Podcast: Play in new window | Download | Embed
Subscribe: RSS
Welcome! brothers and sisters to Episode #4—of the Cornbread Cafe!
Info for musicians’ bios comes directly from the artists or their publicists. Click on names below to visit their websites where you can get the full story, photos, and very often video.
I am the mongrel, and I will be your waiter today. Cazh and cozy, we’re located at the five-corners of Blues, Americana, Folk, Country, and Gospel. And you can sometimes catch an express to Rock ’n’ Roll at the bus stop across the way. We are the Internet’s new fave hang for the best in a sprawling menu of American Roots music.
In this Episode:
Desirae Bronson, “Feel Good Song,” A Little Bit Jaded
Birds of Chicago, “Estrella Goodbye,” Real Midnight
Bumper Jacksons, “Many Paths,” I’ve Never Met a Stranger
Christian Coleman and The Blue Zen Band, “4th Street Boogie,” Blues, Boogie, Rock and Roll
Larry Campbell & Teresa Williams, “Everybody Loves You,” Larry Campbell & Teresa Williams
Maggie Baugh, “Catch Me,” Catch Me
Codie Prevost, “Melting Into You,” All Kinds Of Crazy
The Suitcase Junket, “Evangeline,” Pile Driver
Comanchero, “Have You Seen Her,” Dead Gringo
Comanchero, “Alabama Moonstruck,” Dead Gringo
Francesca Brown, “Collide,” Collide
Honey Whiskey Trio, “Who’s Gonna Be Your Man,” Rye Woman
Fantastic Negrito, “Night Has Turned to Day,” Self-titled EP
Musicians’ bio info comes from the artists, their websites, or their publicists. Click on names below to visit their websites where you can get the full story, photos, and very often video.
Desirae Bronson, Birds of Chicago, Bumper Jacksons, Christian Coleman, Blue Zen Band, Larry Campbell, Teresa Williams, Maggie Baugh, Codie Prevost, Comanchero, The Suitcase Junket, Francesca Brown, Honey Whiskey Trio, Fantastic Negrito
Desirae Bronson
Among the hordes of musical artists Desirae Bronson emerges with beauty and wholeness in a refreshing, homegrown style. Her smoky-velvet voice weaves simple County-Folk-Rock melodies into your mind through lyrics that convey life in a way everyone can relate to. Having begun her career in the unlikely city of Boise, Idaho, this singer/songwriter has found her way on stage with headliners such as Clint Black,The Band Perry, Jana Kramer, Joe Nichols, Trace Adkins, Little Texas and Thompson Square as well as headlining her own shows in concert houses, venues and festivals all over the Northwest. In 2013 she was chosen as RAW artist “Musician of the Year”, Winner of First Place in the National Radio Talent Contest (receiving over 100,000 votes), and a finalist in Nashville’s Music City Songwriting Competition. Her albums title track was also placed on the Big Bang Theory last spring. It won’t take long for you to realize that she has that special something listeners crave. Her album “This Is Me” demonstrates that she is “not afraid to let you see” who she is and what she is about.
Birds of Chicago
In so many ways, we are a word weary culture, ever searching for ways to communicate in fewer and fewer words, letters, syllables…Our online, blogged out, you-tubed attention spans are truncated and fragmented like never before. Birds of Chicago, the collective centered around Allison Russell and JT Nero, reassert the simple notion – radical in these times – that beautiful words and music can still tap deep veins of emotion.
real midnight’s gonna come/ real midnight’s’ gonna come
real wolves at your door/ with blood on their tongues
now what you gonna do/ with your days left in the sun ?
ha da la ha
Stark, elemental imagery that feels like scripture, or a lost folk song recovered; the Birds draw heavily on the gospel tradition and the music feels like a new, secular gospel of sorts. For Birds of Chicago, every word counts. Every note counts. No gold-dusting, no filler. Music is the good news and Real Midnight, the band’s poignant new Joe Henry produced album, throbs with an urgency that feels quietly seismic.
Bumper Jacksons
The Bumper Jacksons; photos by Michael O. Snyder.
The Bumper Jacksons are hot and sweet, painting America’s story from the streets of New Orleans to Appalachian hollers. Unafraid to scrap together new sounds from forgotten 78’s, the Bumper Jacksons boldly and elegantly balance paying homage to the traditions while fashioning their own unique, DIY style. Honored as the region’s 2015 “Artist of the Year” and “Best Folk Band” from 2013-2015 at the Washington Area Music Awards, the Bumper Jacksons are playfully creative with their originals and re-imagining roots music with both power and tenderness. Bursting at the seams with some of the richest threads of old America, Bumper Jacksons bring you into the center of a party where everyone’s invited and the dance floor never sleeps.
