Young folks focuses on the best, fresh folk, acoustic, singer-songwriter indie folk & alt-country jams. Turn it up Folks!
Gracie Jean
‘Romance Is Bad’
[folk/alt pop]
Press Notes:
Hailing from the East Coast of NSW, Australia, Gracie Jean is a storyteller, artist, nature lover and Christian with a lot of feelings. As a timid child music became an outlet to express her feelings when her confidence in short supply. Encouraged by her grandfather who pitch tested her at 5 years of age, and saw incredible potential in her abilities, Gracie began to discover who she was in music and what she was truly capable of, leading her to the journey she is living today.
Gracie Jean is new to the music scene and has been sauntering up onto stages around Sydney’s Inner-West, getting audiences to smile, and tap their toes to original tunes.
The A.M.s
‘Smoke’
[indie folk/americana]
Press Notes:
In 2019 on Piano Day, the 88th day of the year, Adrian happened to tune Mariko’s piano. He asked if she wanted to play together; she said maybe. Realizing she might be able to return to her long-lost passion, music, they connected and started rehearsing with the hopes of playing out. Before they ever got the chance he moved to California, and soon after COVID-19 shut everything down. But they kept playing and sending ideas. Now, with an extensive catalog of 50+ songs, they are releasing their first album, Ignite the Sky, recorded at Earwig Studio in Seattle, WA.
Ignite the Sky chronicles Mariko’s journey of finding her birth parents during COVID, while processing the events and struggles of 2020 in quarantine. The self-produced and mostly self-played collection of songs, save for their drummer, Jason Edwards, lends to the intimate nature of the album along with the acoustic instruments and vintage keys. Using inspiration from nature, “Torn Vine” introduces others to the identity struggles of an adoptee, while “Biggest Wave” illustrates the immense weight of connecting to birth parents and discovering a love and loss so deep. The upbeat latin groove of “15,000 Days” isn’t what it seems at first–rather, it was 15,000 days that had passed until Mariko and her birth parents reunited once again. “Ignite the Sky” the title track, encompasses many themes across the band, adoption, and quarantine: distance, loss, hopelessness, separation, but ultimately faith that stars will align again for reconnection in the future.
Ryan Hicks
‘Am I Going To Die (Hot Windy Palms)?’
[singer-songwriter/folk/alt pop]
Press Notes:
Ryan Hicks makes melodic, Americana alt-pop music – as if McCartney, Brian Wilson and Fleet Foxes made music for David Lynch. Hicks is a singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and producer from Regina, SK. Recent highlights include touring western Canada, being played on Sirius XM’s North Americana Channel, opening for Devin Cuddy, The Royal Foundry, and performing at 2018 Gateway Music Festival with his 2018 album Pulsing Colours with performers such as William Prince and and Terra Lightfoot. (Influences: Ron Sexsmith, Brian Wilson, Paul McCartney, Father John Misty, Radiohead.)
Tyson Ray Borsboom
‘Man’
[folk/acoustic/singer-songwriter]
Press Notes:
Tyson Ray’s music can be described as country, indie, folk, and even rock but what makes this singer songwriter special? He captures the best aspects of numerous genres and harnesses them into one unique sound. If you’ve had the pleasure to see Tyson perform you’ve seen the raw emotion of Dermot Kennedy, the grit of Brett Emmons (The Glorious Sons), and the story telling charisma of Donovan Woods.
Saddlemen
‘I’m No Hero’
[country/americana/rock n’ roll]
Press Notes:
We’re Saddlemen, a Brooklyn rock & roll band with a big passion for high-energy barroom-bangers and honest story-telling. Over the past year, we’ve been working hard on getting an album together. Now, we’re finally ready to send it on out to the world. We hope our tunes make you want to hug your friends, crack one open, and roll those windows alllll the way down.
