The songs on the album reflect both Duvekot's personal journeys and her observations of those of others. Antje remarks "I've come to find that writing about someone else's struggles or happiness feels just as cathartic as writing about my own."

Along with 7 new songs, Antje and Richard decided to add studio versions of some of her best known songs such as, "Merry Go Round," which was used in a Bank of America national TV ad campaign as well as radio favorite "Long Way." "Since I first recorded this older material live, I have become a better performer," Antje explains "I decided to revive the songs that were worthy and produce them properly so that I should not be such a bad mother to them."

Jim Caligiuri, Austin Chronicle, December 2001 - Four star review

-Fred Dellar, Q Magazine (England) - Four star review

Meet Crooked Still, the hot young alternative bluegrass group on a mission to bend the boundaries of traditional music. The unlikely combination of banjo, cello, and double bass drives this low lonesome band, whose soaring vocals and high-wire solos have enraptured audiences all over North America and Ireland since 2001.

With Haas and Clarridge, the band has proven themselves to be even more adventurous, breathing their cosmic fire into old songs. "When Rushad left, we wanted to move in new directions," O'Donovan says. "Brittney adds another female presence to the band; I can hear my voice in her fiddling. Tristan has a refined cello tone, with a powerful, restrained energy. They bring a fresh outlook to the arrangements that keeps the music exciting."

"We rehearsed for a few days before we recorded," Clarridge says. "We'd listen to a source recording, strip the songs to the bone and build an arrangement incorporating everyone's ideas. It's fun to see how many directions you can take a song." Everyone brought material for consideration. "As we worked on the songs, we realized there was a lot of loss and mortality in the lyrics," banjo player Greg Liszt adds. "You can't make a folk album without delving into what's happening now and we were surprised at how current the songs sounded. On 'Captain, Captain' a woman asks what happened to her lover and the Captain replies 'he dropped down dead in the gulf.' It's a 400-year-old line, but it gives you chills."

Still Crooked is an ensemble effort of inspired music making that moves the bands' impossible- to-pigeonhole style in new directions while honoring their folk roots. "It's hard to pin down our music," bass player Corey DiMario says. "We play improvised old time music, bluegrass, folk and our own songs within the broad context of a string band. Like a lot of today's bands, we have modern and traditional influences that confuse the boundaries. We want to keep blurring those lines to make something all our own."

The Evening Sorrow was recorded in an old house across from a church in the struggling city of Holyoke, Massachusetts. The record comes after several years immersed in the vibrant music scene of Northampton, Massachusetts.

With The Evening Sorrow, Crommett sits down on the rug, opens a box of photographs, looks at each, and then throws them into the fireplace. Only the present remains; the love we hear in "Bright," the "it doesn't matter" spirit of "Green Depression Glass"... they replace difficult memories with melodies. It makes sense that Crommett chose to surround himself with friends in the making of this record; it releases it to them -- to the weeping pedal steel and cello, to the drums that crack open "Basement Friends," to the harmonies that drive "Oranges and Reds," creating a sound that is anything but inward or self-conscious. It is wide open like the sound of My Morning Jacket and Nick Drake; it is melodically focused, emotional and genuine, like the worn-out mix tapes of Simon & Garfunkel, Leonard Cohen and Neil Young that populate Dennis' car.

Crommett chose two musical peers whose sensibilities were different but would serve the record well: Jose Ayerve (The Pernice Brothers), a songwriter/producer who has been called "remarkably adept at casting somber moods while rocking incessantly;" and Bruce Tull, whose alt-country pedigree and quiet creativity helped create the mood of The Evening Sorrow. Dennis wanted to surrender some of this deeply personal, darkly vibrant music to the ears of his trusted friends, and allow them to play and sing what they heard. The result is from deep inside Crommett, but not insular, not arrogant.

The album is the urgent and beautiful purging of a young man's obsession with his past. Gone are the nights sitting alone on the bedroom floor with a tape recorder; it is morning. And as he sings on track 3, "Morning takes away the evening sorrow."

Touring and recording since 2003, The Hunger Mountain Boys have released three full-length albums and one vinyl single on their own Old-Fi record label. Their songwriting has won them national recognition, and their music has taken them from coast to coast, Canada and Europe. Their spirited performances of eclectic traditional American music as well as their own compositions have put them on stages with many roots-based artists from Taj Mahal to Doc Watson and Ralph Stanley to Kathy Mattea, among others. With a fourth album scheduled to be released late in 2007, The Hunger Mountain boys continue to tour the nation.

Hungrytown was recorded up and down the east coast, between gigs, by way of their mobile studio, Song Catcher Recording, recalling the semi-fictionalized film about musical folklorist, Olive Dame Campbell. Rebecca and Ken believe in bringing the studio to the musician, and as a result, the album's recording spaces include a converted barn in New York's Catskills, a double-wide in the Blue Ridge mountains of central Virginia, and an old brick and wood meeting house on a Vermont hillside. Among the many guest players on Hungrytown are Michael Merenda and Ruth Ungar Merenda (banjo and fiddle), who comprise the core of the celebrated folk supergroup, the Mammals, as well as Zack Deming (banjo), Charles Frazier (guitar), Donnie Shifflett (bass) and Jeff Vogelgesang (guitar and mandolin), who make up one of the south's top bluegrass bands, the Virginia Ramblers.