Links mentioned in the show:
No Depression | The Journal of Roots Music
American Music Association
Christian Coleman and the Blue Zen Band
Mama Died and Left Me
Papa Died and Left Me
Raised by Wolves on The Mean Streets
Christian Coleman is a 25 year veteran of the Wasatch Front Music Scene. Described as “Bob Dylan meets Muddy Waters”, his solo repertoire consists of Decades of Original Material combined with Classic Blues material from the 1940’s to the present, and Americana Classics that define the Contemporary American Songbook. A One-Man juggling act of Vocals, Guitar, and Harmonica, Christian always brings a signature passion and trademark intensity to every performance!!!
Larry Campbell & Teresa Williams
Multi-instrumentalist-vocalist Larry Campbell and singer-guitarist Teresa Williams have rocked many a venue, as both center stage performers and invaluable assets to world class acts. A shortlist of artists who’ve benefited from their talents, live and in studios, reads like a Who’s Who of Music Icons: Bob Dylan (Larry spent eight years on the Never Ending Tour), Paul Simon, Little Feat, Hot Tuna, Phil Lesh, Emmylou Harris, Sheryl Crow, Mavis Staples, and, for one miraculous seven-year stretch, Levon Helm. Now, with an eponymous debut album, the couple brings it all back home. Larry Campbell and Teresa Williams may have been simmering awhile, but the timing is perfect; the eleven tracks, produced by Campbell, distill everything into a potent, infectious blend of Americana style and timeless soul, offered with a relaxed generosity that can only come from rich experience.
Maggie Baugh
Multi-instrumentalist, and singer/songwriter, Maggie Baugh is a young, South Florida based county music sensation! At 17 years old, she has a publishing deal, she is a Nashville Recording artist, singer/songwriter, guitar player and dynamic fiddle player. Maggie Baugh has played fiddle onstage with Neal McCoy and Charlie Daniels Band. (Yes, she is the one that played Devil Went Down to Georgia with Charlie Daniels – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ylWjExfL5ew).
Playing guitar and singing, Maggie Baugh has opened in South Florida for Ashley Monroe (of Pistol Annie’s), Craig Morgan, Neal McCoy, Cole Swindell, Phil Vassar, Taylor Hicks, Chase Bryant, Drake White, Josh Dorr, Radio Romance, Drew Baldridge, Montgomery Gentry, John Anderson, Cowboy Troy and Old Southern Moonshine Revival.
Codie Prevost
Codie Prevost is a Canadian country music sensation. When he was 14 he picked up his first guitar, and since then his career hasn’t stopped accelerating. He began his journey on the path to fame by playing guitar, and writing songs simply to entertain his friends and family. Little did the world know that those family concerts would spark the pilot light on one of the biggest engines in Canadian country music. Codie has been nominated and won dozens of awards for his art, from the Saskatchewan Country Music Awards to the Canadian Country Music Awards.
Codie grew up on a 2,000-acre farm, where his mother runs a small town bar. He has two sisters, one older and one younger. During family events Codie would listen to his mother and his uncle as they played guitar and sang songs. These family concerts were what began to grow the love of music within Codie.
Festival International de Louisiane • Lafayette, La. • April 26–30
New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival • N’awlins, La. • April 28 –May 7
Mid West Music Fest • Winona, Minn. • April 27–29
MerleFest 2017 • Wilkesboro, N.C. • April 27–April 30
Comanchero
Since 2003, Comanchero has crafted an Americana sound that combines old traditions with new, Country with Rock, Bluegrass with Blues, Honky-Tonk with Funk, and Roots with Rockabilly. While unique in their own sound, there is something strikingly familiar in Comanchero’s songs that weave influences ranging from The Allman Brothers, The Band, Little Feat, & Led Zeppelin, to today’s contemporaries such as Wilco, The Drive -By Truckers, & Mumford & Sons.
