When Alex da Ponte was 22, she recorded an album called Nightmares.

“I think that’s part of getting through your 20s,” she says casually. “You get your heart broken and you write a record about it.”

It’s casual, perhaps, because it’s sort of always been the way Alex processed things, since she was a kid, growing up isolated in Key West. Living in a house on stilts that perches over the water will draw out the creativity, especially in a kid born of a musical family — a many-generations-removed relative was Mozart’s librettist, grandmother sang opera and there was always a piano in the home — and Alex tried to write the songs she wanted to hear.

“I remember writing really ridiculous Blink 182-style songs in middle school because I’ve always been trying to create something that I want to listen back to,” she says. “So it’s a really selfish thing, I guess — I needed an anthem.”

But now, Alex da Ponte is 27. And in January she'll release All My Heart, a record whose title is as evocative as it is precise.

"I found my people, I guess,” she says. “You can tell I've grown and matured, which they always tell you that you will."

Case in point: just a few years ago, playing shows was mortifying, awful, all those eyes bearing into her. Each band member she added was a stitch in a safety blanket that took the attention away from center stage. And just a few months ago, Alex took the bull by the horns, walked into a meeting with a Blue Barrel Records executive, played a fuzzy demo recorded on an iPhone voice memo and said to him confidently, “this is the hit.”

That hit was “Nevermind,” and it will be the first single from All My Heart.  "I've learned in life that I can make things happen for myself." 

Ultimately what Alex made happen was a thesis for 20-something self-discovery. All My Heart is bright, fresh and biting, as honest and brash as it is knowingly self-conscious: that perfect juxtaposition of emotion that pop music has been trying to capture for decades. Guiding you through it is Alex da Ponte, her voice earning comparisons to Jenny Lewis and Karen O, and her style (a blend of femininity and punk undeniably influenced by 90s alternative) to Courtney Love’s Hole.

Standouts on the record include “Dinosaur,” a simple and surprising alt-pop love song (a gentle little dinosaur / but your heart sure weighed a ton), the sharp, witty post-breakup gem “Tell Your Friends,” and of course, that hit: “Nevermind,” a sweetly sung indie anthem whose title phrase again seems to capture that indecision of this perfectly undecided decade.

While working with Blue Barrel Records meant Alex was able to record All My Heart at Music+Arts Studio, she held to one philosophy from Nightmare — “we had a dream team then, so I had to have a dream team for this record, too.” This time around the dream team included Rick Steff and Roy Berry on keys and drums (Lucero), Geoff Smith on bass (Star & Micey), Jonathan Kirkscey and Jessie Munson on cello and violin and Robby Davis on guitar.

And now the girl who used to hate the idea of taking center stage says she's settling in to the idea that all eyes may be on her come spring. "These songs are me,” she says. “I'm documenting my own life and creating these things because that's what I want to sing about. I feel like I am claiming that this year." 

All My Heart is out January 29 on Blue Barrel Records.

There is a section on the United States map that is rumored not to exist, a scrunched up space between the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers where giants were said to have carved the rolling hills out of limestone and Caleb Sweazy spent a childhood exploring the endless acres of a National Forest. Considered a hick to those in the North and a Yankee by anyone south of this river confluence, Caleb found comfort in being an outsider. 

As a boy he dreamed of being an artist. As a young man he moved to California to become an actor. Somewhere in the years that followed he realized that music was his tool for self-expression and the songs emerged, his voice heavily informed by the everywhere-and-nowhere sensibility that had defined his childhood.

After a stint as the bass player for psychedelic rock outfit The Warlocks, Caleb created his own band with a decidedly stripped down sound. "Fool," a song from his debut EP, was selected for volume two of This is Americana, long before it was cool to be folk. Now living in spitting distance from those hills of his own childhood, Caleb calls Memphis, Tennessee home.

In some ways that’s where the story of his newest album begins: in Memphis as a husband and father, endlessly inspired by his children yet unsure how his identity as an artist could survive under the daily grind of running a business and supporting a family. In fact, he confesses, he didn’t see how that identity could fit in at all.

But then, last fall, in a rare live performance, Caleb debuted several new songs, winning over his audience and, unknowingly, Blue Barrel Records. Caleb was signed to the nascent label and given the green light to record an album.

Lucky or Strong is Caleb Sweazy’s fourth album, and he will continue writing and singing about the fringes long after it’s cool to do so.

UK Contact
Iain Murray
Proper Note
Tel: +44 (0) 20 8676 5114
propernote.co.uk

US Contact
Elizabeth Cawein
CEO + Founder Signal Flow PR
signalflowpr.com
@signalflowpr
901.268.9038

GB Shannon
GB Shannon is a writer/director that calls Memphis, TN home. He has directed music videos for Alexis Grace, The Grifters and Rob Jungklas among others. He is a winner of the 2014 Indie Grant for his script, Broke Dick Dog, as well as the writer and co-director of Pretty Monsters(2012) and Fresh Skweezed(2011) which is distributed through Music+Arts Studio.

Ryan Parker
Ryan Earl Parker has applied his uniquely perceptive cinematography to a wide variety of film projects, producing high quality, sophisticated results with an economical approach and a wealth of imagination.  His ability to see through the camera what others might overlook makes him an essential asset to the directors with whom he works, who quickly learn to trust his eye, his intuition, and his skill at communicating their visions. His ability to think outside the box insures originality on screen, ingenuity on set, and cost effectiveness on paper, turning what might otherwise be limitations into seizable, unexpected opportunities. He understands light and color and the changing ways emerging photographic technology captures them, and is conversant, on set and off, in the vocabulary of possibility.

