Rodney Crowell is the songwriter’s songwriter and an icon among giants. Native Texan, Crowell is a multi-Grammy Award-winning troubadour with fifteen number one hits. Over the course of his career, Crowell has gracefully blended his own mainstream success as an artist with a prolific catalog of songs cut by the likes of Emmylou Harris, Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings, Keith Urban and more, making him a master among his peers. With more than 40 years of American roots music under his belt, Crowell has also been cited as the architect of Americana music, extending his genre reach, but owing to the distinctly universal, literary quality of his writing, he has also penned beloved songs for artists as diverse as Bob Seger, Etta James, the Grateful Dead, John Denver, Jimmy Buffett and countless others. A member of the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame, Crowell is also the author of the acclaimed memoir, Chinaberry Sidewalks, and teamed up with New York Times best-selling author Mary Karr for Kin: Songs by Mary Karr & Rodney Crowell in 2012, with Karr saying of her collaborator, “Like Hank Williams or Townes Van Zandt or Miss Lucinda, he writes and croons with a poet’s economy and a well digger’s deep heart.” Crowell was honored with ASCAP’s prestigious Founder’s Award in 2017, and that same year released the album Close Ties, which spawned another Grammy nomination for “It Ain’t Over Yet” with Rosanne Cash and John Paul White in the category of Best Americana Song. 2019’s Texas was a collection of Lone Star-centric collaborations with Ringo Starr, Willie Nelson, Ronnie Dunn, Steve Earle and more, and Crowell’s most recent album release is the 2021 set, Triage. Crowell came up in Nashville’s songwriting heyday alongside Guy Clark, Townes Van Zandt, and Steve Earle and has continued that legacy of camaraderie and kinship with his peers well into the iconic era of his career. As many say – “your favorite song was probably written by Rodney Crowell.” Crowell has four daughters and lives with his wife and dog in Tennessee. He writes every day and loves tending to his garden.

Porter Howell has helped distinguish country music through his lyrics and trademark guitar work for more than 30 years. As a founding member and lead guitarist of the multi-platinum, GRAMMY-nominated vocal band Little Texas, he developed a signature slide guitar style that defined the sound of a band that carved its niche by writing and performing its own music. For the past 15 years, Howell has been both guitarist and lead vocalist, splitting his time between the road and the writing room. Recognized among Nashville’s elite songwriters, Howell co-wrote several of the band’s biggest hits, including “Kick a Little,” First Time for Everything,” “My Love” "What Might Have Been," and “God Blessed Texas.” As a result, he received the CMA Triple Play Award, which honors country music’s greatest storytellers, for penning three No. 1 singles in a 12-month period. When the music industry shut down in 2020, Howell ramped up. After three decades in the business, it took a pandemic to force him to record a side project. After writing 40 songs by himself, Howell began making demos, and slowly an album emerged. Just one listen to the title track and debut single, the nostalgic “This Town Was,” confirms how personal this music is to him. Anyone who knows Nashville’s history will be drawn to the authenticity of the lyrics as Howell sings about how the town he grew up in professionally has changed so much.