Rebecca Hall, who has a knack for penning tunes that sound like time-tested classics, wrote most of the songs on the album. She has been dubbed "a new folk classicist" by the Boston Herald, and her composition "Hungrytown Road" won second prize at the Minnesota Folk Festival's New Folk Songwriting Contest in 2005. That same year, legendary Nashville songsmith David Olney, who has written for Johnny Cash, Emmylou Harris and Linda Rondstadt, included his version of Rebecca's "O Lord" on his highly-acclaimed 2005 release, Migration. Her clear, haunting alto has prompted Roger McGuinn to rave, "I love the sound of Rebecca Hall's voice. There's a sweetness, and a worldly wisdom, in perfect balance."

Ken Anderson, who produced and arranged Hungrytown, plays multiple instruments throughout the recording, including drums, percussion, Hammond B3, harmonica, bass and guitar as well as singing harmony with Rebecca. His distinctive production style is the result of an eclectic musical education, performing in countless punk, soul, rock, and 60s-style pop bands in New York City and elsewhere. The result is no purist folk album, but a recording that demonstrates a reverence for American songcraft spanning many shades and decades. Lately, Rebecca and Ken have been combining their writing talents, and their co-written ballad, "Lucille, Lucille," won third prize at the Great Waters Folk Festival Songwriting Contest in 2007.

Signature's review: Lissa Schneckenburger's eponymous album begins, appropriately, with two original fiddle tunes. These tunes are not only well written, but flawlessly played. Lissa brings together a group of top-notch musicians on this record, including bassist Corey DiMario (Crooked Still), guitarist Keith Murphy (Nightingale), and percussionist Stefan Amidon (Assembly/Popcorn Behavior). Amongst all of this other talent, however, Lissa and her fiddle remain at the heart of this album. The first set of tunes leads seamlessly into a traditional song, "The Irish Girl." In addition to Lissa's fiery, skilled fiddle-playing, she writes tunes that feel at home next to traditional numbers, and confidently performs as if all of these works belong in the same catalog. In the hands of Lissa's expert composition and fiddling style, they most certainly do. --Rebecca Lay

"Lissa's fiddling is artful, skillful, inventive and full of feeling. I had to listen again and again!" Folk Roots raved, "Lissa blows out the cobwebs in no uncertain fashion... Lissa Schneckenburger's name is one we ought to be hearing more of."

Melvern Taylor is the most unlikely of pop geniuses. A middle age guy sporting thick glasses, pork pie hat and a ukulele, Taylor proves himself to be one of the most unique and tuneful songwriters around. Fabuloso is a tour de force of classic song styles, from the Everly Brothers shuffle of "Bettie Lou" to the country heartbreak of "Working Stiff" and the Beach Boys inspired summer pop of "Beer Cans." There isn't a weak track on the entire CD. Highly recommended. --Jim Olsen

Melvern Taylor writes happy songs about miserable people. His instrument of choice is the ukulele. They go together like milk and cookies. He learned to play guitar with an Eagles song book. He started writing songs in the 7th grade. Mostly they were about dead cats or this girl named Emily Tilghman. So far Melvern has released 3 records, Handsome Bastard, The Spider and the Barfly and Fabuloso. Slaid Cleaves covered Melvern's song "Working Stiff" on his last record. Melvern recently signed a Publishing Deal with a company called Primary Wave. They are a top notch bunch of cats.

We at Signature think Melvern is a top-notch cat, too. Who else could write (and get away with) a love song called "You and Me and My Ukelele?" His latest record, Fabuloso, is filled with witty, intelligent pop songs to which we can't help but hum along.

Although the name, The Honeymoon Agenda, was thought up as a rhyming pronunciation guide for their last name, Merenda, it also describes the happy blend of work and play that went into the project.

When producer Jose Ayerve (Pernice Brothers, Winterpills, Spouse) offered to record their new album as a wedding gift, the newlyweds excitedly hit the home studio, where they found great joy in the simplicity of writing and recording as a duo. That joy continues to grow with each performance of these captivating, new original songs and classic favorites by Lou Reed, Bob Dylan, Etta James, and a few of their good friends.

In 2008, Mike & Ruthy are touring festivals, clubs, and house concerts in their native Northeast and beyond.

Naia is confident and centered, as grounded as the musical tradition she grew up with. She is direct, kind, quick to laugh, and talks about music as a conciliatory tool that she has seen unite her family and plans to put to use inspiring and bringing together the peoples of the world. Community is so important to me. says Naia A lot of what I try to convey in my music is that I feel like it's truly time for the people of the world to unite in order to create peace and joy. It has to start in the home, and next in your extended family and community. I wouldn't be singing and writing in the way that I do if it wasn't for the people who have touched my life and heart so dearly.