Hazlett
‘Oh Downhill’
[indie folk]
Press Notes:
After ghostwriting and playing in various rhythm sections for most of his formative years, the shy guy from Brisbane found a creative home in the farthest of places, Sweden. Hazlett packed up his things and now resides in Stockholm where his solo project was founded with the help of close friend and producer Freddy Alexander. Writing with his gut and heart like a troubadour of old and combining it with the modern sonic landscape that dances in his head things are blooming in his new-found home in the Northern Hemisphere. Hazlett’s has so far released two well received EPs, toured across Europe, Australia and grew a close-knit family of people he trusts in his adopted home. “As much as Hazlett is me, I think anything good in life is better when you let people in”. With that team spirit in mind, they all made the decision at the start of the pandemic in 2020 to pause everything, bunker down and work on Hazlett’s first full-length album which is set to be released on his new label home Nettwerk.
Nadia Kamrath
‘James’
[indie folk/indie pop/singer-songwriter]
Press Notes:
Hi!! I’m Nadia 🙂 I write soft and vulnerable indie-pop songs filled with dreamy hooks and melodies. Songwriting is my favorite thing in the whole world and I’ve been doing it since I can remember. My parents have old videos of me making up lyrics and singing ridiculously before I even knew how to write. In all the years since then, I’ve filled notebooks and notebooks with my words. I love telling stories about my experiences and interpretations of love in its most fragile state. I hope you enjoy listening to my songs as much as I enjoyed creating them.
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Lily Talmers
‘Hope, You Whore’
[americana/cinematic/bossa nova]
Press Notes:
Lily hopes her voice will lull you into Midwestern-accent-induced submission. Once called “a real artist in a sea of abc family series previews,” she hopes her songs are in fact, as the same person also said, “NOT a finger painting of a mood.” With melodies as informed by Greek, Lusophone, and classical music as they are by American roots music, each song guarantees you a unique journey into Lily’s strange intervallic insides. A metro-Detroit native who now resides in Ann Arbor, Michigan, her first full length record, “Remember Me as Holy,” was released in February of 2021. Her music is recorded almost exclusively in basements across the state of Michigan. She hopes you find a piece of yourself in her, and she in you.
Metò
‘1000 Times’
[indie folk/indie pop]
Press Notes:
Metò is a Quebec city based multi-instrumentalist, singer-songwriter and producer who moves through a multitude of tones and textures in his musical compositions. As his father fell seriously ill in 2019 and had to be taken care of until his passing, Metò decided to adjourn his reality in triumphant melodies of romanticized epiphanies. From his bedroom and a friend’s basement, he organically sewed a tunic of sound to produce his first EP: Alstroemeria.
Juan Wayne
‘Desert Mama’
[folk/lo-fi rock]
Press Notes:
Call it the alcoholic lovechild of two roving delinquents. Los Angeles-based Juan Wayne emerged in the middle of 2018 from the dark outer recesses of the minds of songwriters Andrew St. James and César Maria while out on tour in support of the former’s 2017 solo album The Big Ole Veronica Apology Record.
Once returned home from the road and huddled in seclusion in Maria’s Koreatown apartment, the pair recorded two records on an 8 track tape machine. Part concept, part earnest autobiographical reflection, the collaboration quickly gained traction through their native San Francisco songwriting community, resulting in live performances replete with cowboy hats and boots and a bevy of supporting players culled from acts as diverse as Tino Drima and Deltron 3030.
The first of those two records, Juan Wayne 1, was released in December 2020, a slice of brevity reflecting the duo’s undeniable kismet. They follow it now with Juan Wayne 2, out September 16, 2022 on St. James’s imprint, Peaches.
Juan Wayne 2 finds our heroes, hearts forever on sleeves, gaining new perspective, with fresh eyes on an emerging new future. The duo’s lifelong friendship yields a profound connection, melded together as always by two distinct narrative voices so intertwined – both through personal history and heartache, and shared influence – that it becomes difficult to distinguish where one ends and the other begins.
Herein the root of new beginning takes shape. Best seen and heard to be believed, Juan Wayne rides.
Photo Credits: Jens Kotlenga
[All Press Notes provided by the artists]
Compiled by: Christos Doukakis