He transforms a director's ideas into incalculable realities.

In addition to a Bachelor of Arts Degree from the University of Memphis, he is a recent graduate of the Global Cinematography Institute founded by Vilmos Zsigmond, ASC and Yuri Neyman, ASC.  He is a Certified Colorist from the International Colorist Academy and recently completed the American Society of Cinematographers Master Class in Los Angeles under the instruction of Kramer Morgenthau, ASC, Affonso Beato, ASC, ABC, and Bill Bennet, ASC, to name a few.

2015 update-where they are now:

Chad Gamble is now the drummer for former Drive-By Trucker, Jason Isbell, and has been a part of Isbell’s impressive rise to fame as a solo artist. Chad performs on Isbell’s latest release, Something More Than Free, which reached #1 on Billboard’s Top Country album chart in 2015.

Al Gamble is presently a member of the breakout soul band, St. Paul and The Broken Bones. Their latest release, Half the City, has done well in Billboard’s 200 charts and the band has appeared CBS This Morning, NPR's Morning Edition and has recently opened on tour for The Rolling Stones.

Art Edmaiston has performed and recorded with Galactic, Dr. John, The Mighty Souls Brass Band, The Bo Keys, Jason Isbell & the 400 Unit and St. Paul and the Broken Bones. Gregg Allman first heard Art perform live with JJ Grey & MOFRO and later asked him to join the horn section of the Greg Allman band where Art remains a member today.

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In January 2001, Memphis-based keyboard player Al Gamble and his drumming younger brother Chad decided to take advantage of their years of jamming in the family rec room and form a band together.

They filled out the lineup with a guitarist and a bass player, and four months later hooked up with tenor saxophonist Art Edmaiston, who shared their love of Southern R&B and their desire to push the envelope. In September the guitar player opted for the steady money of a gig in a Beale Street cover band, and as time went by the remaining four players grew increasingly fond of the space and freedom resulting from the absence of guitar. It was then that the Gamble Brothers Band, as they called themselves, located their sound. Five years later, on their third and latest album, Continuator (Archer Records), the band deftly demonstrates not only how captivating that sound can be but how much substance it can contain.

The world the GBB articulates on this intriguing record—in the working man’s anthem “Overboard,” about the ongoing act of trying to keep one’s head above water, as well as songs like “Hold Out ‘Til Monday,” “Back at School,” “Heart’s Not in It” and “Shopping Cart” — will be readily familiar to most listeners, because it’s the world we live in today. These themes yanked from everyday life in contemporary America interact wondrously with the gritty grooves and smoky feel they’ve carried forward from the ‘60s and ‘70s R&B records on which they’ve based their sound. It’s a sound to which these four natural-born musicians are the rightful heirs, considering the Gamble siblings grew up in Tuscumbia, Alabama, within spitting distance of Southern soul mecca Muscle Shoals, while Edmaiston hails from Troy, Tennessee, north of Memphis, which is the hometown of bass player Blake Rhea, who joined the group late in 2003.

You’ll find their indigenous inspirations displayed proudly and impeccably on Continuator and in the GBB’s scintillating live performances — flavors cooked up and marinated to perfection several decades ago at Fame Studios in Muscle Shoals, Memphis’ Stax Volt and Hi, Allen Toussaint’s joint in New Orleans and wherever Ray Charles and his band set up.

“My dad had the ‘Genius of Ray Charles’ and “Modern Sounds in Country & Western Music’, along with some Jimmy Smith albums and a bunch of Verve Forecast stuff,” Al recalls, “and I wore them out. I grew up in the ‘80s, and I couldn’t relate to the music on the radio, so those records were my salvation.”

But this band isn’t interested in merely replicating the past or geographically confining its reference points, although they readily acknowledge that they’re paying tribute to the great soul acts. “We try to further the heritage,” says Edmaiston. When asked to name his faves, Art starts with Led Zeppelin and John Coltrane, then throws in Louie Prima — “I dig music with life in it,” he says, — while Rhea acknowledges a fondness for Latin and metal. The group’s music touches on all these things, but, “We keep things in a soulful mindset,” is how Art puts it. The new album’s “East Parkway Rundown,” for example, features a super-vibey, near-psychedelic intermingling of sax and Hammond B-3 flavors redolent of Traffic circa “Freedom Rider,” and the timbre of Al’s vocals recall Dr. John at his most natural, but also present is a wry, knowing soulfulness that was the trademark of the late, great Little Feat auteur Lowell George. There’s a lot going on in these fat grooves and sharply drawn vignettes.

The sessions took place at Memphis’ famed Ardent Studios, with producer/engineer/ mixer Jeff Powell (Big Star, Afghan Whigs, North Mississippi Allstars) at the helm. “I love this band and am very proud of this record,” says Powell. “Rather than doing everything in time to a click track and fixing every mistake to make it ‘perfect,’ we went for a live feeling — a soulful, Memphis-style behind-the-beat feel, with a sound that jumps out of the speakers. I think you can hear how much fun we had making it, and these guys are some of the finest musicians I’ve ever worked with.”