One such experience is that of Naia's time at the Institute for Musical Arts (IMA) - an organization dedicated to supporting women in music in Goshen, MA. There she studied alongside IMA co-founder June Millington of the breakthrough rock-band Fanny, IMA Executive Director Anne Hackler and the Grammy-award winning sound producer Leslie Ann Jones among others. Her work with the youth empowerment organization 2050 has also made its mark, as well as her friendship and collaboration with fellow songbird Sonya Kitchell. Wherever Naia's gifts come from, her message is moving, refreshing, and an undeniably eloquent and conscious one to be coming from anyone, let alone an 18 year-old from the hills of Western Massachusetts.

Sweet Music is a personal/political soul-trip, as grounded and articulate as it is emotive, ever powered by the guitar and voice of this blossoming young visionary. Naia explains "All the songs on 'Sweet Music' were written from a pure place of passion. Most times the song-writing process for me, will be days, weeks or even months of playing chords and humming melodies whenever I sit down and play my guitar. Then, out of nowhere, a feeling, experience, person or idea will inspire, and through me will come a song. An expression of how this feeling, experience, person or idea has affected me. The process of actually writing the song will often happen in a matter of minutes.

Listening to Sweet Music, Naia's world view and passions shine through. She writes about truth and love in Are You Ready urging people to unite as one and calls for a revolution through personal responsibility in Come Back Home. She inspires with her words and brings the listener on an emotional journey. It makes me happier than ever to have the opportunity to share my passion with people of the world" says Naia.

Throughout the album her voice flows with a lyrical maturity and precision that conjures images of the great Lauryn Hill or soul diva Erykah Badu, and leaves the listener wide-eyed and ready for action. Sweet Music was produced by June Millington and Lee Madeloni and manages to bring to life Naia's music with the lushness of a full band, without treading on the intimacy or edge of her original solo compositions. But here's the true spark of Naia's music: It calls for a revolution through action not fistfights, seeks empowerment irreverent of race, is inspirational and does not exclude. Naia says "I want my music to be universal" - it might just work.

25 is a one of a kind project that is at once intimate and universal, the voice of a generation of songwriters, simple and direct, yet the touchstone of one woman's song. Over her 25 year career, Patty Larkin has worked with some of the brightest stars in American music, honing a reputation as a musician's musician along the way. On  25 Patty is joined by friends and cohorts, troubadours, renegades, humorists, folk philosophers, dreamers, realists, poets, bards. People who defined a generation of music that wove inside and outside of the box, and sprang from a grassroots love of song, pouring onto the airwaves in an organic, trickle down of musical styles.

Here is a moment, a pause, the snapshot of a career that continues to grow and evolve along a creative, adventuresome path. Here's to 25, and 25 more.

25 is a specially priced 2 cd set!

PRE-ORDER 25 AND RECEIVE AN EXCLUSIVE AUTOGRAPHED COPY OF THE ALBUM!

Always an ironically detached romantic, this time he has plunged into it and committed himself fully to the terrors of the lovestruck heart. There's little irony in these songs, but plenty of darkness. The same knack for hooks and melody that made the Maggies a singalong kind of modern-rock band are present here. The whole affair was recorded in a very demo-ey fashion right in Philip's home studio; many rough edges are present, and the production is minimal. There is nothing like a well-placed mic.

This album and its companion (Honey in the Chemicals) go beautifully together. So, skip today's dose of anti-bipolar medication, pour a stiff one, put your hand on your heart and some headphones on, and fall down the rabbit hole of love again. And again.

Sticking with his basic acoustic guitar/stacked vocals/drum machine/piano approach, Philip laid down the tracks before a well-placed mic, mixed them carefully, and left it at that. It's fantastic, whatever he did. Several years in pretentious art schools in the 1980s somehow gave him the gift of knowing what to leave out, if nothing else. The spareness is alluring, and his writing has never been more concise, focused and bittersweet.

This is different territory than Price's stuff with The Maggies, which relied almost solely on the gift of the hook and a rather pleasingly opaque confessional lyricism. No less confessional, this time there seems to be a fiercely compelling object at the center of it. This time around, also, sonically, Price pays his dues to all the 70s soft-pop that poured through his ears as a child; everything from Cat Stevens, Elton John to Bread. Lovely. - Bill Eleven

From the first moment, it clicked between Rose and Session. They weren't just her backing band and she wasn't just sitting in. Out of the spontaneity (and joy!) they shared was born this CD.

To capture that feel Rose and the band turned to Hi n' Dry, (now defunct, but) a truly unique loft/recording studio established by Morphine founder Mark Sandman. The studio itself was structured towards live, one-room recording, with the "first take" often held up like a holy grail. With the help of that rich, red, history-soaked loft, Billy Conway as producer, Matt Malikowski as engineer, and about 20 microphones, they were able to recreate that live feel.

