Following Charles Wesley Godwin’s 2023 critically acclaimed Family Ties — a highly personal, 17-song diary-like LP that was both universally praised and catapulted the West Virginian singer-songwriter to new heights in his career — the rising musician returned in 2025 with a pair of releases: the Lonely Mountain Town EP and Live From The Steel City. The former is a quieter, more contemplative affair than Family Ties, containing some of the most thrilling songs of Godwin’s career. Written principally on the road, Lonely Mountain Town is at its heart a collection of on-the-move snapshots and quiet moments in life set to tune.  The latter, Live From The Steel City, is a raucous live record that perfectly encapsulates the energy Charles Wesley Godwin brings to his performances, which last year included a sold out Red Rocks headline debut and a string of dates opening Eric Church’s Free The Machine Tour. Godwin has been on a steady upward climb following his beloved debut album, 2019’s Seneca. Alongside his longtime band, the Allegheny High, the musician has developed a reputation as a thrilling and beautifully raucous live performer. Godwin has appeared on ESPN’s Sportscenter, performed on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Kimmel Live! and CBS Saturday Sessions. This year, Godwin will release Christian Name, his second studio album with Big Loud Records, on July 24th. The project is undoubtedly an intensely personal collection of songs — a journey inside the courageous singer-songwriter’s soul. It’s a stunning 12-song collection, and one that doubles as a mechanism for the musician’s otherworldly healing. Christian Name is more than just another body of work; it’s how Godwin learned to live again. Through moments of mourning. Through tales of redemption. And ultimately, through a tried-and-true reaffirmation of his faith.  Not only does Christian Name include a pair of thrilling feature collaborations – the earworm “Better That Way” with Luke Combs and the remarkable “Hey There, Son” featuring Wyatt Flores – but it’s also the result of Godwin partnering with some of music’s most treasured songwriters including Stephen Wilson Jr., Lori McKenna, Tom Douglas and more. 

Travis Hill has lived and worked in the Nashville music community for two decades.  He was a cofounder of independent music publisher Carnival Music and writes songs under the pen name “Scooter Carusoe”.  Between the two he has 20 plus number one songs to his credit.  As a writer, he has five #1 songs by Kenny Chesney, Darius Rucker, and Brett Eldredge. His works have also been recorded by Tim McGraw, Taylor Swift, Keith Urban, Rascal Flatts, Eric Church, Lady A, Uncle Kracker, Dierks Bentley, and many others.

About Tom Douglas:Tom Douglas is an Academy Award, Golden Globe and GRAMMY-nominated songwriter. After enjoying a 13-year career in commercial real estate, Douglas got his first song recorded by Collin Raye at the age of 41. That song, “Little Rock”, reached #1, earned a nomination for CMA Song of the Year and achieved the Million-Air award from BMI for receiving one million spins on country radio. Since then, Douglas has written numerous number one hits, including: “I Run to You” (Lady A), “Southern Voice” (Tim McGraw) and “The House That Built Me” (Miranda Lambert). The Grammy Award-winning song “The House That Built Me” remained at number one on the Billboard charts for four weeks and earned ACM’s first ever Song of the Decade award.Douglas has written countless well-received songs for a wide range of artists, including: Keith Urban, P!nk, Luke Bryan, Celine Dion, Tim McGraw, Carrie Underwood, Florida Georgia Line, Kenny Chesney, Kane Brown, GeorgeStrait, Chris Janson, and Collin Raye among others. In 2011 Douglas’ song, “Coming Home” received an Oscar and Golden Globe nomination for Best Original Song. In 2014, Douglas was inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame, subsequently receiving a Grammy Nomination for his song “Meanwhile Back at Mama’s” recorded by Tim McGraw. Some of Douglas’ recent work includes “Drunk Girl” recorded by Chris Janson, which received the 2018 MusicRow Award for Song of The Year. He also penned the song “Dear Hate” recorded by Maren Morris and Vince Gill, earning the Grammy nomination for the 2019 Country Song of the Year. Douglas is currently signed to Sony Music Publishing, and lives in Nashville with his wife, Katie. On February 24th, 2022, Douglas will release the film “Love, Tom,” along with companion album Inspired by the Motion Picture Love, Tom. Directed by Oscar nominated and BAFTA-winning filmmaker Michael Lennox, and written by Tommy Douglas and Tom Douglas, “Love, Tom” is based on Douglas’ much-lauded 12-minute acceptance speech given at the 2014 Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame, offering a message of hope to a desperate world. Spanning a 30-year career, Douglas shares personal anecdotes as the backstory for his most famous songs. The film, executive produced by Tom Douglas, Tommy Douglas, Austin Fish, Jason Owen, and Michael Lennox, andproduced in association with Sandbox Productions in partnership with Sony Music Entertainment’s Premium Content Division, will be released via Paramount+. The companionalbum, Inspired by theMotion Picture,Love, Tom, features many of Douglas’ beloved co-writers and friends, including Miranda Lambert, Tim McGraw, Lady A, Chris Janson, and Collin Raye. Each track on the album is performed by Douglas in the film as he takes you back to the day he wrote it. The album will be released via Monument Records.

