing was filled with every type of music possible from Hank Williams to Led Zeppelin to the Beatles to Waylon Jennings.
“I am influenced by everything,” he says.

“Some things just overwhelm me! I have to figure out what’s inside those notes, and how it becomes what it does! I just love taking an idea and building it into a song, and then to see it touch a life, wow!!! That’s what’s its all about!”

Ray Herndon

RAY HERNDON, was born into musical heritage. Although residing in Nashville Tennessee for the last 10 plus years, he remains an Arizona man. His late father "Brick" played stand-up bass, drums and guitar. Ray's two older brothers Rick and Ron play drums and piano, (respectively), with the nurturing support of their mother Gwen.

Along side his musical family at their popular restaurant and night spot "Handlebar J" in Scottsdale Arizona, Ray had gained the experience, expertise and discipline a skilled musician needs. Word of his talent spread to "Mr. Lucky's", a nationally known night club in Phoenix, where in 1982 he became a member of the house band "J. David Sloan and The Rogues", who had gained local, national and international acclaim. In 1983, on a trip to Europe, "The Rogues" connected with then unknown Lyle Lovett.

Billy Williams, (respected producer in Phoenix, and also a "Rogue") recorded Lovett's first album, using the talented members of "The Rogues", which included Ray on guitar and backing vocals .Ray has remained a player on most of Lovett's recordings, as well as a member of Lovett's road bands. In 1989 "McBride and The Ride" was formed by then MCA records president Tony Brown. Brown had met Herndon through the Lovett projects, and asked him to be in the band for his label. Herndon accepted the offer and McBride and The Ride went on to record three albums and seven top ten singles in the early 90's including a number one song "Sacred Ground".

Despite their success, "The Ride" took a seven-year break, then reunited at Handlebar J's 25th anniversary party in 2001. A new record followed in 2002, "Amarillo Sky" on Dual Tone records, co-produced and performed by its members along with friend and piano ace Matt Rollings.

In 1996, "Me and You", a song Ray co-wrote with Skip Ewing, became a signature song for Kenny Chesney, and has been nationally awarded.

As a songwriter, Ray's songs have been recorded by other artists including McBride and The Ride, Lee Greenwood, Sonya Issacsand Aaron Tippin.

Ray says, " Songwriting is such a high for me. To be able to write a song and see it through to becoming a record is like having a child and watching him grow into an adult.

"Herndon has played on the Grammy Awards with Lyle Lovett, has been nominated for best group of the year on the CMA and ACM awards with McBride and the Ride, played and sang on chart topping records, written songs recorded by other artists, and even rode on a float in Macy's Thanksgiving day parade, which he says was always a dream of his as a child.

"God gave me these incredible opportunities with other artists, and now I'm stepping out as a solo artist".

Ray's debut CD entitled "Livin' the Dream" has just been released on Rayman Records. Herndon co-produced with long time friend Matt Rollings on "Livin' the Dream". "Matt and I had such a blast making this record together. He's one of my musical heroes, and this project was a great experience and a labor of love."

The record also features guest artists including Lyle Lovett, Clint Black, Sonya Issacs and Jessi Colter. "Matt and I wanted to include artists on the record that we had both worked with and had become close to musically over the years" , Herndon remarked. "They were all so gracious to join me on several different tracks".

The new CD is filled with an array of heart-felt music from the fun "My Dog Thinks I'm Elvis", to the more sensitive like Kris Kristofferson's classic "Lovin Her Was Easier".

Tracks from "Livin the Dream" can currently be heard exclusively on Sirius Satellite Radio, on several Sirius channels including: Channel 36 "The Border" and channel 24 "Sirius Disorder".

Herndon is currently fielding tour offers. Final dates will be available here on the website.

Herndon concludes, "This is an exciting time for me, there's nothing I love more than playing for people who appreciate good quality music and musicianship. It's what my life is and has always been about."