Twisted South Radio

Rachel Schain is a passionate, talented performer, drawing comparisons to Tori Amos, Joni Mitchell, and Dar Williams. Music has been in her heart for as long as she can recall. At age 12 she finally started taking voice lessons to hone in on the music magic you hear today. She performed in school choirs and synagogue whenever she could all through college, where she studied voice. While Rachel has been deeply involved in many aspects of the music industry such as promotions, on-air talent on a Long Island radio station, and good old fashioned fandom, performing music is where she felt she belonged. In addition to the three amazing artists listed above, Rachel counts Blues Traveler, Kate Miller-Heidke, Ben Folds, Rufus Wainwright, Elvis Costello, and OK Go as her greatest musical influences Bluebird & Skoko are a buzzing combination of deep Chicago blues and dirty rock’n’roll energy guided by the spirit of Screaming Jay Hawkins, Billie Holiday, Muddy Waters, The Cramps, and all those artists inspired by the fire inside. Their music is the expression of passion for music and lust for life. They sing and play from the guts, guided by that mysterious creature called Mojo.

It’s a long way from south Mississippi, where she was born, to Glastonbury, in southwestern England. But Lisa Mills has played Glastonbury and many more European festivals enough to feel comfortable on both sides of the Atlantic. In fact, the artistic connections she formed as she gained international fans are counted as her musical next-of-kin; they just happen to be in the UK, while she now makes her home on Mobile Bay. Sky Sutton, author and daughter of the infamous Popcorn Sutton, moonshiner, will be joinig the show to talk about her father Popcorn Sutton, moonshiner extrodinarne and her journey to discover him and her family in the south. Sky will also be talking about her place in the Twisted South family as well.

If your best friends were in a band, wouldn’t you go see them every chance you got? And if they ended up writing all of your new favorite songs, you’d tell all of your other friends about them, right? So every time your best friends play a show, all of your other best friends are there enjoying it with you. A new family like community is formed, and each show is a reunion that you actually want to attend. This is what it’s like to be a fan of Star & Micey. Imagine the female love child of Dusty Springfield and Doug Sahm with Dr. John acting as the midwife…and you’ll have an idea of the southern roots music with elements of rock, blues, soul, gospel and country that defines artist Beth McKee.

    Gina Sicilia 2008 Blues Music Award Nominee for "Best New Artist" - Critically acclaimed, internationally touring Blues & Americana singer/songwriter from Philadelphia, PA. Brian Strange and the Strange Brothers are an Austin based group comprised of Brian and his 2 sons, AUstin & Jake and his daughter Emily. Country based music with beautiful harmonies.   At 43-years-old, New England’s Roomful of Blues has been around even longer than Alligator Records. For all that time, they’ve celebrated the jump blues, R&B and early rock ‘n’ roll music of the horn-powered golden era of the late 1940s and early 1950s.  Inspired by the spirit of the groundbreaking bands of the post-World War II decade, they’ve breathed new life into vintage songs, infusing them with boundless energy and fiery, swinging solos and vocals. 

Like so many of us, Rachel Brooke was born in the wrong time. Her classic style, and her simple and poetic songs fit much more snugly in an oval picture frame of tarnished metal and smoky glass than on CMT or Clear Channel pop country. She might be from Michigan, but this girl must have been touched with the songs and sentiments of the southlands and the weary West at birth. Powder Mill brings to mind an outfit of roughians, backwoods hillbillies that live hard and rock harder.Honest, homegrown, down-home, simple…..whatever you want to call it. It is theirs and they don’t care if you like it……but you damn well better respect it.  JP Jones plays guitar and sings vocals in the band JP, Chrissie ( Hynde) and the Fairground Boys. Fidelity!, the gutsy, raw debut album from JP, Chrissie, & The Fairground Boys, is an epic love story, albeit not a conventional one. Everything you need to know about the heartbreaking, but ultimately uplifting and fruitful relationship between The Pretenders leader Chrissie Hynde and Welsh singer-songwriter JP Jones is contained within Fidelity!’s 11 songs. JP & Chrisse Hynde are currently in NY recording their follow-up album and he takes a break from that to join Twisted South Radio.