Tony Lane comes from the small town of Comanche, Texas.  He played the bars in Dallas-Ft. Worth and Colorado for many years before relocating to Nashville.   Signing with Famous Music (later acquired by Sony ATV) in 1997, Lane quickly had his first number one song, Lee Ann Womack’s “A Little Past Little Rock.”  He continued this run with George Strait’s “Run,” John Michael Montgomery”s “Letters From Home,” and the Grammy-nominated “I Need You” by Tim McGraw and Faith Hill.  He has had cuts by Trace Adkins, Billy Currington, Randy Travis, Sara Evans, Tracy Lawrence and many others.  More recently he co-wrote Trace Adkin’s “This Ain’t No Love Song” and Lady Antebellum’s “Hello World”.  His song, “Roll with It”, became a No. 1 hit for Easton Corbin. He currently writes for BMG Music Nashville.

Lori McKenna titled her album 1988 after the year she married her husband, Gene, yet the 10 songs within also serve as a love letter to lifelong friendships, people she’s lost, and her family. Recorded with producer Dave Cobb in Savannah, Georgia, 1988 naturally has its nostalgic moments, even if not every ending is a happy one.  With more of an electric edge than her past projects, 1988 feels in step with classic ‘90s albums by Sheryl Crow or Gin Blossoms, where the lyrics pulled you in as much as the melody or production. Playing together on acoustic guitars while facing one another in the studio, McKenna and Cobb tracked the album live, giving it a feeling of immediacy and authenticity.  “I was trying to let my age and experience guide me through making a record I wished I’d made when I was younger,” she explains. “I really wanted it to sound like if I made a rock record in the ‘90s, and then I remembered that I made my first album in 1998. There's something so 30 years ago in my head about this record. In a way I wish I could start again and know what I know now.” Back in the early days of her career, McKenna immersed herself in Boston’s singer-songwriter scene and self-released her debut album, Paper Wings & Halos. After issuing a couple of CDs on a New England folk label, the Nashville songwriting community discovered her singular ability to write about complicated emotions through simple words. Meanwhile, one of the lessons she’s learned from writing in Nashville is evident on the album’s first single, “Killing Me,” which she co-wrote with frequent collaborators Hillary Lindsey (who also sings on the track) and Luke Laird. “I had that turn -- ‘Would it kill you to be happy because trying to make you happy is killing me.’ It’s like, ‘Pushing this boulder up the mountain is killing me. Can’t you just carry yourself for a minute?’” she says. “I know that feeling of being in that relationship with someone, and I know feeling of being in that relationship with myself, too. The play on words and the turns -- that all came from learning how great songwriters in Nashville write, because they're so good at that. They're so clever. When those things end up in the room, I always try to pay attention.” However, fifteen years later, when Covid hit, McKenna often wrote alone, four or five days a week. One of the first songs to come from that solitude is “The Old Woman in Me,” which conveys the mutual respect between her current self and the imagined version that she hopes to meet someday. “There's always a lot of discussion of, ‘What would I tell my younger self?’ I’d had one of those discussions one day, and thought, ‘Well, if we can write a letter to our younger selves, we can surely think about our older selves,” she recalls. “It was one of those songs that I knew right away was probably not going to be for pitch. I wouldn't be able to change the lyrics for it to apply to someone younger. It’s one of those songs that wanted to be my story and hopefully a story for the people that identify with me. I think we all focus on when we were younger, so it was fun to flip it. You end up developing this character that is you, that you actually really like.” McKenna teamed up with her son, Chris McKenna, to write “Happy Children,” which bestows perhaps the kindest of wishes. In addition, “Days of Honey” and the title track offer an up-tempo yet realistic view of an enduring marriage. Describing a social landscape familiar to anyone from McKenna’s generation, “Growing Up” emerged from the bittersweet phone calls and text threads that sought to bring comfort as her closest friends were grieving the loss of their parents. Throughout the second half of 1988, McKenna continues to delve into difficult situations with strength as well as sadness. “Wonder Drug” will resonate with anyone who’s watched someone battle opioid addiction, while “Town in Your Heart” unfolds like a letter to a brother who’s succumbed to alcoholism, written by the brother who’s left behind. Asked about her willingness to draw on such heavy themes, McKenna responds, “I think that I like the truth in writing songs like that -- that unfortunate truth that everybody encounters in their life.” Although McKenna has won three Grammys in the Best Country Song category, among many other industry awards, she doesn’t spare herself from scrutiny. In “Letting People Down,” she’s standing in her garage, staring at milk crates full of trophies, and “wondering how it’s all such a blessing and why it’s all so damn hard.” 1988 then concludes with “The Tunnel,” a poignant and devastating narrative that ultimately ends with an uplifting message. The swell of a gospel chorus serves as a dynamic counterpoint to the intimacy of the lyrics, and it’s a striking contrast that McKenna plans to carry out on tour. “I like doing solo shows, but I really like it when we’re all together,” she says. “That’s another reason why this record sounds the way it does. I really wanted it to sound like a band, because it’s so fun to play live that way. You think of Jason Isbell’s song, ‘Traveling Alone,’ and I never did that, but all of my friends did. I'm a serious homebody, so I don't love being gone, but I love playing the shows. And I also love Nashville and I love chasing songs with new people. And I feel like I really lucked out in the fact that I get to still make records. I literally cannot believe how lucky I am.”

Stephen Wilson Jr. is a singer/songwriter from rural Southern Indiana. Wilson was raised by a single father who was a boxer and had him boxing from age seven through adulthood as an Indiana State Golden Gloves finalist. Wilson, a self-taught guitarist moved to Nashville to pursue a degree in Microbiology at MTSU. There, he started indie rock band AutoVaughn after finishing his degree. They toured for over five years and Wilson co-wrote songs as lead guitarist until his creative focus turned more to songwriting and singing. After the band, Wilson relied back on his education where he worked for several years as an R&D scientist at Mars until signing a publishing deal with BMG Nashville in Aug 2016. He is currently building his catalogue and has had songs cut by Caitlyn Smith and Old Dominion, ‪Tim McGraw, ‪Trace Adkins, Chase Bryant, ‪Mackenzie Porter, ‪Kameron Marlow, Sixpence None the Richer and ‪Leigh Nash. Stephen released his first single “The Devil” and a cinematic video for the song in Sept. 2019 with follow-up, "Year To Be Young 1994" which is currently featured on Spotify's Country Rocks editorial playlist, Apple Music's 5th Gear editorial playlist and was in full rotation at Nashville's Triple A station, Lightning 100 last year. Wilson recently released latest single and video for "Holler From The Holler". Wilson almost always plays a late-70’s gut-string acoustic and some of his main influences are ‪Willie Nelson, ‪Kurt Cobain, ‪John Mellencamp, ‪Bruce Springsteen, The National, ‪Glen Campbell and ‪Randy Travis.