RECENT ARTICLES

Ever since he was a young person falling in love with music, Pacific Northwest songwriter, Noah Gundersen, has been at it. Since 2008, the 31-year-old artist has released 13 studio records and likely many other compositions along the way. It all began at 9-years-old when Gundersen first began taking piano lessons. While he loathed them, he still loved music. So, his father gave him a guitar and he began writing. Gundersen, who was homeschooled, had time aplenty on his hands and, since he felt he could only express himself properly through song, he did so over and over again.

“I didn’t have a lot of friends,” Gundersen jokes.

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Nashville-based musician, Maggie Rose, began to sing before she could even speak. In this way, she’s always been forward thinking, readying herself for the future and her place in it while practicing what most contents her sensibilities. Flash-forward a couple decades and, today, Rose is a full-fledged Americana singer-songwriter, blossoming and burgeoning in the genre that itself is doing so, too. Rose’s latest offering – the spritely “Help Myself” – is a nod to her creative core and her ambition to improve. The song, however, never loses track of the lighter side of life and the humor that it takes to press on in a world full of changes and challenges.

“There’s a levity to ‘Help Myself,’ a sarcasm and a self-deprecating angle,” Rose says. “It’s about this idea, ‘I don’t know what I’m doing and neither do you but we’ll figure it out together.’ It’s okay to not be okay, to not know all the answers right now.”

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When listening to Peter Donovan’s new debut solo single, “Good To Be Alive,” it’s impossible not to hear a little tragedy in the melody. Donovan, who also fronts the Seattle-based Americana band, All The Real Girls, wrote and recorded the song before the Coronavirus pandemic for the Emerald City’s Bushwick Book Club, which hosts regular shows featuring music based on popular books. Inspired by the children’s series, Frog and Toad, the chorus for the song is, “It’s good to be alive, with a friend by your side. It’s good to be alive these days.” And while music exists, in some way, on its own, outside of context, in another way, this particular song, when heard within the context of COVID-19 is eerie.

“It’s really weird,” Donovan says. “I did write and record it right before the lockdown happened. I kind of wrote it as this, ‘Hey, look on the bright side of life, life’s not that bad!’ But now it almost has this very literal overtone, too.”

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Lilting songwriter, William Fitzsimmons, remembers following his mother around the house and mimicking her voice. She sang soprano and Fitzsimmons picked up on the high register affectation. Around their house, his mother and father would also play folk musicians on the stereo, artists like Jim Croce, Joni Mitchell, Simon & Garfunkel and John Denver. So, when Fitzsimmons began to sing his own songs later as an adult, the vocal sounds didn’t come from his chest voice. Rather, a softer, more delicate tone emerged. It’s a mood for which he’s become well known and it’s one prevalent on his glinting forthcoming record, Ready The Astronaut, set for release this summer.

“I think I thought that’s just how you’re supposed to sing,” Fitzsimmons says. “I thought you were supposed to sing high. Like when John Denver sings ‘Annie’s Song,’ you don’t really want to belt it out. It’s supposed to be this very pretty, smooth delivery.”

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Mitch Galbraith, guitarist for the Northern Beaches, Sydney, Australia-based rock ‘n’ roll band, Ocean Alley, remembers the group’s early days. High school best friends, the six-piece would get together in its formative years in backyard toolsheds or family garages to play and write music after school before dinnertime. Galbraith remembers “a lot of sand” in the makeshift rehearsal spaces, which were a mere five-minute walk from the nearby beaches. He also remembers, in one garage, having to move the car out before setting up the gear and doing that again in reverse after practice. Those stories now, though, seem quaint when considering the success Ocean Alley has achieved, which will again be punctuated by the release of the band’s forthcoming LP, Lonely Diamond, out June 19th (pre-order).

“As you can imagine,” Galbraith says, “the garages and sheds out back were not very acoustically sound. It was interesting learning in such a dingy environment.”

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When singer-songwriter, Olivia Rox, was 9-years-old, she played the lead role in Annie at Boulder, Colorado’s Dinner Theater. Rox, who’d already toured the country with her professional musician father, saxophonist Warren Hill, was ready for the assignment. At just two-and-a-half years old, Rox had sung to hundreds, performing, “Someday My Prince Will Come,” at one of her father’s gigs. For Annie, Rox performed 75 nights. At such a young age, she learned the rigors of getting ready and the reward of reading and performing to the room. In other words, she’d quickly become a pro. Now, just over a decade later, Rox has released her own solo record, POPROX, and she’s ready for a great deal more.

“For one,” Rox says, “I’m a perfectionist. Everything I do, I try to do the best I can. Whenever I’m writing a song, I try to make it great. I find myself constantly inspired by the world around me, no matter where I am or whether I’m on tour or sitting at home with my dogs on my lap.”

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For many during the pandemic, writing new music has been difficult. Social distancing and the shut down of businesses have caused a type of isolation that has hurt the creative process for some (including Ben Gibbard). But for Shana Cleveland, founder and principle songwriter for the Los Angeles-based harmony-centered rock ‘n’ roll band, La Luz, quarantine hasn’t derailed her songwriting efforts. In fact, Cleveland is working on two albums at this time – a new La Luz record and a new solo album. Writing, for the artist, is just about all there is to do professionally now that recording and touring have been halted. So, that’s what she’s doing on her 9-acre stretch of land in Northern California.

“My partner, Will, and I are both touring musicians,” Cleveland says. “We spend a lot of time in cities as it is. So, we thought, we don’t have to live in a city. I’ve always gone out into nature and isolation to write, that’s always felt like the place where I could let my mind wander the easiest. So, living in this place is where I can be most creative.”

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When listening to the Seattle-based instrumental soul group, the Delvon Lamarr Organ Trio, you might hear the chorus of your favorite song played eloquently on a nimble organ. The thing is, however, that chorus might be wrapped in the body of another song or even a song within a third. That’s the nature of DLO3. The band’s music often resembles a Russian Doll where the hook from a hit like “Move On Up” is tucked into a cover of another like “A Change Is Gonna Come.” Organist and front man, Delvon Lamarr, is a sonic encyclopedia. Fans can enjoy his vast acumen via the group’s latest single (a cover of “Inner City Blues”) or forthcoming live streams on the group’s Facebook page June 1st and 3rd.

“I’m my own Spotify,” jokes Lamarr. “Everything I hear stays in my head.”

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