Articles

Photo by Katrina Burgoyne Don’t try to pigeon-hole Kristy Cox into one set category of music. The bluegrass artist/songwriter from the Land Down Under has a colorful singing voice that can cover traditional to contemporary to country. Born in Adelaide (capital city, 800,000 people), Australia, Cox grew up in a nearby mountainous country town of…

Pikeville, Kentucky native Kristi Stanley has definitely found her groove and grown comfortable with her versatility on this finely executed song collection. Produced by Steve Wilson, Kristi has a fair share of straight-up bluegrass picking, but there are also stylistic forays into gospel, classic country, and hints of rock n’ roll here and there. Stanley, wife of…

There are not many bands that can claim to have done songwriting in Antarctica.  Joey Capoccia of The Pine Hearts did just that while working as a carpenter for the National Science Foundation at the South Pole greenhouse. The Pine Hearts are a self-described Americana band out of Olympia, Washington with a new release entitled…

Jaelee Roberts has an almost perfect pedigree for her chosen career. She has been immersed in music since she was a little girl. Her father Danny is a founding member of the popular band, The Grascals, and by the time she was five she’d already appeared on stage with her dad’s group.  Her mother, Andrea…

Great songwriters know how to open themselves up and reveal something intimate about who they are, and the lives they have lived, in their songs.  The deeper a writer can dig down in expressing a feeling, emotion, memory, or story, the easier it is for the listener to connect with the song because, more often…

Following a well-received 2018 album (Reflections), the Tony Rook Band is back with a new release, Matters of the Heart.  Rook wrote or co-wrote seven of the twelve songs on the disc. Louisa Branscomb contributed three. Banjo player Graham Sones, formerly of Monroe Crossing,  wrote the strong instrumental, “Mud Fence Mending.” There’s another nice, bouncy…