Calendar

The Surfrajettes:
The Surfrajettes are a four-piece instrumental combo from Toronto, ON, Canada. Since
forming in late 2015, the band has charmed audiences with their clever mix of psychedelic rock and reverb-drenched surf music, sky-high beehives, go-go boots, and eyeliner as thick as their guitar strings.

Bethlehem Shalom:
Hailing from the remote wilds of Bathtub, Alaska, and now residing in the vibrant city of Los Angeles, Bethlehem Shalom is a soulful singer-songwriter and producer blending timeless soul and blues with futuristic pop sensibilities.

CHUCK MEAD is a Country singer with a rock n roll heart. He’s also a renowned songwriter, producer, music director, musicologist and architect behind the rebirth of Lower Broadway and the Global Neo Traditional Country music movement.

This Kansas native, has been at the forefront of what has come to be known as Americana Music for the better part of 25 years. Perhaps best known for co-founding the famed ‘90s Alternative Country quintet, BR5-49, whos 7 albums garnered a CMA Award for Best International Touring Act and three Grammy nominations, helped build an indelible bridge between authentic American Roots music and millions of fans worldwide.

Since then he’s toured the globe, entertained thousands on the high seas, released 4 solo albums, made 137 appearances on the Grand Ole Opry, co-produced critically acclaimed tribute albums to Johnny Cash & Waylon Jennings, acted as Musical Director/Supervisor/Producer of the Broadway hit musical Million Dollar Quartet AND the companion CMT television show Sun Records.

With a deep connection to Memphis and a burning desire to keep building musical bridges, Chuck packed up the band and took time out of his crazy schedule last summer to record his fourth solo album with Matt Ross-Spang (Margo Price/John Prine/Jason Isbell/Al Green) at legendary Sam Phillips Recording Studios, the result of which, ‘Close To Home’, was released June 21, 2019 on Plowboy Records.

Since 2019 Chuck has also hosted a radio show on 650AM WSM Radio in Nashville called “Face the Music with Chuck Mead.”

LAID BACK COUNTRY PICKER:  Hailing from the hills of eastern Kentucky, Laid Back Country Picker plays good music and treats everybody right. Blurring the lines with wit and hot picking, this show combines 70s guitar rock, honky-tonk and punk, all with hillbilly sensibility. The band features the powerhouse drumming of his silent partner “Honey”. In her curlers and moo-moo, Honey has no time for foolishness. LB attracts fans from many genres, including rockabilly, punk and metal, as well as more traditional country and rock and roll purists. Rejecting the modern for the surreal, Laid Back and Honey deliver a unique musical experience.
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Laid Back has performed at the fabled Ryman Auditorium, Bonnaroo and Red Rocks. He has toured the nation and is a mainstay on Sirius Outlaw Country Radio. LB and Honey are at home on any stage, bringing smiles wherever they go and never failing to connect with rockers both young and old. 
 

ROBYN HITCHCOCK:
With a career now spanning six decades, Robyn Hitchcock remains a truly one-of-a-kind artist –surrealist rock ‘n’ roller, iconic troubadour, guitarist, poet, painter, and performer. An unparalleled, deeply individualistic songwriter and stylist, Hitchcockhas traversed many genres with humor, intelligence and originality over 30 albums and seemingly infinite live performances.

From The Soft Boys’ proto-psych-punk and The Egyptians’ Dadaist pop to solo masterpieces like 1984’s milestone I Often Dream ofTrains and 1990’s Eye, Hitchcock has crafted a strikingly original oeuvre rife with sagacious observation, astringent wit, recurring marine life, mechanized rail services, cheese, Clint Eastwood, and innumerable finely drawn characters, real and imagined.

EMMA SWIFT
Emma Swift is an Australian-born songwriter, currently residing in Nashville, TN. A gifted singer inspired by Sandy Denny, Joni Mitchell, Marianne Faithfull and a plethora of dead poets, her sound is a blend of classic folk, Americana and indie rock.

In August 2020, she released the critically-acclaimed Blonde on the Tracks, a Laurel Canyon inspired reimagining of some of her favourite Bob Dylan tunes on Tiny Ghost Records. The album received Best of 2020 accolades from Rolling Stone, Nashville Scene, No Depression, The Guardian and more.