Not only was "When the River Meets the Sea" recorded live in the studio, but each of the songs captured on the album were introduced to the band and special guests no more than an hour before they were recorded. You can almost hear the arrangements' organic emergence as the songs rise out of the sonic dust. All those present were free to play any of the studio's instruments, from a grand piano to a toy piano to a vibraphone, and from over a dozen guitars. The resulting musical arrangements stand as unrepeatable works of chance, friendship, and artistry.

When David returned to Boston from Mexico, he quickly found the core group of musicians who comprise the Museum: Jiro Kokubu, Suz Slezak, and Greg Glassman. The David Wax Museum has quickly built up its Boston audience, selling out its first solo headlining show at Club Passim in April of 2009. They have become regulars at many of the most established and respected venues in Boston and have toured throughout New England.

Jiro, a phenomenal multi-instrumentalist from Osaka, Japan, found a home in the Japanese bluegrass community, and on his band's first tour of America, he met his hero Bill Monroe. He later returned to the United States to study at Berklee College of Music, graduating in 2008. In The David Wax Museum, Jiro's breath-taking dobro solos and spectacular mandolin ability make him a thrill to take in.

Suz Slezak brings her lovely harmony vocals, old-time fiddling, and donkey jawbone-whacking abilities to the band. A skillful fiddler with a background in old time, Irish, and classical genres, Suz has been performing in the Boston area on and off since 1999. Raised within a strong old time music community on the outskirts of Charlottesville, VA, Suz helps anchor The David Wax Museum firmly in American roots music with her slight Virginia drawl. She mesmerizes the crowds when she picks up her donkey jawbone, a traditional Mexican percussive piece.

Greg Glassman rounds out the band with captivating drumming, a soulful voice, and his ability to always find a stunning third harmony. Originally from Bedford, New Hampshire, Greg has been an integral member of the Boston Americana scene for almost a decade, performing with the likes of The Sacred Shakers (with Eilen Jewell) and Tastes Like Gravy String Band.

During the band's first year and a half together, The David Wax Museum has already had the good fortune to share the stage with some of its favorite nationally recognized bands. In 2008, The David Wax Museum landed its first opening show with The Avett Brothers (Columbia Records) back in David's hometown of Columbia, Missouri. This eventually led to the band joining three separate legs of the Avett Brother's Emotionalism national tour, which took them to Missouri, Pennsylvania, New York, Connecticut, and Massachusetts.

Released on September 18, 2009, Carpenter Bird is a riveting collage of upbeat Mexican-influenced tunes that have one foot firmly planted in the roots of American music. The album, mixed by Missouri music legend Lou Whitney (Wilco, Jonathan Richman, Blue Mountain, The Bottle Rockets), captures the band's energy and unique Mexo-Americana sound. The new album promises to continue expanding the Museum's audience, introducing more and more people to this exciting new Boston band.

Yes, rap.

Woody Guthrie's pre-rap talking blues never blossomed into a genre. And it never came close to the lyrical complexity and stylistic variation of hip hop rapping.

But what if it had?

Meet the Deadly Gentlemen, whose wildly original debut The Bastard Masterpiece proudly defies the stereotypes of both banjo and rap to define an organic, captivating, and totally novel approach to folk music.

"Trust us, this is not what you are expecting," says Greg Liszt, the band's banjo player and vocalist, who recently completed an international tour with Bruce Springsteen and a Ph. D. in Molecular Biology from MIT.

Each of the ten songs on The Bastard Masterpiece is narrative, topical, and firmly rooted in either traditional or contemporary folk themes. But each song brings its own wit, edge, and attitude to bear our common experiences and fantasies:

The violent Wild West; the metropolitan workday; the end of the damned world; that time you drank too much; the baddest hobo ever to ride rails; ghosts coming back to the world for their living lovers; regret, seizing you, you'll do anything to shake it off.

This album features Greg Liszt (Bruce Springsteen; Crooked Still) on banjo and vocals; Josh Pinkham (Frank Vignola Quintet) on mandolin; Michael Barnett (Jesse McReynolds; Tony Trischka) on fiddle; and Sam Grisman (David Grisman Bluegrass Experience) on double bass.

Herring has built a name for herself by crafting in-depth story songs. Her last release, Lantana, was named by National Public Radio as one of the Top Ten Best Folk Albums for 2008. While critics have long praised the purity and complexity of her voice, drawing comparisons to Joan Baez and Kate Wolf, the vocal performances on Golden Apples of the Sun are as comfortable and intimate as any Herring has produced. It is the most true to stage release of her career, and Herring gives credit to producer David "Goody" Goodrich, who crafted the stripped-down sound in the Signature Sounds studio in Connecticut. Armed primarily with just her guitar and live vocals, the finished product has all the marks of a fully developed artist and performer.