Returning to the backstory, all four members of the GBB lineup started playing their respective instruments early on and went on to log countless hours and miles working as sidemen in blues and soul bands on the chitlin circuit. There were sidetrips along the way, as the Gamble boys both graduated from the University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa, separated by five years, with Al getting his degree in international relations. The logical next step for him was the service, but his decision to pursue career as a U.S. Army officer was irrevocably altered one evening in the early ‘90s, when Al and his wife to be went to hear some music at B.B. King’s Blues Club on Beale Street. Al doesn’t know exactly what hit him that evening — he has to think a minute to even remember who was playing (it was Little Milton) — but he had an epiphany, and that epiphany put him on a path that led to the GBB and a reputation among fellow musicians as the young cat who is most skillfully carrying on the legacy of Booker T Jones and Spooner Oldham on the B-3, the Wurlitzer and the Fender Rhodes.

Both Al and Chad did stints in regionally heralded Shreveport band the Bluebirds (though not at the same time). Al has backed up artists such as Chris Cain, Johnnie Bassett, the Barkays, Irma Thomas, Bo Diddley, Syl Johnson, Eric Gales, Rufus Thomas and the Memphis Horns, while Chad has played behind Rufus Thomas, the Memphis Horns, Eddie Floyd, Chris Cain, Johnnie Bassett, Preston Shannon and Jimmy Thackery.

Edmaiston’s travels took him from the V.F.W. in Lake Charles, Louisiana, to Harlem’s Apollo Theatre and all the way to Japan while touring as a member of the Bobby “Blue” Bland Orchestra. He made it to Puerto Rico and Scandinavia with Preston Shannon and back across the U.S. and Canada with Mason Ruffner. Art’s done time in the Beale Street clubs, much of it in the house band at B.B. King’s; he’s jammed with Ivan Neville, Jon Fishman of Phish, the Aquarium Rescue Unit, Robert Walter’s 20th Congress, Papa Grows Funk and Jim Belushi; and shared stages with everyone from Levon Helm to Wayne Newton, from the Coasters to Leslie Gore. His sax work can be heard on the Johnny Lang’s Grammy-winning “Lie to Me”.

The band started working up material soon after forming, and in a few months they were recording their debut album, 10 Lbs. of Hum. The record was cut on the fly and a tight budget, but it still indicated the intriguing mix of the past and the present that they were developing, while the choice of covers — including Toussaint’s “Everything I Do” and a take on Holland-Dozier-Holland’s “Don’t Do It” patterned on that of The Band —provided a sense of their rock-solid musical foundation. In July 2003 they beat out 1,200 bands to win the Billboard-sponsored Independent Musicians World Series in Nashville, which got them $35,000 in gear. Two months later they released their second album (and first for Memphis indie Archer), Back to the Bottom. It was a crisply recorded affair that showed the development of their songwriting, which was given further context by the presence of inventive interpretations of Randy Newman’s “Little Criminals” and Gary Wright’s “Love Is Alive.”

Back to the Bottom got the band noticed by certain publications with their ears to the ground, like Paste, which gave the record four stars and compared the band to Booker T & the MG’s and the Meters.

Edmaiston joined the Jacksonville, Fla.-based touring band Mofro in 2007 and soon after that, the Gamble Brothers Band played their last live show, opening for the Black Crowes in October 2007 at Mud Island Amphitheatre in Memphis.  Soon after drummer Chad Gamble would join Jason Isbell on the road and travel the world. Earlier in 2007, while on a break from touring, Edmaiston joined Memphis guitar player Joe Restivo, drummer George Sluppick and Al to form The Grip, a four-piece jazz instrumental band specializing in boogaloo music. The Grip recorded the EP Grab This Thing for Archer Records (2007).  The EP is available on this website.

With Edmaiston now full time with Mofro, Al Gamble, Joe Restivo and George Sluppick continued to play as a three-piece, forming the band, The City Champs. The City Champs have released two albums on Scott Bomar’s Electraphonic label titled: The Safecracker (2009) and The Set (2010). The City Champs tour regularly and have opened for other acts, including the North Mississippi Allstars.

Al Gamble now spends his time between touring with the City Champs, Charlie Mars, soul singer Marc Broussard and being an “A” list studio session player. 

If you wanted to know about Memphis songwriter John Kilzer, you could start any number of places.  

If you chose to go all the way back to school days, you could begin with Kilzer’s basketball career as a high school All-American, and later a highly-regarded player on the Memphis State roster. Or you could begin, more predictably, with his two standout roots-rock releases on Geffen Records, Memory in the Making (1988) and Busman’s Holiday (1991).  

Considering his youth, Kilzer’s signing with Geffen was a coup even for a songwriter as strong and promising as he plainly was. In the days when Geffen was the prestige label for music as disparate as Sonic Youth’s roaring avant-guitars, Peter Gabriel’s world-music experiments, and Guns N Roses’ decadent metal, John Kilzer brought a raucous but intimate aesthetic to the label, a heartland-style rock rooted in Southern storytelling and character development. Like his label mate John Hiatt, Kilzer possessed the rare gift of being able to tell you virtually everything you needed to know about the men and women who populated his songs in the first four lines, often to a stomping backbeat that made the poetic intricacies of his lyrics all the more striking when you really paid attention. (Check his gritty single “Red Blue Jeans,” long admired among roots-rock aficionados, for evidence of Kilzer’s lyrical skills.)