Her new album The Resurrection Game was released on Tiny Ghost Records on September 12, 2025.

With musical notes that span well beyond genres like bolero, psychedelic, and cumbia, The Animeros not only make their audience hit the dance floor, but they also invite their listeners and tastemakers alike to a glimpse of their rich cultural upbringing.

The group who is made up of Nick Tozzo (drummer and percussionist), Nicolas Sanchez (bassist), and Mauro Lopez (guitarist) craft a genre-blending sound that drifts between the lush jungles of Colombia, the palm-lined streets of 1960s coastal Mexico, and the dusty cantinas of West Texas.

Sanchez’s Colombian roots, growing up listening to his parents’ beloved salsa and cumbia; Lopez’s parents’ Mexican and American discography, which spanned from traditional Tejano to improvised jazz; and Tozzo’s love for jazz and salsa music, the latter stemming from his college years, leading him to study and live in Colombia to experience music greats first-handedly. All of this, paired with their undeniable chemistry and meshed with their now hometown Austin’s innovative creative sounds has led them to create the unique sonic movement that is The Animeros, a name inspired by Colombian shamans who would usher lost souls to their peace.

Their journey took an unexpected turn when their music reached the ears of Dan Auerbach, the Grammy Award winning producer, songwriter, and frontman of The Black Keys. Auerbach first heard them by chance, music floating from an open hotel window that stopped him in his tracks. Captivated, he made a note to track them down, and within a year, that chance encounter led to something bigger. Now signed to Auerbach’s Easy Eye Sound label, The Animeros are preparing to release their debut album next year, produced exclusively by Auerbach himself.

“I feel like it’s only a matter of time for these guys and for the music that they play. All they have to do is be themselves,” Auerbach said about the trio. “They’re playing the kind of music that they can play forever until they’re 100 years old because it’s rooted in history, but it’s very much in the present.”

“When we first talked, one of the things was our love for the nuance in Latin music,” Lopez shared. “That’s what initially drew ourselves to each other… That’s like a language among musicians.” Tozzo also talked about their shared musical bond: “What makes our chemistry special is that even if one of us has just a glimpse of an idea, together we can take that and really create something out of it.” “That encyclopedia of [music] knowledge everyone brings…That’s what’s really appealing about this project. It’s not just surface level. Everybody’s going pretty deep on it,” Sanchez added.

The Animeros are on the cusp of reaching new audiences all over the globe. More singles are coming with a new album on the way in 2026 via Easy Eye Sound.

James McMurtry: The Black Dog & the Wandering BoyA Lone Star sheriff hunts quail on horseback and keeps a secret second family. A mechanic lies among the spare parts on the floor of his garage and wonders if he can afford to keep his girlfriend. A troubled man sees hallucinations of a black dog and a wandering boy and hums “Weird Al” songs in his head. These are some of the strange and richly drawn characters who inhabit James McMurtry’s eleventh album, The Black Dog & the Wandering Boy. A supremely insightful and inventive storyteller, he teases vivid worlds out of small details, setting them to arrangements that have the elements of Americana—rolling guitars, barroom harmonies, traces of banjo and harmonica—but sound too sly and smart for such a general category. Funny and sad often in the same breath, the album adds a new chapter to a long career that has enjoyed a resurgence as young songwriters like Sarah Jarosz and Jason Isbell cite him as a formative influence.

As varied as they are, these new story-songs find inspiration in scraps from his family’s past: a stray sketch, an old poem by a family friend, the hallucinations experienced by his father, the writer Larry McMurtry. “It’s something I do all the time,” he says, “but usually I draw from my own scraps.” As any good writer will do, McMurtry collects little ideas and hangs on to them for years, sometimes even decades. “South Texas Lawman” grew out of a line from a poem by a friend of the McMurtry clan, T.D. Hobart. Driven by gravelly guitars and a loose rhythm section, it’s a careful study of a man whose feelings of obsolescence motivate him to take drastic action in the final verse. “Dwight’d stay at
our house way back in the ‘70s, when we lived in Virginia. During one visit he wrote this poem about his father’s attitude toward South Texas. He wrote it down on cardboard, and I came across it recently. There was a line about hunting quail on horseback, and that was the seed of the song. I’ve lost the poem since then.”