Perhaps the most unique and unexpected aspect of the new album is the tribute Herring pays to iconic folk songstresses who influenced her. Herrings work has always been identified with the traditions of her native South, yet on Golden Apples of the Sun Herring filters the sounds and inspiration of Joni Mitchell and Judy Collins through her own distinctive musical sensibilities. Long-time Herring fans are sure to appreciate her interpretive abilities. Her inspired reinterpretations bring new life to Mitchell's "Cactus Tree" as well as the traditional bluegrass tune "Long Black Veil" and the blues classic "See See Rider." Herring also tackles True Colors, a song made famous by Cyndi Lauper, giving a newfound strength and directness to the pop song.

"I just finished listening to Accidentals of the West and it's great-everything sounds purposeful but not predictable. It's great, just great." -Chris Smither

"simply beautiful. the melodies are plain spoken and invite you to follow; then they lead to some unexpected places & eerily familiar tunes you've never heard before. not quite standards, not quite old fiddle tunes, not quite blues tunes... but from somewhere near where each of those things come from." -Peter Mulvey

Your Heart Is a Glorious Machine is the second Sometymes Why album. Produced by José Ayerve (Winterpills, Spouse), Glorious Machine finds Sometymes Why taking a step out of the shadows, while continuing to nurture the languorous, luminously intimate pop that first inspired them to pursue their collaboration more intently. Sometymes Why first came to be in the dark, quiet corners of the string band renaissance. Fans of each other's respective bands, Andreassen, Merenda, and O'Donovan had performed together in various contexts, both formal and informal, for years. "In 2004," Andreassen recalls, "we went to an afterparty in Brooklyn. I sang 'The Seasick Dawn,' and those two harmonized. It sounded too dreamy to not want to do it again."

Every moment of Your Heart Is a Glorious Machine is underpinned and illuminated by the palpable warmth and camaraderie of the trio. "It is amazing to be a part of a band that includes two of my closest girl friends," O'Donovan concludes. "It feels like a sisterhood, a club. It's very cathartic to be singing these original songs that have so much weight in all of our lives, and not to be singing them alone - to sing them together."

He's teamed with producer and guitarist David "Goody" Goodrich and drummer Zak Trojano to create a simple, yet emotionally powerful musical landscape upon which to paint his blues and folk-fueled narratives. As always, Smither's signature finger-picking style mixes with his whiskey-meets-honey vocals to deliver intensely honest meditations on life, love and loss. Smither's 11th studio album was recorded in just three days and captures the vibrant urgency and immediacy of his live shows. It features eight original compositions as well as covers from Bob Dylan, Mark Knopfler, and 1920s country-blues songster Frank Hutchison.

Unwilling to rely on her golden voice alone, Ms. Jewell is also an accomplished guitar player and songwriter. Never content to stand still geographically or artistically, she has been part of the music scenes in Boise, Santa Fe, Venice Beach, the Berkshires, and now Boston, where the Herald referred to her as an Americana gem. Probably because of her geographic wanderings, her overall sound is distinctive but not easy to pin down. In the music world, you are Blues or Folk or Country mostly because someone says you are. Eilen Jewell is both all and none of these at the same time. New artists are also described in sounds-like terms which can be more of a curse than a blessing. (All new Bob Dylans please form a line on the left and around the block.) Though any of the Boundary County songs would fit just right on playlists that include singers from Gillian Welch to Memphis Minnie to Lucinda Williams to Neil Young, as far as who she sounds like, suffice it to say that Eilen Jewell is the kind of artist people will cite in the not-too-distant future to help define how others sound.

No stranger to adversity, Ms. Jewell lost the previous album she recorded, a collection of covers and originals, when the studio burned down and the masters were destroyed. Boundary County, rather than being an attempted resurrection of the previous effort, heads confidently in new directions, whether its the barroom stomp of "Mess Around," the rock-steady "Back to Dallas," the beautiful dirge "Till You Lay Down Your Heavy Load," the Masters of War-like "The Flood," the Harvest whine of "Boundary County," the tent-meeting shuffle of "Gotta Get Right," the cowboy blues of "Fourth Degree," or the highway blues of "Blow It All Away." Her first-rate backing band on this recording made at Chris Rival's Middleville Studio includes drummer Jason Beek, also of Whoa! Man! Jesus!, fiddler Daniel Kellar and upright bass player Johnny Sciascia, both former Tarbox Ramblers, dobro/lap steel legend Jerry Miller of The Spurs, and Greg Glassman of Tastes Like Gravy String Band on banjo.

This is the story of Eilen (rhymes with feelin') Jewell and her new album Letters From Sinners and Strangers, which promises to show the rest of the world what the buzz is about.

Jewell's achingly hushed style and intimate grasp of roots music's are revealed in the CD's provocative, melodic originals and timeless country and blues classics. Set to a swaying, irrepressible groove, the subdued emotion in her soft soprano feels like music straining beneath skin. And the band evokes classic country, folk and swing without feeling nostalgic. Nothing about roots is retro in Eilen Jewell's universe.

