The Hooten Hallers are a 3-piece Rock/ Blues/ Americana outfit from Missouri, USA, composed of guitar, drums, and baritone saxophone. They are on tour in support of their concept album, The Devil’s Egg, which will be released on Aug 9, 2024.   A group of three disillusioned teenaged punks find themselves transported into a terrifying alternate universe in The Devil’s Egg, a new fantasy rock opera from Missouri music renegades The Hooten Hallers. Throughout 13 spellbinding tracks, the music flows through a rainbow of musical genres from R&B and metal to punk and prog rock. Captivating audiences with their high-energy romps for nearly 20 years, the satisfying vocal pairing of John Randall’s gravel and Andy Rehm’s falsetto, along with Kellie Everett’s low woodwinds, which weave between basslines and melodies to round out one of modern music’s most unexpected power trios. While musically diverse, the rock opera’s coming-of-age storyline ties it all together, conjuring the science fiction of Stranger Things and the folklore of the Coen brothers to transport characters through an epic and transformative quest. In the end, the kids form unusual alliances to attempt their escape, allowing The Hooten Hallers to take listeners on their wildest, most cinematic journey yet.   The Hooten Hallers will perform the rock opera in its entirety each night, in addition to fan favorites throughout The Devil’s Egg World Tour. 

"Patience is a virtue." Those words are tattooed across Coleman Williams' right arm, forever reminding the alternative-country singer/songwriter of the benefits of taking one's time. The lesson wasn't always so clear. As the great-grandson of Hank Williams Sr., grandson of Hank Williams Jr., and only son of Hank 3, Coleman spent years waging an internal battle with the expectations thrust upon him by his own lineage. He represented the fourth generation of country music's most legendary family — hence his nickname, "IV" — and the pressure to launch his own career was enormous. Although Coleman would eventually make his mark with Southern Circus — the genre-bending debut from his band, IV and the Strange Band, combining southern storytelling and country textures with 100-watt guitar amps and DIY attitude — he needed to break free first and discover his own musical approach along the way. "Before I even knew who I was, people were already expecting things of me," he says. "It felt like there was zero freedom of expression for someone with the last name 'Williams.' Singing about a bloodline didn't appeal to me, though. I wasn't interested in fitting into a shadow that already existed. What did appeal to me was the underground scene in Nashville." Coleman became a fierce champion of Nashville's house-show circuit as a teenager, drawn in by the scene's supportive spirit and DIY ethics. This was a community that valued principles over pedigrees. A community that offered artists of all stripes a place to express themselves. From punk shows to heavy metal gigs to electronic experiments, Coleman loved it all… and for the first time in his life, he felt like he belonged somewhere.   "I was a weird kid who grew up in an unusual situation," he says. "When I began going to house shows in Nashville, I felt like I'd found a family of people whom nobody else wanted — kids who were different and misunderstood — and during these two-hour shows, everyone belonged, everyone felt accepted, and everyone had a place. The experience taught me to trust my instincts. It gave me a new sense of independence. I have to believe that's why Hank Williams made music, too; he could see what it did for people." Inspired to blaze his own trail, Coleman left town after high school and traveled across America, developing musical tastes that were as diverse as the country itself. Over the decade that followed, he became a history buff, a poet, a metalworker, and an educator. Back home in Nashville, he continued his lifelong practice of writing songs, developing the unique sound — a blend of the amplified and the acoustic, laced with fiddle one minute and heavy guitars the next — that would later fill Southern Circus. Coleman took his time. He wanted the sound to be right. Patience is a virtue, after all. Local producer Jason Dietz became a fan of Coleman's songs, prompting the two to begin collaborating. Guitarist David Talley joined them, as did banjo player, Daniel Mason and drummer Carson Kehrer. All five musicians (along with fiddler Laura Beth Jewell and steel player, John Judkins who both appear on the record) came from different musical backgrounds, but they worked together to build something new, using Coleman's acoustic tunes as the blueprint for a southern sound that was soothing one minute and strident the next. An album began taking shape. Just shy of his thirtieth birthday, Coleman Williams made his long-awaited debut with "Son of Sin," a single that was released in 2021 by IV and the Strange Band. "I like to say, 'What doesn't kill you makes you stranger,'" he explains. "I love strangeness and I love my Strange Band. The most genuine people in this world are those who allow themselves to be the weirdos they truly are, because once you repress yourself, that's when you become someone you're not." Coleman channeled this love of the weird and self-certainty into Southern Circus which bounces between autobiographical songs and story-driven tracks inspired by Coleman's historical interests. On "Inbred," he turns the true-life tale of the Fugates — a Kentucky family whose inbred history attracted the attention and anger of religious zealots during the 1800s — into a song about Christian hypocrisy. "Malice" is a swaggering country song based upon a newspaper article about a married couple who each decided to poison the other on the same morning, while "Drinking Sad" pays tribute to the outlaw country bar songs that soundtracked Coleman's childhood. Appropriately, modern-day outlaw Jaime Wyatt appears on the hauntingly elegant "Broken Pieces," contributing vocals to a song about, as Coleman puts it, "the idea someone can’t truly love you unless they know how fucked up you really are."Perhaps nothing encapsulates Coleman Williams' story better than "Stand Your Ground," a seize-the-day anthem that advises its listener to roll with the world's punches and refuse to remain knocked down. The song opens with a leisurely lope, only to segue into a faster section propelled by train beats, banjo arpeggios, and Coleman's anthemic melodies. There are flashes of country twang and rock & roll grit throughout, fused together by a man who's not afraid to blur the dividing line between those camps. Southern Circus offers a peak into Coleman's personal world, and under this Big Top, all southern sounds — and all people — are welcome. "PT Barnum always said, 'The clowns are the heart of the circus,'" Coleman notes. "The circus is all about expression — about being yourself and finding a unique family, just like the house-show scene — and clowns embody that spirit. They're comfortable with being themselves, and they're trying to give you a pure, emotional catharsis. I love that. I feel like I'm the clown of this southern circus." Southern Circus finds a balance between spectacle and spirit, determination and deliverance, melodies and muscle. It's the sound of a man honoring his family tree while planting his own garden. To make it, Coleman had to leave home, explore sounds that stretched beyond his bloodline's catalog, and challenge the world's expectations that he'd join family business. Southern Circus is his homecoming: an album that finds him not falling into a legacy, but earning it.    