BettySoo
It’s the voice that gets you first. 
“BettySoo may well have the most gorgeous voice in Texas …if not in all contemporary folk – its purity and strength can be downright devastating.” – ACOUSTIC GUITAR 
BettySoo’s vocal prowess is a thing of wonder.  A world-class instrument of deft phrasing and purity, a voice that knows when to hold back and when to dive in.  At her own live shows, taking a verse onstage with friends or singing harmonies in sessions with Austin’s finest, BettySoo sings with consummate loveliness and self-assurance.  A voice that knows the roots of American music inside and out; coming from a most unexpected place – a diminutive Korean-American with a deceptively girl-next-door demeanor. 
Then the performance reels you in. 
“Truly remarkable. BettySoo’s sharp, often self-deprecating humor skillfully wove the songs together. Her clear, evocative voice and poignant lyrics recall Patty Griffin and Joni Mitchell, and did I mention she’s a hell of a guitar player?”  – NO DEPRESSION, live concert review 
 

Nick Lowe
NickLowe has made his mark as a producer (Elvis Costello-GrahamParker-Pretenders-The Damned), songwriter of at least three songs you know byheart,short-lived career as a pop star, and a lengthy term as a musicians’musician. But in his current ‘second act’ as a silver-haired, tender-heartedbut sharp-tonguedsinger-songwriter, he has no equal.Starting with 1995′s ‘The ImpossibleBird’ through to 2011′s ‘The Old Magic,’Nick has turned out a fantastic string of albums, each one devised in his WestLondon home, and recorded with a core of musicians who possess the same veteransavvy. Lowe brings wit and understated excellence to every performance,leadingBen Ratliff of the New York Times to describe his live show as “elegant andnearly devastating.”In 2024 he released his latest record ‘Indoor Safari,’ a collaboration with Los Straitjackets

Los Straitjackets
LosStraitjackets are the leading practitioners of the lost art of the guitarinstrumental. Using the music of the Ventures, The Shadows, and with Link WrayandDick Dale as a jumping off point, the band has taken their unique, highenergy brand of original rock & roll around the world. Clad in their trademarkLucha LibreMexican wrestling masks, the “Jackets” have delivered theirtrademark guitar licks to 16 albums, thousands of concerts and dozens of filmsand TV shows.Their latest album ‘Somos Los Straitjackets’ was released in 2025. "The quartet's time-warped expertise shines through on track after track" -Shindig! Magazine,★★★★

All About the Bones

The sound and imagery of the 20th release by Chris Smither, All About the Bones, (release date: May 3, 2024 on Signature Sounds/Mighty Albert, distributed by Redeye) is as elemental as the inky black shadows cast by a shockingly bright moon. The listener is welcomed into some gothic mansion on an imaginary New Orleans street, and there in the lamplit parlor confronts the band, a minimalist skeleton crew: Smither’s inimitable propulsive guitar and rumbling baritone are joined seamlessly to producer David Goodrich’s carpetbag of instruments, Zak Trojano’s rock-steady, primal drumming, BettySoo’s diaphanous harmony vocals, and the flat, mournful flood of Jazz legend Chris Cheek’s saxophone.

Recorded at Sonelab Studios in Easthampton MA by Justin Pizzoferrato (Sonic Youth, Dinosaur Jr., the Hold Steady) All About the Bones has a feel that is somehow baroque and austere at once. Smither and his longtime producer David Goodrich have been refining their musical conversation for decades, both in the studio and onstage, and by now, their bond verges on the telepathic. Goodrich plays on nearly every track. His sound is by now so translucent that it seems to function as a swath of silence, allowing the songs to burn like ciphers in the crackling air.

And oh, the songs on All About the Bones. Chris Smither, after six decades of sharpening his knife as a songwriter, can at this point open damn near anything with a flick of his wrist. God and the Devil are opened here. Mortality is too. Politics, consciousness, renewal, family, vulnerability, surrender… Smither has sat with these topics like so many Zen koans, for so long, that every line is a pearl. The title track, “All About the Bones,” kicks the record off with “Consider your high station/ think about your fame. All of your creation depended on your frame.” Irony, wit, the double meaning of “depended”… each verse is a master class in songwriting.

