RECENT ARTICLES

New Orleans standout group, Tank and the Bangas, famously won the NPR Tiny Desk Contest in 2017. The band, picked from some 6,000-plus applicants, celebrated the victory with a rousing and emotional performance at the media hub’s New York City offices. Ever since, Tank and the Bangas has been on a roll, both in the recording studio and on the road, which culminated with a 2020 Best New Artist Grammy nomination. But, says frontwoman, Tarriona “Tank” Ball, the group doesn’t much sweat the highs of the wins or the lows of the losses. Instead, Ball says, she’s confident that what comes for the group is what’s meant for the group, what’s necessary for both their creative sustenance and evolution.

“We were picked out of all those people,” Ball says. “So, it made me feel like whatever’s for us is really for us.”

Five-time Grammy-winging songwriter, Keb Mo (born Kevin Moore), remembers being 12- or 13-years-old on the porch. He’d sit there with friends. One person had a drum, someone else had a can. Amongst a small group of kids, they’d have whatever they could find and bring to this rudimentary drum circle. But the instrument didn’t matter – not at first, anyway. What mattered was the group and the combination of sounds to make something new. Today, for Mo, that same musical philosophy holds. For him, it’s less about any one particular thing and more about the relationship between the elements. And the results are stellar – or, constellational. Evidenced by his latest award-winning effort, 2019’s Oklahoma.

“Back then,” Mo says, “it was really about the ensemble, being part of something.”

For California singer-songwriter, Karla Bonoff, who has worked with some of the biggest names in music – from Linda Ronstadt to Bonnie Raitt – if it wasn’t for the infamous Troubadour nightclub in West Hollywood, which was just a fifteen minute drive from her Los Angeles home at the time, all of the majesty of song may not have unfolded before her as it had. Bonoff, who came of age amidst the hippie movement in the 1960s, cared about artistic craft and new ideas. She dove headfirst into the former clutching to as many of the latter as she could. This love of song continues today with the release of her 2019 album, Carry Me Home, and a collaboration that same year with country music star, Trisha Yearwood.

“Looking back,” Bonoff says, “I realize how amazing it was. But at the time, it just seemed like our life.”

Renowned author, James P. Carse, is known for his book, Finite and Infinite Games, which discusses the difference between “games” like a tennis match and the art of writing poetry. The first, Carse says, is played to have a clear winner. The second is played so that one can merely continue to play it. Those players – i.e. masters – simply go deeper and deeper into the art form, somehow both expanding their knowledge and the surface area of what they have yet to learn. One such guitar master is Nashville’s award-winning bluegrass musician, Molly Tuttle, who will release her latest (covers) album, …but i’d rather be with you, on August 28th.

“When I see the guitar,” Tuttle says, “there are so many endless opportunities and ways to keep learning. It’s like playing a video game that never ends and gets more and more complex. I think it’s a really exciting world of possibility.”

Boston-based artist, Jonatha Brooke, grew up dancing. She also grew up loving music, taking choir in school, playing bass in her 8th grade rock band and she even joined an a cappella group. But it wasn’t until her junior year in college that she got the urge to write songs – a feeling that has since remained throughout her life, from early successes in the 90s to more substantial ones later on. Brooke, who has co-written with stars like Katy Perry and composed songs for Disney and TV show-runner, Joss Whedon, continues to challenge herself. The work can always be better, she says. Hers is a mentality that has propelled her to a prolific and fruitful career. And Brooke’s latest achievement is the release of her forthcoming LP, The Sweetwater Sessions, out tomorrow (July 10th).

Bay Area singer-songwriter, Drea Jeann, functions best with a regimen. It’s been this way since she was young. Jeann, who first started singing at three-years-old – jumping on stage during a cruise ship talent show – craves structure. As a young person, she signed up for programs at school and in church. She performed musical theater. But it wasn’t until she joined an a cappella group in high school that her ambition really took hold. It was then she knew she wanted to dedicate herself to music.

Today, after some tumultuous personal ups and downs, Jeann is poised to set new, reinvigorated sights on her creative goals, the most recent of which includes the release of her autobiographical track, “Dying to Stay Alive.”

In many ways, Nathan Willett, front man for the electric-elastic rock ‘n’ roll group, Cold War Kids, is restarting everything. Willett, whose group grew from grassroots in its original Southern California home, has since achieved great successes. From backyard jam sessions to playing in front of tens of thousands regularly, Cold War Kids has, for all intents and purposes, achieved its central goals. But rather than give up playing music now, Willett is starting the journey over again. It excites him, energizes his ambitions. The process began with the group’s 2019 release, New Age Norms 1, and will continue with New Age Norms 2, which is set to hit the streets August 21st (with a special song debut today for “You Already Know”).

The ground-shaking, precedent-setting punk rock band, Bad Brains, hit the commercial scene and began wowing audiences in 1979. But while the band released their eponymous debut LP in 1982, the group first got together and started to practice in earnest around 1977. At that time, says band front man, Human Rights (aka H.R., born Paul Hudson), it was all about rehearsing, nailing the sound and speed that Bad Brains would quickly and thereafter become known for. In the end, though, the focus for the group was primarily two-fold: play as fast as possible for the audience and play its signature punk rock music with an underlying positive mentality.

“What I saw was missing in those early punk rock days,” says H.R., “was the message and how it wasn’t too positive. That’s where I would change the message and make it more positive. We had a philosophy: PMA. Positive Mental Attitude. I got the idea from this Napoleon Hill book called, Think & Grow Rich, which talked about how you should be positive and keep determined. We were always determined.”