Country | Musicosity

Country

Patricia Vonne

Over the eight years since her debut album, Patricia Vonne has proven herself a truly ascendant and transcendent musical artist. The lovely San Antonio, Texas born and bred Chicana “has absorbed just about every indigenous musical style Texas has on offer, and can summon any one in the flick of a castanet or guitar pick,” notes the Houston Press. In the same fashion as her lyrically and stylistically multilingual sound melds and soars above a rainbow of genres and musical flavors, Vonne has also handily crossed geographic borders...

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The Stairwell Sisters

Producer Lloyd Maines recalls hearing The Stairwell Sisters for the first time: “I happened upon this tribe of women musicians, playing old-time string music, with the power and excitement of a great rock band.” Tribe of women indeed. Evie Ladin explains what holds sway with the sisters, themes similarly found in one of their early influences, Hazel Dickens & Alice Gerrard: “not exactly the sweet and tender ladies, but the stand up for yourself and face the world kind of women.”

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Kitty, Daisy & Lewis

Kitty Daisy & Lewis are a three-piece band comprising the teenage siblings of the Durham family. Their music is influenced heavily by R&B, Swing, Jump blues, Country and Western, Blues, Hawaiian and Rock 'n' Roll... The trio are all multi-instrumentalists playing guitar, piano, banjo, lapsteel guitar, harmonica, double bass, ukulele, trombone and accordion between them. Kitty Durham is the youngest of the group and primarily sings and plays drums, harmonica, ukulele and guitar. Lewis Durham is the middle child who sings and plays guitar, piano, banjo, lapsteel and drums.

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Iris DeMent

Iris DeMent (born 5 January 1961) is an American country/folk singer and songwriter. She was the fourteenth and last child of Pat DeMent and the sixth child of his second wife, Flora Mae. She was born near the town of Paragould, Arkansas but grew up in California, where she was exposed to and influenced by country and gospel music. DeMent writes songs about everyday experiences in simple language.

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Matt Bauer

Matt Bauer grew up in Kentucky, and his music is rooted in the sounds and natural surroundings of the region. His melodies and banjo style bear the markings of traditional mountain music, bluegrass and early country, but his sound is distinctly contemporary. The lyrics live unflinchingly in the present and the arrangements draw on influences as varied as gamelan orchestras and post-rock. His latest record The Island Moved in the Storm, centers around the story of a young woman was found dead along a dirt road near Eagle Creek, north of Georgetown, Kentucky in 1968.

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Spirit of John

Formed in Leeds, UK in 2008, The Spirit of John is a two-piece band featuring Joshua Sheard (vocals, guitar) and Adam Richards (double bass), both 23 years old. Taking their cue from various pre-war American music styles (particularly bluegrass and rockabilly) as well as great storytellers like Tom Waits, Jeff Mangum and Johnny Cash, their sound is an interplay between Sheard's delicately picked guitar melodies and Richards' thumping bass parts.

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