"On those albums," she reflects, "people told me they heard folk, country, western swing, rockabilly, and even jazz...but a part of my roots has been left out up until now."

On April 21, Signature Sounds will release Eilen Jewell's third album, Sea of Tears, a recording that fills in a vital, hitherto missing element of her musical persona. "Before I discovered Woody Guthrie and folk music," she explains, "I was listening to Elvis Presley, Buddy Holly, and, later on, the Animals and the Kinks. I love that stuff, and I love to play it."

With Sea of Tears, Jewell and her longtime band of Jason Beek (drums, harmony vocals), Jerry Miller (electric, acoustic, and steel guitars), and Johnny Sciascia (upright bass) wed her elegantly unflinching songwriting with a rustic, pre-Beatles swagger that encapsulates vintage R&B, Midwestern garage rock, Chicago blues, and early rock and rockabilly, while maintaining the haunting, folk-inspired purity that first made her an artist to watch.

Raw and intimate, Shoot the Moon Right Between the Eyes covers familiar and lesser-known songs spanning twenty years of Prine's career. You can hear amplifiers pop, the heater tick, and the chairs creak as Foucault settles down to capture Prine's timeless simplicity and depth while leaving his own indelible stamp on songs like 'The Late John Garfield Blues,' 'Storm Windows,' and 'He Was in Heaven Before He Died.'

"When I was seventeen my Dad brought home John Prine's first album and it became my private religion for a while. I learned to play the guitar by learning his songs, and my Dad and I still play them around the table after supper when I'm home. They've kept me company for years in hotel rooms and foreign countries, on stage and away from it, telling the truth in beautiful and unexpected ways. This is a record I always wanted to make..." --Jeffrey Foucault

But it's a crossroads too, a transition or turning point. We cannot be delivered from one thing without being delivered into something else, which is to say, without being changed. It's an apt title for Erelli's new collection, produced by Zack Hickman (Josh Ritter). Delivered is a recording born of change, a reckoning of new things seen and old things seen anew.

"Fatherhood has made me more fearless, Erelli says. "I'm less interested in pulling punches." As such, Delivered is Mark Erelli's accounting, his new and sudden narrative, his response to the arrival of the deepest love a man can feel, de profundis, and all its concomitant fears. The record is never sappy, never anxious, refuses to preach, but doesn't shy away from tough issues. It confronts.

Apart from the lyrical content, Erelli also goes deep musically on the new record. From the stark, first-take of Volunteers, to the slashing, Neil Young and Crazy Horse treatment given to Shadowland, from the stirring crescendo of horns that ends Not Alone, to the Paul Simon-esque bounce of Once, Delivered is the sound of a confident artist in complete control of his dynamic musical range. All the talk of new voicings and instrumentations would seem a bit academic, if not for the plain fact Erelli, frankly stated, sings his ass off.

In all regards, Delivered delivers.

Recorded at Slaughterhouse Studios (no animals were harmed), Ranky Tanky is co-produced by Rani Arbo & daisy mayhem and band guitarist Anand Nayak, who has won national recognition for his work with Stevesongs, now featured daily on PBS Kids. It has a live energy that communicates instantly, thanks to a band that gets along, laughs a lot, and knows the key to good music (and a good life, while we're at it) is to get out of the way and let it happen. There is minimal overdubbing on most tunes, and maximum in-the-moment fun: you really feel like youre in the room with these guys.

After 10 years of touring together (often with their own children in tow) Rani Arbo & daisy mayhem are bona fide family themselves - one youll want to jump up and join, as soon as you hear them play. Go for it! Pick up a shaker, dance around the living room, wiggle in the car seat or better yet, pack up the kids and come out to a live show. Family music is a new endeavor for the band, but they have longstanding reputation for performances that are, as the Boston Globe put it, "playful and profound. Ranky Tanky sticks with that equation: it's uplifting, danceable, playful, sometimes silly, sometimes wistful, and never sarcastic. Is it music for kids that parents can love, or music for parents that kids can love? The band refuses to answer that question. They'd rather prove that good music never grows old  and that it keeps us all young. Play along!

At the core of Central Chambers, their newest album and third overall, the Northampton, Mass. quintet maintains its signature chamber-indie ambience while exploring new grounds sonically and lyrically. In it, you'll hear production running the gamut from boombox lo-fi to crisp studio sonorousness; dense rockers balanced by quiet hymns; and an overall diversity in instruments and textures. All of this backs the wandering words of songwriter Philip Price, and here we can see him condensing his meditative lyrical approach into mantras contemplating the frailty of humanity.

This heightens the subjects he studies, themes of frailty and humanity and the heart. He says the albums title, Central Chambers, was initially chosen as a lark, a nod to the band's Northampton rehearsal space. But as the writing/recording process was under way, Price discovered he had a heart condition called an aortic aneurysm; a weakness in the aorta that can lead to hemorrhaging or quick death if left untreated.