Howard Kaylan, founding member of the Turtles and half of the duet called "Flo & Eddie" who were part of Frank Zappa's Mothers of Inventions, joins Twisted South Radio to talk about his long career and what he is doing now, including teaching at Dweezilla Music Boot Camp this July 2011. Also on the show this week will be Billy Hulting, percussionist for the band Zappa Plays Zappa who is a veteran of the first Dweezilla Music Boot Camp as well as being in Zappa Plays Zappa lead by Dweezil Zappa for the last 5 years since Dweezil decided to put a band together to bring back the music of his father, Frank Zappa to live audiences once again. On this show a special guest has just been announced, Cal Schenkel, the artist who did so many album covers for Frank Zappa, Captain Beefheart and more. He was the main visual collaborator for Frank Zappa and was responsible for the art and graphic design of many of Zappa's most well-known album covers. Schenkel's work is iconic and distinctive in style; a forerunner of punk art and the new wave era.

In just a year or so, soulsters Fitz & the Tantrums went from the living room to the main stage. The recipe for meteoric success? Six killer musicians, five dapper suits, irresistible songs, some serendipity and one vintage organ. Since their first show at Hollywood’s Hotel Café in December 2008, Fitz and co. have toured with Maroon 5, played to thousands at Colorado’s world famous Red Rocks Amphitheatre, shared the stage New Year’s Eve with Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings, and performed on KCRW’s esteemed show, Morning Becomes Eclectic, all this on the strength of their stellar five-song EP, Songs for a Breakup, Vol. 1. For some bands, it takes a lifetime to build this success, but few performers deliver an unrestrained blast of soul-clapping, get-down-on-the-floor, moneymaker shakers like Fitz and the Tantrums. Now post-release of their debut full length, Pickin’ Up the Pieces, which has since earned them a 3 ½ star album review in ROLLING STONE, the troupe is poised to get down in dancehalls across the universe. Josh Langston is a man of “This is who I Am” merit. With his in your face, take it or leave it attitude, he has been on a road of many twists and turns that fly through his music career without a doubt. His voice carries through a room like a tornado with a cause and if you ever have the chance to run him down and hear a show you will be left with no question of who he is, what he stands for, and a hum that will run through your soul like never before, finding yourself with an addiction to the sound wailing from his mic.Often being called the Steve Earle of his time; his outlaw tune is not your typical commercial jingle lingering from Nashville.

Too Slim & The Taildraggers are Straight Whiskey Blues with a Southern Rock Beer Chaser. Angie and the Car Wrecks are comprised of two brothers, Shawn and Dale Ball, on the upright bass and guitar, respectively, with their good friends Calvin Jernberg on the drums and Garrett Pessin on Harmonica, and Dale's wife Angie Ball leading the pack and taking on vocals. They are based in a small town in the Pacific Northwest, where they hone their craft on many rainy days stuck inside. Kevin Daniel Smith-"With a deep, booming voice harking back to a time in music history when singers like Merle Haggard and Johnny Cash reigned supreme,(and with songwriting abilities to boot), his songs relate to just about anybody, and his sound is all his own, no doubt."...

Jaida Dreyer was born in Canada but raised in Nashville,we welcome her southern style to the show. Jesse Dayton is playing Kinky Friedman in an upcoming play. The movie I did over the summer, "The Sinner," will be screened at SXSW Film Festival and we're in the studio working on the soundtrack right now. Stag Records is talking about releasing a full sound track record for it which will be cool. Again, something different for me.-Jesse Dayton Peter Parcek has been nominated by The Blues Foundation for the 2011 Blues Music Awards as "Best New Artist Debut." Peter's nomination is the result of the overwhelming critical acclaim for his 2010 national album debut, "The Mathematics of Love."