Kilzer’s music brought him high-profile exposure; it was featured on MTV, and even on the quintessential ’90s series “Melrose Place.” That was the shiny side of the coin. The scarred side was years of the fast living that Kilzer finally came to realize was beyond his power to control. So you might pick up the story just after those records, with the tale of how a young, gifted artist battled his way back from addiction to arrive at a place of sobriety and peace—and how he worked to help others find their way back as well, through music.  

Prior to his musical career Kilzer had earned a Master’s degree in English, even taught at Memphis State for three years. After entering recovery in 2000, he went back to school again—divinity studies this time—and merged his music work with his soul work. So you might begin with the music, by noting John Kilzer’s long and productive career as a songwriter for other artists. You might recount the catalog of musicians who’ve recorded his songs over the past 20 years, a list that includes country music royalty Roseanne Cash (“Green, Yellow and Red,” on her classic King’s Record Shop album), multiple CMT Award-winning country singer Trace Adkins, and Greenwich Village folk-blues legend Maria Muldaur, among others. Or you might begin on the soul side, with his Master of Divinity degree (2005) from Memphis Theological Seminary, with his Doctorate from Middlesex University in London England (2010), or with “The Way,” the music-driven Friday-night “recovery ministry” services he’s run regularly at St. John’s United Methodist Church, in the heart of midtown Memphis, since the year he received his Ph.D.

For years, most of John Kilzer’s work was gifted out to other people.  His life has taken him from the major labels through major addiction to ministry. And though you could call him the Reverend Dr. John Kilzer, what he is at core is a songwriter who believes, as he once noted in an interview, that “All Memphis music is gospel music.” Drawing on the deep traditions of his beloved Bluff City, Kilzer’s songs are rooted in joyful soul, electric blues, and folk storytelling, making his music a rich blend of styles and approaches.

Hide Away finds John Kilzer turning in a new set of songs in that rich, cross-genre tradition, with the help of Memphis’s established musical community and members of the up-and-coming generation as well. Alvin Youngblood Hart, Luther Dickinson, Steve Selvidge, Bobby Manuel, Greg Morrow and Kirk Whalum, among others, all show up to help Kilzer bring it home. It’s a testimony to John Kilzer’s respected standing in the Memphis music community, and it’s the reason Hide Away marks a return to top form for a songwriter who knows, personally and professionally, how music can move, can shake, can heal us.

–Eric Waggoner

Joyce Cobb’s musical journey has taken its fair share of twists and turns, but the multifaceted singer is hardly finished adding new chapters to her story at this point.

After beginning her professional calling with the distinction of being signed by Stax during its heyday, she proceeded on to a career that includes highlights such as charting in the Top 40 with a record on the famed Cream label (later Hi Records), and touring internationally with household names like The Temptations, Muddy Waters, and Al Jarreau. For many artists these sort of experiences might have been enough, but despite such early success, Joyce has never stopped to dwell on the past, instead adopting fresh approaches to her seemingly limitless talents.

Raised in her grandmother’s church choir, Cobb later left Nashville for a chance to sing down the road in the Home of the Blues. Upon arriving in Memphis, Stax wasted no time inking her to a deal, setting in motion a whirlwind of events. At a time when Soulsville, USA was pumping out hit after hit, Joyce began incorporating her love of jazz recordings into her soulful styled singing, creating a distinct division in her sound from most vocalists who relied more on bluesy power than styled refinement. Somewhat ironically though, as worldwide travel increasingly became a requirement of her blossoming performance career, she began to find herself more deeply rooted into the ever-expanding traditions back in the Bluff City.

In a place boasting marquee names as B.B., Rufus, Elvis, and Isaac, Cobb soon became one of the foremost ladies in a music scene that had produced few notable female vocalists outside of Memphis Minnie and Carla Thomas. That fact never fazed her though, as she was more than comfortable in what had become a melting pot for the southern soul, rhythm and blues, gospel, and jazz she loved. Rather, Memphis became a platform for countless projects outside of her recording career: she owned and performed in her own Beale Street nightclub, received recognition for one-person stage plays at Theater Memphis, taught jazz vocals at the University of Memphis School of Music, and still continues to host her famous Sunday jazz brunches in midtown. And though the love for her adopted hometown remains steadfast, Cobb anxiously anticipates stepping out this year with a new jazz project, her first album with independent Memphis label Archer Records.

Joining her will be Memphis-by-way-of-New York pianist Michael Jefry Stevens, who, like Cobb, has never been one to sit idly around. In fact, at present Stevens heads or plays a part in a number of jazz ensembles across the country, having played on 62 released albums during his career. In addition, he was recently honored with an induction into the prestigious and diverse company of Steinway Artists, including past legends like Irving Berlin and Cy Coleman, as well as modern players such as Billy Joel and Harry Connick, Jr. When not busy juggling one of his many projects, Stevens often gives solo jazz salon performances and leads various instructional series (a current series focused on the 70s era electric fusion of Herbie Hancock, Chick Corea, and Joe Zawinul, et al).

Not long after moving to Memphis Stevens was contacted by local upright bassist Jonathan Wires, and the two instantly formed a playing partnership that grew to eventually include drummer Renardo Ward, well known around town for his session work. After hearing Joyce perform, Stevens felt that her dynamic style and singular intonation would be the perfect foil for his newfound trio. “I have a few places in Europe I always like to play,” mused Stevens, “and I knew these folks would fall in love with Joyce. It made perfect sense.” With the members solidified, Archer Records signed the group in late August 2009 before welcoming them into the midtown Memphis label’s Music + Arts studio. To ensure the best sound possible, Archer arranged a Steinway D for Stevens, and the September 21-24 sessions, which were recorded to magnetic tape, reflect the classic richness and warmth of sound that will recall smoldering Dinah Washington and Billy Holliday LPs.

