Originally conceived as a loosely-knit collective showcasing four of Austin’s best up-and-coming artists, The Band Of Heathens is quickly becoming one of the most exciting new acts in American Music. The band’s debut album LIVE FROM MOMO’S features dynamic songwriting with powerful vocal harmonies and superb musicianship. The broad appeal of The Band of Heathens can be credited to musical diversity.
Cory Branan is a singer/songwriter, born in Southaven, Mississippi. He garnered comparisons to Ryan Adams, Pete Yorn, and Bright Eyes' Conor Oberst with the release of his 2002 debut album The Hell You Say. By his teens, Branan was playing hard rock and heavy metal, eventually fronting a Black Sabbath cover band. In his early 20s he began to explore the music of John Prine, a move which urged him to pick up a guitar and start writing songs.
Caramel Jack is a pop, folk and experimental group based in Brighton, England and built around the songwriting and production team of Richard Scott and Joe Doveton. Most often associated with the alt.country / americana scene their music is really a smorgasboard of styles ranging from Country-Folk to Chamber-Pop to Vaudeville incorporating hip-hop beats, cinematic instrumentals and sound effects along the way.
Sally Timms (born 29 November 1959 in Leeds, England) is a singer and songwriter. Sally is best known for her long involvement with The Mekons whom she joined in 1986. She recorded her first solo album, Hangahar (an experimental improvised film score), at the age of nineteen with Pete Shelley of the Buzzcocks. She has released several other solo CDs, Someone
Todd Daniel Snider is a singer-songwriter born October 11, 1966 in Portland, Oregon. Best known for his wry humor, Snider has been a fixture on the Americana, alt-country, and folk scene since his debut on MCA, entitled Songs for the Daily Planet, named for the bar where Snider used to play regularly in Memphis. On that album were the minor hits "Talkin' Seattle Grunge Rock Blues", a folk song about the early '90's grunge scene, featuring a band that "refused to play", and "Alright Guy", which later became the title cut of Gary Allan's 2001 album.
Barzin is a Canadian singer-songwriter named Barzin Hosseini. Slow and melancholic, introspective and confessional: These words in some ways describe the sound of Barzin. A project that began sometime in 1995, Barzin was a solo endeavor at its inception. But somewhere along the way it shed its solitary skin allowing a wide array of characters into it’s sound. From amongst a rotating cast of musicians, who occasionally made appearances on recordings and at performances, three individuals slowly became a fixture of this project.
Led by the gifted songwriting, impeccable playing, and honeyed harmonies of vocalists/guitarists Gary Louris and Mark Olson, the Jayhawks' shimmering blend of country, folk, and bar band rock made them one of the most widely acclaimed artists to emerge from the alternative country scene. The group sprung up in 1985 out of the fertile Minneapolis, Minnesota, musical community, where Olson had been playing standup bass in a rockabilly band called Stagger Lee until his desire to write and perform his own country-folk material prompted him to begin a solo career.
Americana singer/songwriter Chris Mills was born an Army brat, spending his formative years living in both the U.S. and Germany; as a teen he settled in southern Illinois, where he was exposed to the groundbreaking insurgent country sound of local heroes Uncle Tupelo. While in high school, Mills also fronted a speed metal band, but in the years to follow his music took an increasingly rootsy turn; upon signing to Chicago indie Sugar Free, he issued his debut EP Nobody's Favorite in 1997, followed in early 1998 by the full-length Every Night Fight for Your Life.
Australian songwriter and multi instrumentalist Chris Altmann is touring internationally to celebrate the release of his debut solo album Que Paso. Adelaide born and Melbourne based, Altmann is taking his sound to North America in 2011. Spanish for ‘What Happened’, Que Paso is a tongue-in-cheek reference to the change from the hard rocking style that fans have come to expect from Altmann’s better known group, The Vandas. The sound is influencd by the border town grooves of Doug Sahm and Jerry Jeff Walker, combined with the up tempo country rock beats of Chuck Berry and Levon Helm.
The Handsome Family are an alternative-country duo from the United States, the couple Brett and Rennie Sparks who live in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Brett writes the music while Rennie, who also is an author, writes the lyrics. Typical for the lyrics is a close connection to the literary genre American Gothic, and Gothic elements found in early country and folk songs. Their seventh CD, Last Days of Wonder (June.