Jeshua started the Americana Punk band Larry And HIs Flask with his brother Jamin 20 Years ago. In LAHF and on his own Jeshua toured Europe 12 times, did the Van's Warped tour, played in every state in the US and every province in Canada. He has played countless festivals, concerts, and street corners.

She’s quite the paradox: a seasoned songwriter who perfectly embodies the music of the American South but lives in the wilds of Michigan. An artist who grew up performing with parents in the family bluegrass band but spent her teen years raging away in an all-girl punk band. An introvert off stage, whose wall-shaking voice has earned her a place at cutting- edge roots music festivals like Muddy Roots, SXSW, and the Rochester International Jazz Festival. An icon of underground country, whose newest critically acclaimed album has been featured in major media outlets like CMT, Parade Magazine, Glide, and Cowboys and Indians, and garnered the attention from Nashville big-wigs. But when you sing this well and play like hell, who do you have to answer to anyways?

'If Tim Burton were to throw a surprise birthday party for The Devil at Fats Domino's house, Viva Le Vox would be the band in the living room' Viva Le Vox bubbled up out of the South Florida muck in 2008. Often found playing open mics and their local laundromat spreading their peculiar blend of punk rock, ragtime, and blues, their live performances soon gained enough attention to land them in the clubs. It wasn't long before they took their show state-wide. With their first full length release, Desperation Alley in 2009, they ventured out into the southeastern United States. In 2010 they released Wayward Ones and took on the rest of America, touring almost nonstop for the next two years with a short break to record Dirt For Sale with Joe Buck (Joe Buck Yourself, Hank III, Legendary Shack Shakers).     The band's lineup has embodied many forms since its inception, and at this point Tony teamed up with Joe on upright bass to continue spreading VLV's weirdness here in the states and make the jump across the pond to Europe. In 2014 the duo recorded Luv Hungry and made their second run to Europe and the UK in 2015. Upon their return, Tony reunited with original bassist Scarecrow Jenkins and convinced long time friend Johnny Tugboat to take up the drums, soon relocating the base of operations to North Carolina. The trio released The Fall Of Skivvy Starzo in 2016 and continue to blow asses off throughout the galaxy....  

Brook Blanche hails from the Kansas prairie. As a singer and songwriter he’s know for his commanding voice and work with rowdy road warriors The Calamity Cubes! Saving Country Music notes his “moaning voice bellows out from the very inner depths of dark human emotions…’Empty Bottle’… rivals any country drinking song in depth of songwriting” (video above). He’s played with Lucero, Ben Miller, and the Hooten Hallers and headlined Muddy Roots and Moonrunners music festivals. His music has been featured in skateboarding flicks and documentaries including Pretty Sweet and Hard Soil. His self-titled solo album was released in 2016.