The Blues are a religion and Brian "Husky" Burnette sho nuff preaches it. He blends Mississippi Delta guitar licks with Rock n Roll, Electric Blues and Attitude. His music is gritty, soulful, southern, deep-fried, low-down and dirty. Husky, following in the family footsteps of Rockabilly Kings Johnny Burnette and Dorsey Burnett. Bigd Ledbetter is the creator of the viral videos "The Redneck Minute" where he gets drunk and reviews all the great music of the south, in his traditional "redneck " fashion. The Bear formed in The Shoals area of Alabama in 2006. The members are Louisa Murray (vocals, banjo), Nathan Pitts (vocals, guitar, banjo, pedal steel), Ben Tanner (keys), Kyle Minckler (percussion & drums), & Ben Stedman (upright bass). The band began as a duo of Murray and Pitts. After a couple of years the other members joined the band. As well as playing keys, Tanner (who works at Fame studio in Muscle Shoals as an engineer) also recorded and mixed the album. The majority of the album was recorded over two marathon weekends during the summer of 2010 and was self released in January of this year.

Growing up in Buffalo, SC, Vanderford first learned to play the harp from his grandfather. Initially, Vanderford blended the country style of his grandfather with the sound of the Chicago blues. One day on the way to school, however, Vanderford turned on the radio to hear Arthur “Peg Leg Sam” Jackson play the Piedmont Blues. Once the teenage Vanderford discovered that the blues harpist and former medicine show performer lived nearby, he set out to meet him, eventually developed a close relationship and learned something of Peg Leg Sam’s skills and his style. Like all families, Kopecky Family Band beats with the same heart and writes in the same blood. The Family began creating music together in Nashville, Tennessee in the Fall of 2007. What started as late night talks about life and dreams gradually flowed into eccentric and beautiful music that has propelled this band into the forefront of the fast-moving Nashville music scene. Leading the family are singers Gabe and Kelsey, along with Steven (lead guitar), Corey (bass), Markus (cello), Benjamin (violin), and David (drums). The emotion of their music is raw and vulnerable whilst maintaining an unmistakable power and presence. The sounds created by the booming and orchestral septet challenge the listener’s ear while still offering simply melodies to sing along with. The Dirty Guv’nahs new CD, Youth Is In Our Blood, produced by two-time Grammy-winner Justin Guip (Levon Helm, The Black Crowes) at Helm’s renowned barn/studio in Woodstock, NY is the follow-up to their eponymous 2009 debut. It is a hot, roiling stew of gritty, soul-influenced rock ‘n’ roll, mixed with a hefty helping of roots, funk, blues and country. It’s the sound that has earned them the distinction of being voted Knoxville’s Best Ban —three years in a row—by the readers of that city’s alternative weekly, Metro Pulse.

Critically-acclaimed singer/songwriter Nathan Moore has been astounding audiences nationwide with his unique Americana-tinged indie-folk sound and lyrical profundity for nearly two decades, and the well-spring of songs from “…a musician that is in a constant state of becoming, always in the present with wide-eyed curiosity,”(State of Mind) keeps flowing. Music critics like JamBase’s Aaron Kayce marvel at Moore’s gift: “Nathan Moore…is one of the greatest songwriters we have and the faucet is always on pouring fresh songs out like water.” The world's youngest rock band, Haunted By Heroes, are growing up in Pacifica California. They became best friends at a daycare center when they were 3 years old. These five kids, now at the ripe old age of ten, are rocking it out on stage from Candlestick Park to the Whisky a Go Go in Los Angeles.. As the youngest band to ever perform at the legendary Whisky these tykes continue to pick up media steam...The group was discovered by manager Brent Turner (whose former band once rocked the fabled Sunset Strip ) and Turner set up tours along the west coast where Haunted By Heroes perform for a variety of audiences and venues.This remarkable and talented rock quintet's career is moving faster than a speeding bullet. Hammering out music in the vein of AC/DC and Tool these kids are captivated with music as they develop their own sound. Instead of Cheerios, these kids eat rock and roll for breakfast.

