The Wood Brothers didn’t know they were making a record. Looking back, they’re grateful for that. “If we hadknown, we probably would have been too self-conscious to play what we played,” reflects bassist/vocalist Chris Wood. “At the time, we just thought we were jamming to break in our new studio, so we felt free to explore all these different ways of performing together without worrying about form or structure. It was liberating.” Recorded live to tape, those freewheeling, improvised sessions became a vast pool of source material from which The Wood Brothers would go on to draw ‘Kingdom In My Mind,’ their seventhstudio release and most spontaneous and experimental collection yet. While on past records, the band—Chris, guitarist/vocalist Oliver Wood, and drummer/keyboardist Jano Rix—would write a large batch of songs and then record them all at once, ‘Kingdom’ found them retroactively carving tunes out of sprawling instrumental jam sessions like sculptors chipping away at blocks of marble. A testament to the limitless creativity of the unharnessed mind, the record explores the power of our external surroundings to shape our internal worlds (and vice versa), reckoning with time, mortality, and human nature. The songs here find strength in accepting what lies beyond our control, thoughtfully honing in on the bittersweet beauty that underlies doubt and pain and sadness with vivid character studies and unflinching self-examination. Deep as the lyrics dig, the arrangements always manage to remain buoyant and light, though, drawing from across a broad sonic spectrum to create a transportive, effervescent blend that reflects the trio’s unique place in the modern musical landscape. “My brothercame to this band from the blues and gospel world, and my history was allover the map withjazz and R&B,” says Chris, who first rose to fame with the pioneering trio Medeski Martin& Wood. “The idea for this group has always been to marry our backgrounds, to imagine what might happen if Robert Johnson and Charles Mingus had started a band together.” ‘Kingdom In My Mind’ follows The Wood Brothers’most recent studio release, 2018’s ‘One Drop Of Truth,’ which hit #1 on the Billboard Heatseekers Chart and garneredthe band their firstGRAMMY nomination for Best Americana Album. NPRpraised the record’s “unexpected changes and kaleidoscopic array of influences,” while Uncuthailed its “virtuosic performances and subtly evocative lyrics,” and Blurtproclaimed it “a career-defining album.” Tracks from the record racked up roughly 8 million streams on Spotifyalone, and the band took the album on the road for extensive tour dates in the US andEurope, including their first-ever headline performance at Red Rocks, two nights at San Francisco’s legendary Fillmore (captured on their 2019 release, ‘Live At The Fillmore’),and festival appearances everywhere from Bonnaroo to XPoNentia

Michaela Anne had no way of knowing what lay ahead when she began writing her gorgeous and aching new album, Oh To Be That Free—sobriety, pregnancy, a global pandemic, and the hemorrhagic stroke that would nearly kill her mother were all just around the corner—but listening back in the warm glow of hindsight, it’s almost as if she was writing a survival guide for her future self. The songs are profoundly vulnerable here, hinting at everything from Brandi Carlile to Kacey Musgraves as they reckon with the flaws and faults that keep us up at night, and Michaela’s delivery is tender and empathetic, insisting that we’re worthy of love not in spite of our shortcomings, but because of them. And so the freedom Michaela sings of isn’t the wild freedom of youth or rebellion, but rather the spiritual freedom that comes from learning to accept what is rather than what ought to be, from learning to appreciate what you have rather than what you want, from learning to look in the mirror and love the person staring back.   Oh To Be That Free follows Michaela’s 2019 Yep Roc debut, Desert Dove, which helped land her festival invitations everywhere from Bonnaroo to XPoNential alongside praise from Billboard, USA Today, The Associated Press, Paste, and more. The World Café raved that “Michaela Anne’s voice shines like a beacon,” while NPR hailed her “stunning vocals,” and Rolling Stone named the album one of the year’s best country and Americana releases.