With mortality on his mind moreso than ever, the title came to represent for him the chambers of the heart, and themes of the heart crept into the songs he wrote; the life force of blue veins running through everything ("Secret Blue Thread"), an old man collapsing of a heart attack after losing his farm ("Gentleman Farmer"), the aging heart heard through the skin of sleep of an old romantic ("Weary Heart"). "The actual, physical heart goes through many changes and challenges," Price says. But Central Chambers reflects the emotional heart as well. "To me, it also speaks to a place where judgment is dispersed, where lovers meet, where people live - and hide - and where secrets are kept."

These concepts are conveyed with more presence and immediacy than we've heard from Winterpills - notice the forcefulness of "Well Bring You Down," or the elegance of "Take Away The Words." Certainly, we can still pick up on their roots: those Elliott Smith moments remain, along with newer directions invoking Bonnie "Prince" Billie, The Velvet Underground or The Arcade Fire. But youll find these influences only if youre listening specifically for them.

Taken as a whole, though, the things youll hear here - the pleading lyrics, the dreamy pop, the harmonized vocal exchanges and evocative playing - comprise a distinctive sound, crafted over the course of three albums and very much owned by the band playing it. On Central Chambers, Winterpills' biggest influence is none other than Winterpills itself, a strongly established voice that will warm your heart one moment only to sting it the next.

Now, The Light Divides ups the ante on Winterpills' shimmering, resonant, heartbroken pop glory. These songs, as musically sophisticated and delicate as any of songwriter Philip Price's career, and given otherwordly treatment by band members Flora Reed, Dave Hower, and Dennis Crommett, nevertheless feel essential, even familiar, like old friends. The hooks and harmonies have been burnished so that they glow from within -- it's as if Winterpills has brought to light the songs you were already humming to yourself, but didn't know it.

At the core of Central Chambers, their newest album and third overall, the Northampton, Mass. quintet maintains its signature chamber-indie ambience while exploring new grounds sonically and lyrically. In it, you'll hear production running the gamut from boombox lo-fi to crisp studio sonorousness; dense rockers balanced by quiet hymns; and an overall diversity in instruments and textures. All of this backs the wandering words of songwriter Philip Price, and here we can see him condensing his meditative lyrical approach into mantras contemplating the frailty of humanity.

This heightens the subjects he studies, themes of frailty and humanity and the heart. He says the albums title, Central Chambers, was initially chosen as a lark, a nod to the band's Northampton rehearsal space. But as the writing/recording process was under way, Price discovered he had a heart condition called an aortic aneurysm; a weakness in the aorta that can lead to hemorrhaging or quick death if left untreated.

With mortality on his mind moreso than ever, the title came to represent for him the chambers of the heart, and themes of the heart crept into the songs he wrote; the life force of blue veins running through everything ("Secret Blue Thread"), an old man collapsing of a heart attack after losing his farm ("Gentleman Farmer"), the aging heart heard through the skin of sleep of an old romantic ("Weary Heart"). "The actual, physical heart goes through many changes and challenges," Price says. But Central Chambers reflects the emotional heart as well. "To me, it also speaks to a place where judgment is dispersed, where lovers meet, where people live - and hide - and where secrets are kept."

These concepts are conveyed with more presence and immediacy than we've heard from Winterpills - notice the forcefulness of "Well Bring You Down," or the elegance of "Take Away The Words." Certainly, we can still pick up on their roots: those Elliott Smith moments remain, along with newer directions invoking Bonnie "Prince" Billie, The Velvet Underground or The Arcade Fire. But youll find these influences only if youre listening specifically for them.

Taken as a whole, though, the things youll hear here - the pleading lyrics, the dreamy pop, the harmonized vocal exchanges and evocative playing - comprise a distinctive sound, crafted over the course of three albums and very much owned by the band playing it. On Central Chambers, Winterpills' biggest influence is none other than Winterpills itself, a strongly established voice that will warm your heart one moment only to sting it the next.

Named after the address of New York's much-loved Joe's Pub, Lafayette is the acclaimed songwriter's first official live album and an on-record invitation into her other world, the stage, where she spends more than half of every year knocking 'em dead nightly. Over 13 tracks, Lafayette captures the energy and musicality of McKeown as a bandleader and entertainer extraordinaire.

The songs on Not Far Now are among Shindell's most cinematic and provocative, constructing scenarios in a voice that is notably free from moralizing, judgment, or conclusion. Opener Parasol Ants is a notable example, presenting a snapshot of a fallen small-time criminal, knocked to the ground within inches of a row of ants carrying chunks of green leaves over their heads. The thug is at once powerless in his own world and all-powerful in the ants.