The fearless leaders of The Bridge have traveled an enormous distance to get where they are; all the way from living off-the-grid on a remote Hawaiian farm—in Kenny Liner’s case—and chafing in the buttoned-down corporate world—in Cris Jacobs’—to making a formidable album that’s fed by hometown roots and laced with wanderlust. It’s called National Bohemian, a nod to both the Baltimore-based sextet’s beloved local brew and their creatively rewarding but often unglamorous hard-touring lifestyle. It’s also the work of a dexterous band of players to be reckoned with. And it’s available February 1, 2011 on Woodberry Records/Thirty Tigers. To sample some of their music click here http://thebridgemusic.com/?page_id=30 Wiser Time is straight rock and roll Americana Blues, from the heart of New Jersey and New York. Their sound is something you might have thought would be coming from the south.To sample some music fro them click here http://www.wiser-time.com/music.html Danny Zelisko of LIVE Nation will be joining us tonight to our listeners about the upcoming benefit concert in Arizona with Jackson Browne, Alice Cooper and many more bands.

The Belle Brigade is a band from Los Angeles consisting of siblings Ethan and Barbara Gruska. Inspired by Barbara and Ethan’s love for Fleetwood Mac, Simon & Garfunkel, The Beatles, and Stevie Wonder, the album’s artfully arranged, freewheeling songs brim with breezy, California melodies and bracing pop harmonies, fueled by the driving rhythms Barbara plays on drums. A longtime fixture on the Los Angeles music scene, Barbara is a sought-after live drummer who toured with Inara George and Jenny Lewis, among others, before she picked up a guitar and formed The Belle Brigade with her singer-songwriter younger brother Ethan two years ago. Billy Eli plays country that rocks and rock that’s country, delivering songs that are vivid slices of real life lived to the fullest and chased down with a stiff shot of whiskey. With a style that’s rooted in his small town Southeast Texas origins that transcends the Lone Star State to achieve an international reach, the Austin, TX-based singer and songwriter has been compared by critics to such stellar American music artists as Tom Petty, Steve Earle, John Prine and John Mellencamp, to name a few. Brandon Jenkins With a voice as big as Texas and guitar chops (and beard) that would make Billy Gibbons proud, Jenkins takes his rightful place as one of the shining stars of not only Red Dirt, but American music. “I’ve always thought Red Dirt was less about a sound, and more about a brotherhood of musicians with a common goal; not only to make music, but music with a message,” says Jenkins. “Bob Childers, Jimmy LaFave, Tom Skinner, The Great Divide and so many others have helped to shape and form this rapidly growing genre, bringing in the convictions of Woody Guthrie, and the swank and swagger of the Outlaw Country and Southern Rock movements”.

Jesse and Noah is a Florida based country music duo. It is composed of Jesse Bellamy and Noah Bellamy, the sons of The Bellamy Brothers. In the late 1990s, Jesse and Noah formed and were members of a group called Burning Sky. The group released a video that year for their single "It Weeps In My Heart" which was featured on CMT. Their debut project with Fort Worth based Smith Music Group titled Nowhere Revisited was released in 2006. Jesse and Noah's first single, "Daddy's Got a Shotgun," made the Texas Music Chart's Top 50 Songs of 2006. Additionally, the song, “Wild and Willin’” received Texas Music Chart success Their song, “You’re the World”, co-written by Jesse Bellamy and David Bellamy, was included on both the Nowhere Revisited album and the Bellamy Brothers, "Jesus Is Coming" album. This song earned Jesse Bellamy his first gold record when Wenche of Denmark released her version of the song.] The album included a cover of the Tom T. Hall-penned “Faster Horses” and earned them the "Who to Watch in 2007" title by the Country Music Association. Matt Zeiss was born on Long Island, New York in 1987, Matt Zeiss was raised by parents who played a variety of music, Doo-Wop, Rock n’ Roll, R&B, Hard Rock, 80's Rock, Bubble Gum, and just about everything else. Anxious to begin producing more music, Matt became involved with a numerous amount of producers trying to find the right sound for himself musically. Over a few years and a lot of effort, Zeiss finally was introduced to a producer by named Sean Power: And on one train ride, and one online video chat, the two had figured out the sound Zeiss had been looking for. A few weeks after the meeting, Zeiss worked his way to recording at the Legendary SUN Studio in Memphis, Tn. bios courtesy of http://www.jesseandnoah.com/ and http://www.zeisslive.com