Country music gets a bad rap, and it’s mostly the fault of goody two-shoes like Keith Urban and Garth Brooks. I mean, back in the day, country was full of bad boys (and if you’ve never read George Jones’s memoir, I Lived to Tell It All, you really should—that man was an animal!). Seattle’s Country Lips sound and play more like classic country’s raucous and rowdy boys—and their live shows are becoming legendarily wild. It’s hard to stand still when eight-plus members are bringin’ the foot-stompers. Country Lips are putting the party back in the original party music. Somebody had to do it. It’s not always about tears falling in your beer. -The Stranger Many, many years before the likes of Kenny Chesney, Brad Paisley, and Blake Shelton donned 10-gallon hats and began crooning about blue jeans and cheesy romance, country was the genre of choice for drunkards, rebels, and rockers. Seattle’s own Country Lips pay homage to that proud tradition, cranking out debauched ballads with slurred-speech choruses that would make Johnny Cash and Merle Haggard proud. The eight-piece band has a reputation for rowdiness (as should any roots country revivalists worth their weight in Jack Daniels)… -Seattle Weekly

Elijah Ocean is a songwriter’s songwriter. Having been dubbed as one of LA Weekly’s “Artists to Watch” in 2017, Ocean is poised for a breakout year in 2018. Channeling the ghosts of Laurel Canyon as well as the Hudson Valley, his sensibilities for folklore and his ear for a hook are on full display with his latest single, “Down This Road.” “Down This Road” is one of those songs that was lost to time, buried in the pages of a notebook and unlikely to ever see the light of day. Ocean penned the first verse on his couch after moving to Los Angeles in 2014, and it stopped there for a while. After multiple revisions and mental blocks over the next three years, the song was finished in November 2017 in a Las Vegas hotel room, where longtime friend and keyboardist Zach Jones helped bring it to life. The production and songcraft are unabashedly influenced by Tom Petty--bright electric guitars layered with acoustic and electric twelve-strings, fluttering organ, and anthemic gang vocals in each chorus as Ocean calls out, “Here we go again / It’s like this road won’t ever end / It circles back to you my friend / And here we go again.” It’s equal parts folk and timeless rock ‘n’ roll. Ocean was born in a small woodland house in the Hudson Valley, raised in rural Maine, and enlightened by time spent in New York City. He’s landed in Los Angeles for now, where the Sunset Strip is a wasteland, Silverlake has peaked, and the spirit of Laurel Canyon echoes through the hills of Highland Park. The end of the world is a damn inspirational place to be. Every year, Elijah Ocean crosses the country singing his songs and making memories. Picture this: It’s 2018 in the southwestern corner of America. There’s snow in the distant mountains and the slow desert sunset creeps through the windshield of a Mercury blazing down I-40 West. With four albums under his belt and a fifth in the chamber, Ocean is hitting his stride. The hard work shines through in his craft without a scrap of it being over-thought. It’s American music. It’s conceived on highways between cities past their prime. It’s born from memories and dreams of fresh starts. There’s a rich history to draw from places like Nashville, Memphis, Muscle Shoals, Bakersfield and Austin, but Ocean doesn’t desire a repeat. He celebrates the multi-generational canon of American music while adding his own fresh voice to the conversation. “Down This Road” is that voice speaking up, ready to be heard. Welcome to California.

ALL THE REAL GIRLS IS A ROCK BAND FROM SEATTLE, WA. Their new album, Elk City, was produced by John Goodmanson (Nada Surf, Sleater-Kinney, Los Campesinos!) and features the talents of many musicians including Jason McGerr (Death Cab For Cutie), Jim Roth (Built To Spill), Steve Fisk (Pell Mell), Eric Corson (The Long Winters), Eric Howk (Portugal. The Man) & Shelby Earl. When singer Peter Donovan listens to his band’s new album, he can’t help but think about the menthol cigarettes that helped inspire it. “She must have smoked a whole pack by the end of the night,” he remembers, laughing. Donovan was living just outside Bakersfield, California and working on an independent film, Lost on Purpose. “The character I played was a struggling singer-songwriter who pays the bills by working as a ranch hand on a dairy farm,” Donovan said, adding: “Typecasting, obviously.” After shooting wrapped one day, he walked into a bar in town and found himself with an improbable drinking buddy: “Her name was Jo. She was probably in her 70s, super tall, wearing this bright yellow dress, and a pair of these ridiculous Coke bottle glasses.” They got to talking. The woman, joined by her geriatric Basset Hound Winston, had been driving all day, en route to the Pacific Ocean from Oklahoma – and she was in the mood to chat. “She started giving me her entire family history, like five generations of it,” Donovan recalls. “Adultery, botched kidnappings, crazy cult leaders, schizophrenic starlets. It was nuts. She basically just inhaled white wine, smoked like a chimney, and told me these crazy, amazing stories all night.” Donovan had just completed the songs he contributed to Lost on Purpose and wasn’t expecting to be writing new music anytime soon. “I wasn’t thinking at all about more songwriting, but these stories were just too good. I started picturing all these crazy, sordid characters intersecting each other’s lives in some tiny Oklahoma town.” Donovan said. “I was writing as soon as I got back to my room.” Donovan brought the songs to producer John Goodmanson, hoping to enlist him to help record the album. “I wasn’t totally sure how he’d respond to it, but he was on board right away, which was huge.” Donovan says. “His records all have this amazing balance between melody and chaos, which I love. I knew John was the only guy for this.” Goodmanson and the band set up shop at Robert Lang Studios in Seattle and hunkered down to begin recording. “Once all those other guys got their hands on the songs, that’s when the whole thing really started to come into focus,” Donovan said.  Donovan says he tried his best to be faithful to what the woman told him of her family history, though admits there is some creative license on the record. “I had to sneak a little bit of me in there.” Though, “fluid storytelling,” as Donovan puts it, may just be hard to avoid with stories like these. But in the end, Jo probably won’t mind. “As she was leaving, she told me she embellished some parts,” Donovan laughs. “But she never said how much or which parts.”