Grateful Web

“Los Angeles folk & roots outfit Diane Hubka & The Sun Canyon Band releases new single “Baton Rouge,” out today. Hubka’s charming vocals lure you into dancing along to this feel-good Guy Clark cover. It’s like a sunny walk through a swampy town in this song about picking up your life and starting somewhere new. Something we can all relate to in this post-covid world. New Orleans-born drummer Lynn Coulter (Leon Russell, Carole King, Rita Coolidge) takes zydeco and african beats and melds them with legendary guitarist Albert Lee’s (Emmylou Harris, Eric Clapton, The Everly Brothers) one-of-a-kind guitar sounds.”

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“Payback Day (I’ll Give No Warning),” a vintage blues-rock banger with honkytonk, roadhouse bar fight vibes, keeps up the momentum as the narrator drinks and plots his revenge. As was the case with “I Keep On Searching,” Comper only had to do a few touch-ups to what was already on tape to ready the track for release. He’s learned the hard way about dismissing unfinished material. “I used to just write tons of songs and I never finished them,” he says about his days with Golden Reef. “When you give it a second look, sometimes it’s a great song.”

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SeepeopleS is the politically-charged indie project led by Portland-based singer/songwriter and producer Will Bradford. The band has been making their way through the indie underground for decades, taking a fluid approach to genre lines but uniting their diverse stylistic instincts with a strident topical edge. “Bradford has toured the country as SeepeopleS’ bandleader, songwriter, and producer, bringing his defiant, politically-charged music to the masses, challenging audiences to question the world around them creating a community of misfits hellbent on speaking truth to power. Now, on SeepeopleS’ brilliant sixth LP, Field Guide For Survival In This Dying World, Bradford has created an empathetic, emotionally intelligent collection of songs that serve as both a documentation of personal struggle and a companion in a world that seems edging closer to collapse.”

“SeepeopleS’ music has always been characterized by Bradford’s staunch refusal to abide by genre conventions, and Field Guide For Survival In This Dying World continues in that spirit, though Bradford’s talent and decades of experience have allowed him to blend 90s inspired electro, expressive indie-folk, and avant-garde pop into something musically diverse yet wholly cohesive.”

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SoCal singer/songwriter, Emmy-nominated TV writer-producer & novelist James Kahn’s seventh album, By the Risin’ of the Sea, turns our expectations of traditional sea shanties on their heads by confronting our modern environmental struggles. The album was a finalist in the International Acoustic Music Awards, and the music video of the title song has won several film festival awards, including Best Music Video at the Global Film and Music Festival.  READ MORE…

In the wake of recent press at The Bluegrass Situation, Americana UK, Glide Magazine, Ditty TV, and the Billboard Country Update, Nashville Americana / folk-blues artist Bill Filipiak released new record, Medicine I Need, Friday, Oct. 1, on Vidlicity Records.
 
As a producer for the most hallowed of Nashville roots-music institutions, the Grand Ole Opry, Filipiak has had a chance to not only brush elbows with, but really get to know and learn from, some of the finest Americana artists around. Which, of course, has been a major influence on his own work. With his latest—and most fully realized—record to date, Filipiak taps the inspiration and wisdom of these artists, honing his lifelong passion for music and songwriting into an impressive, thoughtful and healing folk-blues journey, the aptly titled Medicine I Need.

“When you have the opportunity to talk songwriting with these people and watch them perform—I’m talking about folks like Larkin Poe, Sarah Jarosz, Molly Tuttle, Bryan Sutton and Allison Russell; artists like Lera Lynn and Maggie Rose, who insist on finding their own path while staying true to who they are; or maybe you spend a couple days with a legend like Keb Mo, George Thorogood or Ray Wylie Hubbard—after that,” Filipiak says, “it’s hard not to pick up your instrument, try to emulate what they’ve done, then come up with your own idea and follow through on it.”

And that’s exactly what Filipiak has done with Medicine I Need. The album—his third full-length—features a unique palette: the gritty blues power of a Gretsch Honey Dipper resonator guitar, mellowed by a splash of Beach Boys surf and a healthy dose of Wurlitzer electric piano. Filipiak—who recorded, engineered, produced and played every sound you hear on this singular vision of a record—simmers these ingredients into a potent and satisfying stew of downhome country-blues, folk and Americana.

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“Oh, you were in Deep Wound?”: an FAQ for punk roots thrasher Scott Helland, whose prolific songwriting has yielded over 30 records since the ’80s, ever since that fateful flyer fell into the hands of lo-fi heroes, J Mascis and Lou Barlow. Helland has since opened for many great rock bands, including Hüsker Dü, Black Flag w/ Henry Rollins, Cro-Mags, COC, 7 Seconds and more.

Eventually, Helland jettisoned punk rock and thrash metal in the ’90s, picking up an acoustic that he began strumming and chasing after atmospheric melodies and the songs that came with it. He relied on looping and self-sufficiency, which eventually led him down a path of spy-noir instrumentals, inspired by The Rockford Files, The Man from Uncle, I Spy, and others from childhood immersion. 

In the tight-lipped, complex and solitary characters celebrated in those shows, Helland finds an analog for his own go-it-alone forays into stylish post-punk guitar composition. “I like the thought of providing music for a movie inside someone’s head,” he says. Thus, his solo career under the moniker Guitarmy of One was born. 

The title ‘Overtones of Hercule and Holmes’ is a tipping of the hat to those classic detective characters. Hercule Poirot is from the Agatha Christie series and Holmes, of course, is from Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes series. “I took my perception of those characters and wrote a soundtrack for them,” Helland says. This song fits with the rest of the album, The Spy Detective Collective, which is inspired by spy and detective shows from the ’60s and ’70s. The album has an all-instrumental spy-noir feel, with driving acoustic-electric melodies over propulsive electro beats.

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