There is something to be said about Daniel Mason - the way he captures an audience with his soulful voice - brings back a taste of Blue Eyed Soul with a mix of Country and R&B - writes with integrity and truth. Born in Paris, KY to a small impoverished family, Daniel Mason emerged and matured his God given talent in the local church choir. Raised by a Mother that influenced him with everything from Aretha Franklin, Marvin Gaye and Hall & Oates, to Michael Jackson. From there he developed guitar and writing skills at an early age. As most serious hungry artist, he moved to Nashville TN in '08 to establish himself as a Singer/Songwriter. After 3 years and 500 + shows as the lead singer of a local favorite Nashville trio Amber's Drive, Daniel Mason is pursuing upon his own solo career known as The Daniel Mason Band.

Down to hell and back again is one way to put the feeling behind a lot of the songs currently coming from Dead Man String Band fronted by Northern Kentucky's Rob McAllister. With songs of loss, persistence, and a little tongue in cheek. Dead Man String Band has headlined the stage at Fountain Square (Cincinnati), played Bunbury Music Festival, headlined the CincyMusic Relaunch Party (2016), and is a staple in the Northern Kentucky and Cincinnati Music Scene.

Like all good teenage madmen dreamer poets who fell in love with the beat generation, I found a guitar and saw it as my ticket out of nowhere, and it’s painful banality. Started playing in bands to get lost in the beat, scream and sing my piece, and go places. My head was a muddling of the different music I heard growing up, from everything big in the 90s (Punk, Ska, Industrial, old 80s Thrash Metal, 60s and 70s rock my parents listened to as well as their collection of old Irish folk music).   Heard the Pogues for the first time while I was drinking a bottle of MD 20/20 while waiting for a flight to meet up with friends down in Virginia, and fell in love with what they had done: You could be both that heavy without distortion, and intelligent lyrically. I was blown away. Needless to say, I quit the band I was in and started playing under the name The Swaggerin’ Growlers in Seth Moore’s basement in 2004.   Discovered Woody Guthrie and Common Rider and felt this weird thing called hope for the first time in my life. Strange new direction for a former sad bastard. Moved from my native New Hampshire to Boston in 2006 to give music a real go - the trendy destination for all rock and rollers of the area at the time. It’s there that heard Mischief Brew, from my buddy Twitch, a basement show regular, who happened to catch them with Leftover Crack and said ‘this guy reminds me a lot of you’. Let’s be honest, a) I’m not nearly that good and b) that changed my goddamned life about as much as the Pogues did. Same with the World / Inferno Friendship Society. In spite of the hellish environment that New England could be, I saw the potential for passion and beauty in it all. Something much, much bigger than I had ever seen or felt before. I immediately started playing with both aforementioned bands, and started touring the second I could pull it off with a 5 person band.   After about the 5th or so lineup disintegration, a personal life that was growing increasingly violent and desperate, and a trashed band name that made booking damn well near impossible, I had some life reevaluation to do. Erik and Denise’s house, better known as the Mischief Brew / Fistolo Records compound, had become a sanctuary over the years for us weird traveler types that did strange things to both folk and punk, between Erik’s creative output, and Denise’s magical ability to herd cats - I ended up there a lot before, during, and after tours. At the time, Erik was covering one of my favorite New Model Army songs, Vagabonds. So I put together the opening line of Vagabonds (We followed the tail lights out of the city, moving in a river of red) and Erik’s proto Mischief Brew band, Kettle Rebellion - I was utterly hooked on the song Away With Purity, and the gritty texture everything had.   Tail Light Rebellion was born. (insert trumpets).   Why? Because when your car is totaled, you either stay where you’re at and call it over, or get another one, and keep driving. I’m still me, and I’m still hear to scream and sing my piece. Spent the next few months homeless yet again, this time out of choice to escape the nightmare I was living in, and crash landed in an apartment in Boston’s mostly forgotten Borough - Hyde Park. The infamous Hyde Park triple decker, where I recorded a demo in the basement. It’s there that I met Tim, this fantastic percussionist with a passion for video and scoring music for them, (now done under the name Chozame Studios) and some kid living in the garage rehearsal space, Rob Black (Y’all know Burt Camero by now). Mixed down the demo at my good friend Griffin Sullivan’s place, as well as an extended few days at the Fistolo compound, and down the goddamned road I went.   Still am. Probably always will be.   Since then I’ve lived van lived on the street, lived in Grand Rapids, MI, Memphis, TN, and as of this writing, Greensboro, NC. Each place I stay is home and I wouldn’t want it any other way.

Bobcat is a one-man band like no other. Drawing inspiration from the likes of garage rock, soul music, power-pop, rhythm and blues, rockabilly, punk rock, psychobilly, new wave and indie rock, this one-man band takes the notion one step further with ornate arrangements with minimal accompaniment.