On their resultant self-titled album Joyce Cobb with the Michael Jefry Stevens Trio, Stevens leads the rhythm section in deftly complementing Cobb’s full range of honey sweet vocals with carefully composed peaks and valleys. Beginning with the distressed album-opening “Moanin’,” they collectively deliver 12 tales that ebb and flow as a dialogue between enflamed passions and desperate solitude. Drawing on her own uniquely developed mixture of silky jazz and aching soul, Cobb scours the depths of cheerless heartache (“It’s Over Now”) and profound longing (“If You Never Come to Me”), before illuminating the heights of hopeful anticipation (“Jitterbug Waltz”) and unwavering love (“My Heart Belongs to Daddy”, “If You Know Love”). Throughout, Stevens provides vibrantly articulated and lyrical solos, as Wires and Ward glide naturally between moods and tempos with remarkable ease and style. The outcome is a magnificently crafted album coursing with life and full of delicate flourishes resulting from an incredible understanding between the full-bodied musical personalities of Cobb and Stevens.

Look for Joyce Cobb with the Michael Jefry Stevens Trio online and in stores. The group completed a successful European tour in Switzerland, Austria and Germany in October 2010 and are planning to return in 2012. Project photos, audio samples, and more, are available here on the Archer Records site or the Michael Jefry Stevens homepage at michaeljefrystevens.com.

Acclaimed as "one of the world's foremost classical guitarists" according to Public Radio International, Lily Afshar is a virtuosa who brings passion to her performance. Her unique life story finds expression in her art. The Washington Post has described her onstage performance as "remarkable, impeccable." She is the only classical guitarist in the world who blends excellent formal training in the United States and Europe with the rich cultural heritage of Persia to bring audiences an extraordinary musical experience.

The Love Light Orchestra celebrates the Memphis big band blues style found on the 1950’s & 60’s singles of Bobby “Blue” Bland, B.B. King and Herman ”Junior” Parker.  The band of seasoned Memphis musicians derives their name from Bland’s 1961 hit “Turn On Your Love Light.” Their sound is completed with the soulful voice of bluesman John Nemeth.

In addition to dipping into the catalogs of Buddy Ace, Freddie King, and Percy Mayfield, the band demonstrates their deftness with uptown blues via the solid originals “Singing For My Supper, “Lonesome and High,” and the Ray Charles-inspired opener “See Why I Love You.” Casual fans of Memphis music might only recognize their cover of Al Green’s iconic “Love and Happiness,” but it’s reset here as a shuffle, building upon riffs that horn player, Marc Franklin, says were inspired by Charles Mingus’ “Fables of Faubus.”

The Love Light Orchestra’s overall sound, says Franklin, was inspired by Joe Scott whose work Franklin discovered after he was hired to play with Bland in the early ‘90s. “The first time I heard his work it sounded like Ellington, but more downhome, with extended harmonics that you don’t necessarily hear on blues or soul records. It’s a jazz thing, throwing extra notes into the chords—at Stax they didn’t do 6th chords.”

Grammy winning producer/engineer Matt Ross-Spang cut the record live at the tiny DKDC bar in Memphis, and recalls “it was more or less done after we cut it. This music is really supposed to be heard live, to be in the room to feel the horns, and it turned out magically—lightning in a bottle twelve times in just a couple hours.”

Scott Baretta

Former editor, Living Blues

One of Memphis music icon Sam Phillips’ favorite sayings was, “If you’re not doing something different, you’re not doing anything.” With a unique ensemble sound and surprisingly diverse repertoire, Memphis Ukulele Band is firmly rooted in Memphis music’s maverick tradition.

And like so much great Memphis music, this story starts at Sun Studio. It was there one evening in 2013 that Jon Hornyak, engineer Matt Ross-Spang, and multi-instrumentalist Jason Freeman came up with the idea of starting a ukulele band. They invited a few friends along – critically acclaimed singer-songwriter Mark Edgar Stuart and talented newcomer Kyndle McMahan – and soon found themselves opening for the uke’s biggest kahuna, Jake Shimabukuro. That show earned them both an enthusiastic crowd response and the interest of Blue Barrel Records, and in May 2015 they began recording their debut album at Music+Arts Studio.

For all five members, MUB is a genuine labor of love, a ukulele-fueled Traveling Wilburys-style break from their busy musical “day-jobs,” which range from Ross-Spang’s high-profile production/engineering gigs to Kyndle McMahan’s junior-year music studies at University of Memphis. But what started as a fun side gig for house concerts and neighborhood coffeehouses soon took on a life – and devoted local fan base – all its own.

Now, MUB eagerly looks forward to bringing their “Ukulele Soul” sound to a national audience with their self-titled debut album, out early next year. Their debut record features 10 covers and one original song – Mark Edgar Stuart’s “In-Laws” – and explores the charms of the uke within myriad genres, from pop to blues to reggae to soul.

Nothing is untouchable. MUB takes on “Valerie,” the Zutons song made famous by the late, great Amy Winehouse. Perhaps Kyndle’s finest vocal performance on the album, it stays true to the edgy-yet-fragile original while at the same time showcasing the young singer’s own unique qualities. The album’s most elaborate production, “Valerie” remains true to the intimate simplicity that is MUB’s trademark.

