Storytelling has been an anchor of Lee's music since the very beginning. He launched his career as a genre-bending musician after returning to Tennessee, quickly progressing from dive bar gigs to high-profile opening slots (including shows with Jason Isbell, Los Lobos, and other artists who, like him, blurred the lines between roots-rock, country, and other forms of American folk music) to his own headlining shows. Throughout it all, he drew upon the narrative skills he'd sharpened as a student. If albums like Honky-Tonk Hell and The Hometown Kid often unfolded like autobiographical entries from his road journal, then Drink the River shows an even broader range of his storytelling abilities. Lee isn't just writing songs about himself; he's writing songs about all of us. And maybe, in doing so, he can bring us a little closer together.

Raised amongst the pavement and pop radio of Los Angeles, Natalie Del Carmen creates her own musical geography with Pastures. It's the sound of a modern-day folksinger narrowing her focus and expanding her reach into a sharp, singular version of American roots music.   Pastures doesn't sound like the work of a Gen Z songwriter. Instead, its songs are poised and pastoral, filled with acoustic instruments — including the 1930s banjo she inherited from her grandfather — that evoke a landscape far more remote than Southern California. Some songwriters make music that reflects their surroundings, but Del Carmen takes a different path, turning herself into a musical world-builder. At just 24 years old, she's chased down an Americana sound of her own making. "I've heard stories about people growing up in small towns, wanting to move to a big city," she says. "That's not me. I love living in a city, but I also feel connected to a traditional sound. I crave both." With Pastures, she builds a bridge between those two contrasts. Songs like the wistful, waltzing "Plans Upon Plans" and the nostalgic "Leanne" make no apologies for their countrified arrangements, but their lyrics tell a more universal story, capturing the zeitgeist of 20something life in all its charmed and contradictory glory. Like her musical heroes — from Brandi Carlile to Izaak Opatz to Gregory Alan Isakov — Del Carmen embraces her folksy roots without abandoning a wider audience, delivering coming-of-age songs that transcend genre and generation. After all, navigating the twists and turns of early adulthood is hard work, wherever you live.  "The way the music hopefully moves people and brings people together is a byproduct of artists doing it for themselves to get through life. At least it is for me. When it becomes writing just to hit numbers, that’s when I fear I’ve sold out." With Pastures, Natalie Del Carmen joins the ranks of empowered artists bringing a female perspective — and a youthful outlook — to the Americana space.  

Born on the Wasatch Front and raised at the foot of the Colorado Rockies, Ben Garcia got his musical start with early success in the alternative rock scene. Yet, after years on long Western highways—often with only bird dogs, horses, and a Gibson Guitar as companions—his music picked up grit from mountain passes and country roads. His songs drive through sometimes stark, sometimes sublime landscapes towards a jagged but unbroken skyline, stopping occasionally at Honky Tonk bars to tell stories of rough, worn cowboy hats, boots, and tales of love.