Nicholas “Nick” Drain Lowe, is an English singer-songwriter, musician and producer. A noted figure in power pop and new wave, Lowe has recorded a string of well-reviewed solo albums. Along with vocals, Lowe plays guitar, bass guitar, piano and harmonica. Wikipedia
Nick Lowe has made his mark as a producer (Elvis Costello-Graham Parker-Pretenders-The Damned), songwriter of at least three songs you know by heart, short-lived career as a pop star, and a lengthy term as a musicians’ musician. But in his current ‘second act’ as a silver-haired, tender-hearted but sharp-tongued singer-songwriter, he has no equal.
Starting with 1995′s ‘The Impossible Bird’ through to 2011′s ‘The Old Magic,’ Nick has turned out a fantastic string of albums, each one devised in his West London home, and recorded with a core of musicians who possess the same veteran savvy. Lowe brings wit and understated excellence to every performance, leading Ben Ratliff of the New York Times to describe his live show as “elegant and nearly devastating.”
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Jason Isbell
Jason Isbell
Michael Jason Isbell is an American singer-songwriter and guitarist from Green Hill, Alabama, in Lauderdale County. He is known for his solo career, his work with the band The 400 Unit, and as a former member of Drive-By Truckers for six years, from 2001 to 2007. Isbell has won four Grammy Awards. Wikipedia
“Isbell may not be a household name but he is a songwriter of great depth and intelligence. Blending country, folk, roots and rock, his music is soulful and alive, with deceptively sophisticated lyrics about addicts, runaways, lovers and outsiders. Naturally, his vignettes of the American working class have seen him compared to Bruce Springsteen, though his quieter songs bear the traces of one of his late mentors, the master American songwriter John Prine. On Sunday night, Isbell’s latest album, Weathervanes – recorded with his band the 400 Unit – is up for three Grammys (Best Americana Album, Best Americana Performance, and Best American Roots Song).” Independent – Louis Chilton
Now, he is high profile and touring widely….this is what is being said “One of the greatest songwriters of his generation, Jason Isbell and his band, the 400 Unit, mix soulful stompers like “Hope the High Road” and “Cumberland Gap” with emotional love songs such as “If We Were Vampires” and “Cover Me Up.” Armed with a pair of Grammys each for Best Americana Album and Best American Roots Song, Isbell turns a mirror on the people and places across America. “
Jason Isbell was married to Amanda Shires. (Click to visit her site) They were part of each other’s bands and often appeared on record together.
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Darlingside
Darlingside
“It’s over now / The flag is sunk / The world has flattened out,” are the first words of Extralife, the new album by Boston-based quartet Darlingside. While the band’s critically acclaimed 2015 release Birds Say was steeped in nostalgia and the conviction of youth, Extralife grapples with dystopian realities and uncertain futures. Whether ambling down a sidewalk during the apocalypse or getting stuck in a video game for eternity, the band asks, sometimes cynically, sometimes playfully: what comes next? Their erstwhile innocence is now bloodshot for the better.
Hope arrives in the form of Darlingside’s signature superpower harmonies, drawing frequent comparisons to late-60’s era groups like Crosby, Stills & Nash; Simon & Garfunkel; and The Byrds. And yet, their penchant for science fiction and speculative futurism counteracts any urge to pigeonhole their aesthetic as “retro”. The four close friends construct every piece of their music collaboratively, pooling musical and lyrical ideas so that each song bears the imprint of four different writing voices. NPR Music dubs the result “exquisitely-arranged, literary-minded, baroque folk-pop”, and calls Extralife “perfectly crafted”.
Darlingside perform all of their music around a single vocal microphone, inviting audiences into a lush, intimate world where four voices are truly one. Their 2016 performance at the Cambridge Folk Festival “earned an ecstatic reception and turned them into instant stars”, according to The Daily Telegraph. The band tours regularly throughout the United States, Canada, the UK, and Europe.
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Kathleen Edwards
For decades, Kathleen Edwards has been a cornerstone of North American roots music.
Since making her debut with 2002’s Failer, she’s spent the 21st century occupying the grey area between genres, swirling together her own mix of alt-country, folk, and heartland rock & roll. It’s a sound that has earned its creator more than a half-dozen Juno nominations, as well as Top 40 success on both sides of the Canadian/American border. Now in her third decade as an artist, Kathleen Edwards has done more than carry the torch of songwriting heroes like Tom Petty, Neil Young, and Lucinda Williams — she’s opened the door for others, too, inspiring a new generation of artists who, like her, blur the boundaries between genre and generation.
A native of Ottawa, Ontario, Edwards was still in her early 20s when she released the critically-acclaimed Failer. The album’s warm, woozy sound — crystallized on radio hits like “Six O’Clock News” — quickly turned her into one of the era’s alt-country heroes. From the very start, though, Edwards’ music seemed to exist somewhere out of time, resisting categorization even as Failer received a Juno nomination for “Roots & Traditional Album of the Year.”
“No one knew what to call my type of music back then,” she says of those early years. “The Americana genre didn’t exist yet, so they couldn’t categorize me. I just made the kind of music I wanted to make.”
Edwards continued blazing her own trail with follow-up albums like Back to Me and Asking for Flowers. By the time Voyageur arrived in 2012, Americana very much did exist as a genre, and Edwards found herself riding a newfound commercial peak. The album reached Number 2 on the Canadian Albums Chart and Number 3 on Billboard’s Folk Albums chart. Even so, a busy decade on the road had left her exhausted. After touring in support of Voyageur’s release, Edwards left the music business altogether and moved to suburban Ontario, where she opened a coffee shop called — defiantly — “Quitters.”
“Before I turned 30, I toured the world and put out nearly four records, performed on TV, and had an incredible run,” she says of her first 10 years in the spotlight. “What’s interesting is that I walked away from all of it, too — and when I came back, I felt better than the person who put out Failer.”
By the late 2010s, Edwards felt recharged and revitalized. When a phone call arrived from Maren Morris, who was looking for songwriting partners for a new project, Edwards jumped at the chance to collaborate. The two musicians co-wrote “Good Woman,” which appeared on Morris’ Grammy-nominated album Girl in 2019. Back home in Canada, Edwards continued to write new material, eventually partnering with producer Ian Fitchuk for the album Total Freedom. Released in 2020, the album expanded her sound and her audience, boosted by two hit songs — “Options Open” and “Hard on Everyone” — that both reached the Top 30 on the Triple A chart in America. Total Freedom didn’t just mark her return to the music industry. It was a rebirth, too.
What’s next? New music, of course. She and Grammy-winner Jim Scott co-produced and released an album called Covers, which pays homage to some of her songwriting heroes – Tom Petty, REM, John Prine, Bruce Springsteen, et al. Edwards remains a fan of “ripping guitar riffs and good songs,” and she’s combining both into a follow-up album co-produced by Grammy-winners Jason Isbell and Gena Johnson that will showcase her legacy as well as her evolution.
She maintains a presence on the road, too, playing her own gigs one minute and sharing shows with her heroes — including Willie Nelson, John Fogerty, and Bob Dylan — the next.
“The amount of things I’ve gone through might make someone else quit…but quitting doesn’t quite do it for me,” she says. “I can’t help but want to write great songs, connect with people, and see what’s ahead. I don’t love looking behind, even though it’s one of the ways we can see what we’ve done, so I’m looking forward.” from High Road Touring bio
In keeping with her love of dogs and the great photo used on this post…give a listen to “Who Rescued Who”
2025 – new record out now “Billionaire”