Highlights:
– Boston’s Americana Jam Band since 2003
– Four studio albums
– Songs licensed by PBS (Road Trip Nation) and ABC (20/20 with Diane Sawyer)
– Direct support for artists such as: ZZ Top, Crosby, Stills & Nash, The Yardbirds, & Passion Pit
– Winner of Relix Magazine’s “Jam Off” competition & featured in magazine and monthly CD
– Nominated by Red Line Roots for Favorite Local Rock and Rollers
– Over 500 performances including international (Ireland, UK tour)
The Suitcase Junket
Matt Lorenz sits alone on a suitcase in the center of a complex construction of upcycled cookpots, saw blades and broken chairs. Artist, tinkerer, tunesmith, swamp yankee. A one-man salvage specialist singing into the hollow of a Dumpster guitar, slipping a broken bottleneck onto the slide finger, railing on a box of twisted forks and bones, rocking till every sound is ragged at its edges, till the house is singing back. Then, unplugging all the amps and letting one mountain ballad soar over the raw strings on that guitar. Every night is a hard-driving, blues-grinding, throat-singing search-and-rescue junket. Sooner or later everything rusts, busts, and gets tossed into the junk heap: iron, bones, leather, hot rods, muskrats, the night, theheart. The goal is to recover it. To waste nothing. To create new ways from old. This is The Suitcase Junket.
Matt Lorenz was raised in Cavendish, Vermont, the son of teachers. He learned to sing by copying his sister Kate. (The siblings are two-thirds of the touring trio Rusty Belle.) Lorenz graduated from Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts, in 2004, having taught himself to throat-sing thanks to a South Indian cooking class. On moving day, he pulled his guitar, filled with mold and worse for wear, from a dorm Dumpster. He fixed it up and started pulling songs out of it. That was the beginning.
Francesca Brown
Francesca Brown’s music is best described as Americana. It is rooted in folk and country, but has elements of blues and hints of 90’s alternative rock at moments.
Francesca brown was born in San Clemente California, but spent much of her childhood moving between northern Illinois and southern California. Some of her earliest and fondest childhood memories were spent in Hemet California, which at the time was a small agricultural town. It was here where she remembers falling in love with desert landscapes, Native American art and culture, a simplistic way of life, and the surrounding snow capped San Jacinto Mountains. As a child her family took frequent visits to the artist mountain town of Idyllwild, which still serves as artistic inspiration in her life today.
From about the age of nine up through high school, she lived in and around Rockford Illinois near the Wisconsin border. It was pretty rural, but close enough to cities like Chicago and Madison to be exposed to great music and culture. She spent a lot time at outdoor music festivals and concerts with her mother and siblings seeing artists such as BB King, Lonnie Brooks, Buddy Guy, Little Richard and The Smashing Pumpkins to name a few.
Honey Whiskey Trio
The Honey Whiskey Trio explores harmony in folk, bluegrass and any melody that catches the ear. Through their powerful, yet sweet harmonies, body percussion, haunting melodies and vitality on stage, Honey Whiskey Trio captivates and moves audiences. These storytellers in song found their roots in vocal jazz, all singing in Pacific Standard Time, CSU Long Beach’s award winning vocal jazz ensemble, though at different times. This foundation in jazz gives Honey Whiskey Trio an inherent flexibility to their sound, allowing them to change and adjust their tone to best fit the mood of each song.
In 2013, after singing together for only 5 months, Honey Whiskey Trio won the Harmony Sweepstakes National Competition, also winning Audience Favorite at both the Regional and National sweepstakes. They have gone on to headline the Los Angeles A Cappella Festival, the Women’s A Cappella Association‘s SheSings Festival, the South Eastern Minnesota A Cappella Festival, and have been featured artists at the FAR-West Folk Festival, the Rogue Valley Roots Festival, the Long Beach Folk Revival Festival,and the Shedd Institute for the Arts. Called “One of the most talented vocal harmony groups performing today” by John Neal, Harmony Sweepstakes executive producer and ”One of the very best arrivals this year on my stage. Solid in every way and fully entertaining” by Bob Stane, of The Coffee Gallery Backstage, Honey Whiskey Trio is a group you don’t want to miss experiencing live.
Fantastic Negrito
Fantastic Negrito won his first Grammy Award for 2017 Best Contemporary Blues album.
Listen to my June 2015 conversation with him just after his NPR Tiny Desk Concert win.
Fantastic Negrito is the incarnation of a musician who is reborn after going through a lot of awful shit. In fact, the name Fantastic Negrito represents his third rebirth, literally coming back from death this time. The narrative on this man is as important as the sound, because the narrative is the sound. Songs born from a long hard life channeled through black roots music. Slide guitar, drums, piano. Urgent, desperate, edgy. Fantastic Negrito is the story of a man who struggled to “make it”, who “got it”, and who lost it all. For anyone who ever felt like it was over yet hoped it wasn’t, this is your music; blues harnessed, forged in realness. For anyone who ever considered getting their old high-school band back together, this is your inspiration. These are singular songs by a true musician who writes and produces. They are his fuel as he embarks on the third comeback of his life.