Nancy Middleton

It's hard to know exactly what it is about great songwriting that moves people. Whether it's a well-crafted turn of phrase, a passionate plea for understanding, or an astute observation about everyday life, it's an intangible that you can't quite put your finger on. You just know that it's great.

Nancy Middleton is one of those great songwriters. With a wonderful voice that shifts gears seamlessly through the entire spectrum of human emotion, and an arsenal of solid tunes that straddle the line between rock, country, folk and blues, Nancy is a rare gem

The North Carolina native cut her teeth on the cover band circuit, honing her stage-savvy and planting the seeds for a loyal grass-roots following. She molded her experiences into her first release, Homeland, in 1994, and quickly followed with The Way I Do, which shot her to national recognition.

Musician Magazine voted The Nancy Middleton Band one of Musician's Best Unsigned Bands out of a field of over 3,000. Among the all-star judging panel were Steve Winwood, Stone Gossard, Juliana Hatfield, Pat Metheny and Matthew Sweet. Billboard Magazine called her "one of North Carolina's most underrated artists. New Country magazine said "When Nancy Middleton becomes a household name, you can say you heard her here first", and promptly featured the bittersweet "This Town Is Yours" on one of their CD's. Her blues background is evident on tracks like "All I Do Is Cry" and "If It Hadn't Been So Good", and her country roots are strong enough that somebody created a couple of line-dances to her songs. But that wasn't her idea.

Nancy soon transplanted herself to Nashville, fighting for attention amongst an increasingly conservative Music Row who didn't understand her pop sensibilities. She's been favorably compared to the likes of Bonnie Raitt, Lucinda Williams Kim Richey, Mary Chapin-Carpenter and Trish Murphy, but definitely charts her own musical course.

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

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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.

click here for details of some of the venues Julie's played.