Then there’s “(You Keep Me) Hangin’ On,” a song that is at the heart of the band’s signature sound – ukulele soul. Kyndle’s rich, fluid voice rides the Memphis groove of the band’s ukes, augmented by a lone cello played by adventurous Memphis Symphony Orchestra cellist Jonathan Kirkscey, in an arrangement crafted by legendary Memphis studio man Lester Snell.

Right at home alongside these classic songs is “In-Laws,” Mark Edgar Stuart’s original contribution. He sings it wryly – a post-modern Furry Lewis. With its classic theme of marital discord set against jaunty, countrified uke strumming, it’s got the feel of a state-of-the-art 21st Century jug band, with a little hill-country stomp tossed in.

The ukulele is an instrument whose low volume and capacity to express a broad range of emotion make it one of the most intimate, evocative and underrated stringed instruments. It’s fitting, then, that Memphis – also intimate, evocative, certainly underrated – is the setting for this magical collaboration. The Memphis Ukulele Band’s self-titled debut is out on Barrel Records February 19, 2016

It was a dream Sean Murphy had fostered since high school, ever since he’d first dipped an ear into the Dirty Dozen Brass Band’s discography.

Murphy had a vision of a brass-band outfit anchored by a tuba bass line—a combo that could draw from New Orleans traditions, but one that mainly honored the deep, wide-ranging musical history of Memphis, Tennessee. And it took a couple of decades of woodshedding in a wide array of formal and improvisatory settings, but today, tuba player/composer Murphy and a group of crack-shot co-conspirators are brewing a strong, soulful pot under the moniker Mighty Souls Brass Band, comprising some of the city’s most sought-after musicians, putting a uniquely Memphis spin on a tradition that’s as global in its scope as it is root-deep in American popular music.

Mighty Souls Brass Band, a rotating collective of composer-players versed in a multitude of musical traditions, isn’t a soul band, nor is it a funk band, a marching band, or a swing band. And yet, depending on where you catch them live, you’ll hear all of those influences, as well as more from around the globe, in the group’s music.

“We’re not interested in just being a bunch of Memphis musicians playing New Orleans-style brass band music,” says Murphy. “We love that music, and we honor it. But we love Memphis music too, and world music, and we want to pay tribute to that history. And it’s a deep one.”

True enough. Check MSBB’s roster, for one thing—an evolving list of knockout players whose chops around Memphis are long-established. The group began to coalesce in 2012, when Murphy and Jim Spake came together to play a New Orleans-style funeral, accompanied by horn player/vocalist Jeremy Shrader and percussionist Earl Lowe. Murphy, who has spent 13 years honing his chops in an improv dance and music group, found a kindred spirit in the wildly versatile Spake, whose sax playing appears on three decades’ worth of albums by Alex Chilton, Al Green, the North Mississippi All-Stars, Natalie Merchant, and dozens more. When Murphy outlined his project—a brass ensemble whose repertoire drew from American soul and funk as well as global traditions—Spake jumped at the chance, as did a host of other players from Memphis’ powerhouse session-musician community. On any given night the talent represented onstage at a MSBB show can run from five to 14 members deep, showcasing some of the best and most esteemed players in the city’s rich performance pool.

That elasticity—of personnel, and of the music—allows MSBB to enjoy a lot of flexibility in its arrangements and live performances. “That’s the great thing, one of the great things, about this group,” says Jim Spake. “Sean’s got to be there, he’s our fount of craziness. But it can be a different band on any particular night. In other settings, you might think, ‘Oh no, man, we don’t have our bass player?’ In this group, the feeling is more like, ‘Hey, who’s playing today…? Cool…’”

That portability brings us to MSBB’s many diverse gigs, which can take them—as the band’s lively booking schedule recently did, over the course of a single day in October 2014—from a morning show playing globally-derived “world brass band” music for children age 8 and younger, to an afternoon’s polka-inflected set at an Oktoberfest party, to an evening opening for (and backing) New Orleans legend Dr. John. To hear Murphy talk about the heady blend of styles the MSBB works in is to hear how the band’s music drinks deep from a multitude of sources. The tight, polished work of MoTown’s session horns; the gritty, dirty inflections of New Orleans’ funky Meters; the slippery R&B of Memphis’ own Booker T. and the MGs—it all finds a place in the thumping heartbeat of Mighty Souls Brass Band.

For proof, check the band’s debut album—Lift Up!, on Blue Barrel Records—largely recorded live, to catch the infectious synergy of the group. You’ll hear all of these influences, but you’ll also hear the writing and arrangement talents of the MSBB’s members, who themselves composed ten of the album’s dozen tracks. This vigorously creative impulse, this desire to weave something new from the threads of various traditions, is what makes Mighty Souls Brass Band a unique act even among brass ensembles. Rooted by bandleader Murphy’s sousaphone (“I like to say I play the ‘brass bass,’” he notes cheekily), MSBB has talent to burn, and that talent burns bright and fierce on Lift Up! From the swaggering opener “STS” to the stomping blues-holler “Lift Up Your Mighty Soul” to the stately southern swing of the traditional “I’ll Fly Away,” this is a band that knows where its roots lie, but also where its branches are reaching, far out into the world, a world that, as Murphy notes, seems invariably to express its deepest spiritual desires and celebrations through music. 

