Serving a stint as a cook at the Bluebird Café didn't do much harm to pull her into the singer/songwriter fold. In 1988, Richey planted her roots in Nashville to really test that fold and hone her own songwriting craft. She built a reputation as a singer who could interpret a lyric and harmonize with the best of them, all the while writing songs with an optimistic melancholy quality that is unusual and alluring. Before too long, the Zanesville, Ohio, native was signed to PolyGram Records, releasing her eponymous debut in 1995. Bitter Sweet and Glimmer followed in two-year increments. All three albums were tagged as contemporary country but actually fall in step pretty close to John Hiatt's brand of music making. Comparisons to Shawn Colvin have also run rampant over the years, due to Richey's cleverly twisting lyrical phrases and beats. By the time she made 1999's Glimmer with producer Hugh Padgham, her sound leaned even further toward the pop end of the spectrum. Cut to 2002 and the release of Rise. Teaming up with producer Bill Bottrell, Richey fleshed out her sound with worldly flavors of instrumentation, atypical for a so-called contemporary country artist. The result was mesmerizing and her most masterful work to date. Her greatest hits, entitled Collection, arrived in 2004, followed by Chinese Boxes in the summer of 2007. In recent years, Kim turned to her East Nashville-based bandleader and frequent co-writer Neilson Hubbard to conjure the earthy indie-pop feel of Wreck Your Wheels and to complete her masterpiece of smart, sensual understatement Thorn In My Heart. She continues to tour and perform on the Grand Ole Opry.

For two decades, Gretchen Peters has been one of Nashville’s most beloved and respected artists. “If Peters never delivers another tune as achingly beautiful as ‘On A Bus To St. Cloud,'” People Magazine wrote, “she has already earned herself a spot among country’s upper echelon of contemporary composers.” Inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame in October 2014 by singer-songwriter Rodney Crowell, who called her “both a songwriter and a poet (who) sings as beautifully as she writes,” and said her song “The Matador”, “moved me so greatly, I cried from the soles of my feet”, Peters has accumulated accolades as a songwriter for artists as diverse as Etta James, Bonnie Raitt, The Neville Brothers, Patty Loveless, George Strait, Bryan Adams and Faith Hill. Her song “Independence Day”, recorded by Martina McBride, won a CMA Song of the Year award in 1995. She has been nominated for 2 Grammys (“Independence Day/Martina McBride, “You Don’t Even Know Who I Am”/Patty Loveless), a Golden Globe (“Here I Am”/Bryan Adams), and numerous other awards. Her 2015 album, ‘Blackbirds’ was awarded International Album of the Year and Song of the Year by the UK Americana Association. In 2015, The Telegraph named her one of the greatest 60 female singer-songwriters of all time. In 2021, she was awarded The Poets Award by the Academy of Country Music “for outstanding and longstanding musical and lyrical contributions throughout her career.” Her latest album, The Night You Wrote That Song: The Songs of Mickey Newbury, is a loving tribute to another Hall of Fame songwriter and a profound influence on Peters’ own writing.

Barry Walsh has spent a lifetime writing, performing, and producing music. After  three years studying classical piano under Carol Stone at Tennessee State University in Nashville in the late 70’s, he spent the next decade traveling and recording in the bands of Waylon Jennings, Roy Orbison, and other Nashville-based singers. A sideline pursuit was always songwriting. His songs have been recorded by Waylon Jennings, Jessi Colter, The Amazing Rhythm Aces, Tom Russell, and Gretchen Peters, among others.  The 90's found Walsh in Nashville recording studios, where he played on countless recordings for an array of artists.  In 1990 he met singer-songwriter Gretchen Peters, starting a now thirty-plus year musical relationship that led to their marriage in 2010. In April of 2001, they toured the UK and EU, beginning an era of constant touring, TV and radio appearances. A result of all of this hard work was the  success of albums like Hello Cruel World in 2012,  Blackbirds, in 2015, which  debuted at #1 on the UK Country chart and in the top 40 UK pop chart, and won the 2016 Americana UK Album of the Year. Dancing With The Beast was released in 2018. All three of these albums were  produced by Walsh, Peters, and Doug Lancio. In 2020 Gretchen Peters released the UK Folk#1 album, The Night You Wrote That Song: the Songs of Mickey Newbury, produced by Walsh and Peters. March, 2022 will see the release of Gretchen Peters - The Show - live in the UK with the Southern Fried String Quartet, also produced by Walsh and Peters.  Walsh has recorded three solo records: 2008’s The Crossing, 2012’s Paradiso, and 2014’s Silencio. All three were recorded at his home studio with guests including Gretchen Peters, Walsh’s son Brennan Walsh, Mark Selby, David Henry, Doug Lancio, Rob Ickes, John Catchings and Jim Hoke. A track from Walsh's second album, Paradiso, "Gretchen's Theme", was used in the 2013 Dutch documentary The Sex Police,  which follows a Dutch detective unit that combats human trafficking and the exploitation of prostitutes in The Hague. Recording his own original work has provided Walsh an alternative outlet to his duties as a producer/keyboardist on the more commercial recordings he's been a part of. Using the tools of his trade: piano, accordion, guitars and bass, these highly personal pieces give him an incentive to explore more exotic musical territory. "The whole idea for my solo recordings," Walsh says, "was to find the space between the notes. Finding space through the use of restraint." As Emmylou Harris once said, "restraint intensifies emotion."  In August, 2018 Walsh was an Artist-In-Residence at the Banff Centre For The Arts in Banff, Alberta, Canada.