State of the Union, a tale of an addict's journey into and out of sobriety with George W. Bush's annual congressional address as the backdrop, has been part of Shindell's live sets for several years now. Boldly unsentimental, it is an unglamorous glimpse into the day-to-day struggle that divides renewal and relapse, rendered by Shindell with unflinching clarity and honesty. Elsewhere, he crafts evocative tales of crooked developers ("One Man's Arkansas"), assumes the role a lovelorn street performer anxious to overcome physical and social barriers ("Juggler Out In Traffic"), and offers a stark, knowing reading of the late and much-missed Dave Carter's postmodern spiritual "The Mountain."

Nine years ago, New Jersey native and longtime New York resident Richard Shindell left home, relocating his family to Buenos Aires, Argentina. "Argentina feels like home now. Despite its many dysfunctions, the place and its people really get under your skin," he explains. "Some of the subject matter of the songs on Not Far Now is rooted in my experience of the local context. For example, 'Mariana's Table' is about a woman who sells empanadas to the truckers in a town called Brandsen, in the Province of Buenos Aires. 'Balloon Man' deals with a guy in our neighborhood here in Buenos Aires."

Before he moved, Shindell firmly established himself as a leading light on the American folk circuit, via a compelling series of albums of original songs (beginning with 1992's Sparrow Point), the live Courier (2002), and 2007's Vuelta. The Wall Street Journal proclaimed him "a master of subtle narrative," while Jon Pareles wrote in the New York Times that, in Shindell's songs, "The tone is reflective, but the dilemmas and disappointments couldn't be more vivid." Shindell toured tireless behind each of his albums, building a dedicated following among both listeners and his fellow artists, leading to an offer to tour with Joan Baez and the formation of Cry Cry Cry, the all-star trio of Shindell, Dar Williams, and Lucy Kaplansky, who released an eponymous album in 1998 and toured regularly through 2000. Kaplansky contributes vocals to Not Far Now, and other guests on the project include bassist Viktor Krauss, venerable session drummer Steve Holley (Dar Williams, Joe Cocker, Elton John, Wings), keyboardist David Sancious, and vocalist and violinist Sara Milonovich, among others. Shindell plays an array of stringed instruments, including acoustic, electric, and twelve-string guitars, electric bass, percussion, piano, and bouzouki, which is featured prominently on many of Not Far Now's tracks. "I've been playing a lot of bouzouki," he says. "As the Irish discovered as well, it's a great instrument for accompanying the human voice. It also produces a very persistent, driving kind of sound, which I find generates a certain energy in an arrangement." The instrument is most strikingly used as an accompaniment on a powerful version of Cuban revolutionary songwriter Silvio Rodriguez's "Que Hago Ahora."

Of all the themes and characters investigated on Not Far Now, a surprising favorite emerges: "Get Up Clara," a soliloquy delivered by a weary traveler to his mule as he wanders rootlessly through the backroads, set in the later days of the Roman Empire. The song's appeal is obvious, Shindell insists. "Of the eleven songs on this record," Shindell reflects, "there are three that have shown up pretty regularly in my live sets during the past year or two. People seem to like 'Clara' the most, as do I. This is perhaps explained by the fact that Clara is a mule, and people generally like songs about mules."

South of Delia's twelve songs are drawn from a wide variety of sources including bona-fide legends (Dylan & Guthrie) and excellent contemporary writers (Josh Ritter & Jeffrey Foucault). Also included are a couple of traditional songs to complete a thoughtful selection of tracks.

Shindell's smooth and effortless guitar obviously dominates the disc, but there's a wide variety of instrumentation including electric guitar, strings, bass and percussion, plus there are some memorable backing vocals on many tracks. The list of musicians and guests is full of exceptional talent and includes Richard Thompson, Eliza Gilkyson, Larry Campbell, Lucy Kaplansky, Viktor Krauss and Tony Trischka. The choice of material is superb, with a mix of well known and more obscure songs. There are many memorable tracks, including A.P. Carter's beautifully simple melody on "The Storms are on the Ocean," and his reading of Springsteen's "Born in the USA," which is anything but anthemic, and really highlights the bitter and stinging hardship contained in the lyrics. The Band's "Acadian Driftwood" is an account of the Great Expulsion of Acadia by the British Army in 1755, and Shindell's reading is moving and full of feeling. "Deportee (Plane Wreck at Los Gatos)" is a Guthrie protest poem dealing with the crash of a plane carrying 28 illegal immigrant who were being deported back to Mexico, and the subsequent media coverage that referred to the dead workers only as "deportees."

His own songs may be missing, but his superb guitar playing, strong vocals and musicality are very much present--his ear for an arrangement has always been very strong but Delia represents a high watermark. The construction of the songs feels natural but it's obvious that much love, time and effort has been put into the arrangements and production to achieve this balance.

South of Delia is a superb disc; great songs and musicians and some of the classiest, most restrained and appropriate production you could wish for. Essential and not to be missed.

If you weren't able to attend the show, you can still help. For this special benefit concert Signature Sounds created an exclusive collection of songs donated by our artists to help raise even more funds.100% of the proceeds from the sale of this CD will be donated to Partners In Health