Yet the stark, elemental sage always has a twinkle in his eye, a light touch at your elbow as he guides you along. From the wickedly funny defense of the Adversary in “If Not for the Devil” to the unsentimental open-heartedness of “Still Believe in You,” he is as human as we all long to be. The disjointed imagery of “In the Bardo” and the dystopian mirror of “Close the Deal” find Smither unflinchingly staring down the mortality of both individuals and republics, and yet he is at peace, among loved ones in his cover of Eliza Gilkyson’s “Calm Before the Storm,” and turning his gaze to the future in “Completion”. He sends us on our merry way, startled, dazzled, unsettled and then comforted, with Tom Petty’s “Time to Move On.”

As noted by the New York Times, Rolling Stone, MOJO, NPR, and others, in the decades of travels to All About the Bones, Chris Smither has gone from up-and-comer to journeyman to veteran to icon, and yet the whole time his path has more closely resembled Joseph Campbell’s “Hero with a Thousand Faces”- an unblinking, fearless trek into the depths of struggle and revelation, and a return back to the land of the living, to share the hard-won treasures found along the way. His restlessness is long gone, and his eyes are fixed “where the moonlight falls on some never-to-be-seen horizon” (“Still Believe in You”). The light given off from his music casts our own lives into a sublime and welcome clarity.

Travel back in time to the 1960’s for a fabulous evening of music and entertainment, reminiscent of a Frank Sinatra performance at the Sands Hotel in Las Vegas. Song stylist Jack Garrett and the amazing Atomic Wise Guys perform Sinatra’s classic hits, including “Fly Me to the Moon,” “My Way,” “One for My Baby (One More for the Road),” “Summer Wind,”“Nice N Easy,” “New York, New York” and many more. As a bonus, Jack and his ten-piece band perform hits from some of Frank Sinatra’s friends such as Tony Bennett, Frankie Valli, Dean Martin and Bobby Darin.

Guest vocalist Teresa Carey contributes hits from artists including Sarah Vaughan, Nancy Wilson, Aretha Franklin, and Etta James.

Featuring custom-written, deeply authentic band arrangements to reproduce the original Sinatra recordings, Let Me Be Frank is a fast paced, high-energy show including audience interaction and interesting information about Frank, both the man and his music.

The Atomic Wise Guys
Brian Cashwell – Pianist – Keyboard
Michael Sharfe – Bassist
Jim Leslie – Drummer – Music Director
Bill Dixon – Trombone – Trumpet – Music Arranger
Hank Mauntner – Lead Trumpet
Christopher Jeffery – Jazz Trumpet
Grant “King” Koeller – Tenor Sax
Jeff Spurlock – Alto Sax
Terry Staten – Baritone Sax
Jack Garrett – Vocalist
Teresa Carey – Guest Vocalist

Richard Shindell lives as both an immigrant and emigrant, crossing thresholds, that informs his illumination of the human experience through narrative song. Shindell has inhabited a Zen Buddhist monastery and busked in the streets of Paris.

Originally from New York, now living in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Shindell is a writer whose songs paint pictures, tell stories, juxtapose ideas and images, inhabit characters, vividly evoking entire worlds along the way and expanding our sense of just what it is a song may be. Meticulously recorded over three years in New York and Buenos Aires, his most recent release, Careless, offered an ambitious, luxurious, full- length statement. Shindell immersed himself in the studio, allowing the time and latitude to explore, experiment, take risks—to play—as each of these eleven songs was given form and substance. While his signature acoustic guitar style is used to good effect, Careless also found Shindell plugging in more. “The wider sonic and dynamic range of the electric has been a real inspiration. Rejuvenating.”

During the pandemic, Shindell stayed in Argentina, out on the wide open Pampa, reading, writing, taking walks, doing a little experimental recording, and tending the garden. He now returns to the road for a limited number of performances. Innovative, original and occasionally spiritual, Shindell’s songs weave tales that interchangeably champion the downtrodden, exalt the disaffected or wax empathetic to those lost to society’s fringes. From lighthearted ballads and adulterous love songs, to dirges and diatribes that skillfully skewer politics, prejudice, war and religion, to the comic point-of-view of a cow stuck in a barbed wire fence, he has a unique ability to morph into the soul of the many and varied personalities he casts as narrators in certain songs—veritable novellas framed in haunting acoustic melodies.