5 January 2017

The story of Shane O’Malley Firek, the single constant member of The Ferdy Mayne, is one of journeys – physical, spiritual, and a combination of the two. “I was going through massive change when I was writing this material,” Firek explains of his self-titled debut album, out March 24th via Greater Peaks Records. “Before my sobriety, I was completely insane, in and out of jail, losing friends and putting myself in considerable debt,” he confesses. “I quit drinking around the time I began to perform in New York, and I’ve been sober a little over three years now.” Free of the law, and free of the hold of alcohol, Firek accomplishes on this album what any artist hopes to who has lived through pretty good and really bad, and that is to fully inform the work with experience. Firek is most proud of his lyrics, and unlike some songwriters, he fights hard for them, sometimes over the course of many years. “This is the single most focused song on the record, lyrically,” Firek explains. “What else can it say? Define my name. Surreal, poignant Ferdy lyrics. This is what I do best.” It’s a lot of movement, the other side of the coin of confinement, which Firek also knows something about. It’s likely the same optimism about his first glimpse of Los Angeles that kept him going before arriving there. “Los Angeles is a shimmering object at first glance,” he remembers. “It is unreliable, similar to the unreliable dream of New York City, but I trust in the truth that you can sharpen the tools you came here with.” Firek’s journey continues in 2017. Details of a tour behind the release of the debut album by The Ferdy Mayne will be announced shortly. The self-titled debut album by The Ferdy Mayne arrives on March 24th, 2017 via Greater Peaks Records.

While Caroline Spence may not look like one of the road-hardened troubadours of America’s past, the latest record from the young songwriter from Charlottesville, Virginia proves she is every bit as serious. Her highly-anticipated sophomore album, Spades & Roses, is due out on March 3, 2017. It’s is a rare but unmistakable authenticity and emotional resonance that can’t be faked, all delivered from  a “feather-light voice that evokes the best singers of the Lilith Fair era” (Rolling Stone Country). Somehow Caroline Spence manages to be both ethereally pristine and yet profoundly raw and human–a disarming union of self-assuredness and vulnerability that runs throughout the record.  Under the guidance of Producer Neilson Hubbard, Spades and Roses strips away all of the sonic barriers that might stand between Spence and her listener, allowing her fragile melodies and first person confessionals to do their work– reaching out and empathizing, providing a soundtrack to our own hidden stories.  Every song on the record–whether pop or meditative, glib or heartbreaking– asks the essential question of whether or not the listener can recognize himself. Having won numerous songwriting awards from industry mainstays like the Kerrville Folk Festival and American Songwriter Magazine, and garnered nods and admiration from both Miranda Lambert and her fellow writers in the Nashville underground, Caroline Spence has delivered a record to meet the expectation: Quite simply, 11 songs of gorgeous Americana that remind us of why we fell in love with the genre in the first place. So who is Spades and Roses for? Songwriters who need a sympathetic shoulder?  Song lovers who are tired of the latest gimmick? Modern ladies who still enjoy knitting? Older men who have seen enough to not find that intimidating? In the end, it’s for all of us that demand a lot of life and love, and yet still have the grace and hope to go on loving the world in spite of what it is sometimes. It’s for all of us that still like to hear our story told in song.  In Caroline’s own words, which seem to summarize the record, “It’s all love, and it’s all pain. And after all, I can’t complain.”