Mighty Souls Brass Band is a group attuned to that desire, that celebratory spirit. It’s a music that swings, that soars, that swoons—all of which is suggested by that profound, that humble, that most human of words: “Soul.” 

How mighty, indeed.

–Eric Waggoner

There’s something strange yet familiar about Motel Mirrors—like an old photograph of a place you think you know, but don’t quite remember having visited.

If the collaboration was obvious to LaVere, the style was obvious to Keith: he wanted to emulate the classic 50s and 60s country duets — George Jones and Tammy Wynette, Conway Twitty and Loretta Lynn. The two dove into their respective record collections, searching for songs they could make their own.

Three covers — Mickey & Sylvia’s “Dearest,” “Your Tender Loving Care” by Buck Owens and Susan Raye, and Red Foley’s “As Far As I’m Concerned” — blend seamlessly with originals by Keith and a co-write for the pair, “That Makes Two of Us.”

Timeless is a good word for it. If you put the needle down and close your eyes, you might mistake yourself for being somewhere else. At another time, in a different town. In a bar, listening to a band of strangers, whose voices are at once, both fleeting and familiar.

Not unlike one of their compositions, the dynamic between Rick Steff and Roy Berry is as simple or as complicated as you want it to be.

The yin-yang is obvious. Rick is a seasoned piano player who's been performing since age 5, the son of a professional musician, a student of music theory and song structure who's toured with Hank Williams Jr. and Cat Power. Roy is a musical scientist, self-taught, voraciously curious and prone to falling down rabbit holes of experimentation. He's recorded and performed live electronic music with Overjoid, Gelatinous Cube and Synthohol.

But as with those compositions, the magic is in the layers.

Start with this one: Rick and Roy met through their day-and-night job, as keys player and drummer, respectively, for noted alt-country road warriors Lucero. And in the midst of 200-some-odd days a year of rocking, the duo will release an experimental electronic pop album this spring.

"Have I told you how Roy started playing drums?" Rick asks, while talking recently about their forthcoming debut Superfluidity. He tells the now somewhat famous story of Roy's notebook.

"We were recording the Lucero record Rebels, Rogues & Sworn Brothers, and when Roy would be frustrated with not getting a part to sound the way he wanted he'd go over to this tablet of paper and come back with the part," Rick says. "After five or six times, I said, 'What's in that book?' And he told me, 'When I learned to play drums, I locked myself in my apartment with a drum kit and came up with my own binary code system to determine how many hits and rests can occur over a finite amount of surfaces over a given span. And I wrote them in here.' That’s when I was like, “I’m gonna make music with you.”

After playing together in Lucero for years—often collaborating on tracks over a laptop in the back of a tour bus or talking about the evolution of modern synths or circuit bending—their official coronation as Rick & Roy came in 2013. Rick had an opportunity to compose for a short film score being recorded at Music+Arts Studio, where he'd recently finished producing a few songs for Americana/folk chanteuse Amy LaVere (Runaway's Diary). He called in Roy, and their work ultimately landed them a second project that required hours of original music.

It was on that film score job that the two honed what would become their process—"We make a mess and then we clean it up," as Roy says—and the sounds emerging from the control room caught the ear of Ward Archer, owner of the studio and Archer Records. He asked them if they wanted to make an album.

The resulting songs will pull you into their orbit—you’ll float through spaced out interludes, bounce into perfect, shiny electronic pop and then set adrift again, your vessel knocking against dissonance and feedback as you list toward the next surprise.

Though they are quick to give endless credit to others—Archer,Superfluidity producer Daniel Lynn, filmmaker Giri Swami—the whole thing is probably least of all surprising to Rick or Roy. 

"It’s a totally different way of coming at music than what I came from and it makes me completely reinvigorated and inspired to do that," Rick says. "And hopefully there are things that I can do that he maybe can’t do."

Roy remembers the first time they met, in a recording session. Rick had played a part on a song and it was lovely. It was fine. But Roy thought something was missing. "Everybody else was afraid to say something," he remembers. "And I just said, 'hey, that was excellent. But, could you...make it weirder?"

Rick jumps in. "And I was like, Well, hell yeah I can!"

Perhaps the only thing missing from Rick Steff’s Rick’s Booogie EP is the sound of clinking glasses, some muffled conversation, fits of barroom laughter.

It’s a texture Rick knows well, from years of touring with Lucero, Hank Williams, Jr., and Cat Power. But this time, the beloved sideman is making the noise solo. Rick says his “booogie,” extra O and all, comes from his dad. After all, it was Dick Steff — a renowned horn player and former member of The Memphis Horns whose credits include Elvis Presley, Dusty Springfield and dozens of other legendary American Studios recordings — who encouraged Rick to pursue the piano, because he said he’d always have work. “He started me playing at 5,” Rick says. “He taught me to watch the singer, serve the singer, and listen as much as you play.” Judging from Rick’s career, it was good advice — but this time, there’s no singer. Just Rick, his keys and a few old friends you might know to back him up a little. In three songs, he takes you from sparse to full and back again, from honkytonk to melancholy, from one end of 88 to the other. The EP was recorded at Archer Records’ Music+Arts Studio by Daniel Lynn, produced by Lynn along with Roy Berry and Rick Steff, and mastered by Kevin Houston. Those friends of his who come along for the ride on track two are Ben Nichols, Roy Berry, Brian Venable, John Stubblefield, Scott Thompson and Jim Spake.