Atlanta-based Irish rock band

Austin Lucas has come home. It’s been over two decades since the songwriter packed his bags and left Bloomington, Indiana, the Midwestern town where he spent his childhood years falling in love with rock & roll, embracing his punk roots, and standing his ground whenever intolerant locals didn’t understand his way of life. He returns to that place – both creatively and physically – with his seventh studio album, Immortal Americans. Written after a tumultuous period that found Lucas getting sober, supporting his partner through a battle with cancer, and breaking up with his longtime record label, Immortal Americans is a clear-eyed album for murkier times, rooted in stripped-down heartland rock songs that find the artist reflecting upon the changes in both his hometown and himself. Co-produced by Lucas and Will Johnson (Centro-matic) and recorded/engineered by Steve Albini and captured in a series of live, full-band performances, Immortal Americans was written after Lucas resettled in Bloomington. He’d been away for years, touring the world as an independent solo artist before signing a record deal with New West in 2013. In many ways, the albums he released during that period were reflections of the music he’d grown up with, from the mountain music of his father (bluegrass musician Bob Lucas) to the punk records that soundtracked his teenage years. Appropriately, Lucas earned a fanbase as a folksinger with punk roots – or was it the other way around? – while touring the country with artists who represented both ends of that spectrum, sharing shows with Willie Nelson one minute and Chuck Ragan the next. Somewhere along the way, his vices began to get the best of him. He started drinking too much. He gained weight. His marriage crumbled. Albums like 2013’s cowpunk-inspired Stay Reckless and 2016’s Between the Moon and the Midwest shone a light on those challenges, tackling everything from divorce to depression. When Lucas hit rock bottom though, he stopped writing about his temptations and instead, left them behind for good. He headed back to southern Indiana, resettling himself in a town that had changed considerably since he left. There, in a region suffering from an opioid epidemic, an HIV crisis, and a homelessness problem, Lucas focused on rebuilding his career and his body. He got sober, shedding more than 100 pounds. He recounted the stories of his youth, where, as an outsider in a small town, he dodged beer cans hurled by passing drivers. As he once more walked the Bloomington streets, he learned to embrace his own fighting spirit again. The album’s title track, “Immortal Americans,” emerged from that period of self-discovery. “My friends and I had to fight for who we were,” he remembers of those early days in the Midwest, “and it was an alienating, anxious, and oftentimes scary way to live. This song is about that fight. It goes out to the most marginalized and at-risk human beings who live in our country, all the people who live on the outside of mainstream society and have to fight every day for their identities and for their existence – because those are the true immortal Americans.” Meanwhile, Lucas’ new partner was fighting a different sort of battle. Lucas had discovered a lump on her body during their first evening together and the mass turned out to be cancerous. He became not only her romantic partner, but her caretaker too, nursing her back to health after a life-altering surgery and a string of energy-sapping chemotherapy sessions. Lucas continued writing music throughout the process, strumming an acoustic guitar quietly while his girlfriend slept in the next room. Although much of Immortal Americans is influenced by that experience, album standouts like “The Shadow and Marie” tackle the experience directly, shining a light on his partner’s vitality and unending beauty. “The song opens up with dark lyrics,” he admits, “but the overall point is, ‘We’re still alive. We still have so much to be grateful for. As long as we’re still here, there’s beauty and joy.’ I wrote it to remind my lover that even though she’d been through a crazy ordeal in which her body was permanently changed, she was still beautiful to me. The song may start out on a low note, but as it builds, it goes to a place that’s brighter. It pushes toward something better. In many ways, that’s the theme of the whole record.” When it came time to record his new songs at Steve Albini’s studio in Chicago, Lucas didn’t reach too far beyond the songs’ unplugged origins. He’d already cut loose from his record label, which meant he was free to chase down his muse without any sort of outside influence. He consolidated his sound accordingly, stripping away the electric guitars and dense sonic landscapes that had permeated his recent albums. In their place, he focused on acoustic instruments and a restrained rhythm section, gluing everything together with lyrically-sharp songs that measured the distance between his rocky past and even-keeled present. The band – whose members included his Dad, who’d traveled north to play banjo with his son – crowded into the same room at Electrical Audio and played together, resulting in an all-analog album that’s both raw and real. “I wanted it to sound like human beings playing instruments,” says Lucas, “I knew the best thing for this batch of songs was for them to sound as organic as possible. I sang live, playing guitar at the same time, and we worked very quickly. It was an in-the-moment kind of album.” Immortal Americans is Austin Lucas’ homecoming album, created during a whirlwind period of tumult and regrowth. With its gothic heartland sound and autobiographical lyrics, it’s also Lucas at his most honest, rooted in a string of largely unamplified anthems that don’t rely on electricity to pack a punch. “I was watching the changes in Bloomington and reflecting upon the changes in my own life,” he sums up. “Not all of this is happy stuff, but there’s hope. There’s light in the darkness. I really do believe in second and third chances, because I know how many chances I’ve received. You have to keep fighting, because that’s what makes life worth living.” Or, in other words, that’s what makes you immortal.