Sid Selvidge endured in the American folk scene with a genial yet uncompromising attitude toward his work. He hoped you would like his music, but it was more important that he like it first.

There is a strip of U.S. Highway 70 in Memphis, Tennessee that is long and flat and unending, filled with bodegas and taquerias and dim sum and pho. It’s the city’s unofficial cultural crossroads and the namesake for its newest sound: Summer Avenue.

Like that strip of highway, Summer Avenue’s music is a mash-up of tastes and textures, mixing hints of power-pop and electronica with rich harmonies and 80s-influenced songcraft.

Summer Avenue’s debut full-length album Some Sort of Color is out on Blue Barrel Records March 2, 2018.

With grinding organ, pounding drums and soulful grooves, the Grip has asserted itself as Memphis’ true boogaloo band.

It’s just past midnight in Memphis as Tuesday bleeds into Wednesday. Clubs and restaurants are tallying the day’s business and locking the doors to end another day. Nightlife has wound down in the Home of the Blues, except for a poorly-lit stretch of road in an otherwise nondescript part of Midtown. The muffled sounds of laughter, clanking bottles, and music rise from a small building illuminated by the dingy yellow glow of a street sign that reads, “Buccaneer Lounge.” Here is where you will find the tightest, yet most spontaneous band in town - The Grip. With grinding organ, pounding drums and soulful grooves, the Grip has asserted itself as Memphis’ true boogaloo band.

Boogaloo is the sound of the streets. From its northern origins in Spanish Harlem to the refined southern sound of Memphis’s Stax Studio, boogaloo digs deep into the heart while keeping the feet and hips moving. This gumbo of soul/r&b/funk swept across the country in the 60’s and 70’s, schooling new generations in the American music tradition of fusing eclectic genres. While that smooth sound never vanished, it became a fetish find in hip record stores in every town…until now.

The GRIP has stepped into the footprints created by legendary masters such as Lonnie Smith, Big John Patton and The Mar-Keys putting the focus on funky rhythms that move the masses and keep heads bobbing. Dedicated to revamping the hottest tracks of yesteryear while mixing in original compositions and new looks at popular tunes from across the spectrum, The GRIP are blending genres and breaking stereotypes to push a fresh sound on their debut EP, Grab This Thing (Archer Records). The release ranges from the smooth stylings of Prince’s classic “Controversy” to a smoking take on Ennio Morricone’s “Farewell to Cheyenne” from the famed Once Upon A Time In The West film score. The album also sports high-bouncing boogie with the original composition “Tutwiler,” and rounds out with funky, riff-filled versions of the soul classics “Jan Jan” and “Grab This Thing.”

Maybe the best kept secret in an underground Memphis music scene bursting with talent, the GRIP bring together a group as divergent as the sounds they produce. The band features “Paper Bag Brown” (Art Edmaiston - MOFRO/Gamble Bros. Band), who handles emcee duties and plays a blistering sax; the silky smooth tone of “Natural Jay” (Joe Restivo - Charlie Wood/J3C Quartet) on electric guitar; Hammond organist extraordinaire “Johnny Roulette” (Al Gamble - Gamble Bros. Band); and virtuoso drummer “Jasco Parks” (George Sluppick - MOFRO/ Robert Walter’s 20th Congress). While each member regularly plays with other groups, something special happens every time the GRIP find themselves together again. “Paper Bag Brown” explains, “When George and I perform with MOFRO, we’ve got our roles and a style that we stick to. But in the GRIP, we try to evoke something different. The alter-egos allow us to focus on certain aspects of our playing that we might not normally adhere to in our regular gigs”. “Jasco” readily agrees, “Everyone’s got really big ears in this band. ‘Johnny Roulette’ has always got something new that excites us.” Playing under performance names allows the members of the GRIP to fully embrace the freedom and originality that exists in that special forum. While the musical selections they play come from a bevy of sources, the feeling invoked is definite. “We prefer recreating the mood of a neighborhood barbecue joint in the late 60’s rather than the hipster clubs of today,” maintains “Paper Bag Brown.” This preference relates directly to the deep roots that the GRIP have based in music aimed for the soul. “Johnny Roulette” recalls, “My dad had The Genius of Ray Charles and Modern Sounds In Country And Western Music, along with some Jimmy Smith albums and I wore them out.” Similarly “Paper Bag Brown” grew up listening to the 45s that his mom would spin by the stack including, “…lots of Motown hits as well as Stax Tunes and Atlantic tunes recorded in Memphis and Muscle Shoals. These sounds were crucial to my development as a musician and in the way I hear and feel music today!”.

Once they began playing together as a unit, the GRIP quickly noticed a special chemistry beginning to develop. Though they each logged time in various other touring bands, the bond that formed kept the group fresh every time they found the opportunity to get together. With “Paper Bag Brown” and “Johnny Roulette” already acquainted with local Memphis label Archer Records, the foursome went into Archer’s studio to put together a record. What came from those sessions reflected the traditions from which each member draws as well as the original vibe produced when they play together. Grab This Thing provides listeners with that deep bowl of home-stewed funk complete with tight grooves as well as proficient individual displays from each of the bands’ four members. While the Grip’s repertoire will always contain songs from the cannon of Sixtie’s Soul titles, the band looks to tackle new genres and become more experimental. “There could be GRIP albums doing our take on movie soundtracks, individual artists, rock bands… most anything that catches our ear. But it will all be explored within the parameters of the boogaloo combo,” figures “Paper Bag Brown.”