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Thirty years ago Chicago-born RJ Comer abruptly withdrew from music school and gave up on his dream to be a musician.  Dark years of violence, addiction, poverty, fractured relationships, and suicide attempts followed, culminating in a come-to-Jesus weekend in a Mississippi jail.  RJ straightened himself out (mostly), worked his way through college, earned a full scholarship to law school, and became an attorney. He thought he was done with music, but music wasn’t done with him.  Eight years ago, while a partner in a Los Angeles law firm, a band RJ started for kicks got signed. RJ stormed back into music, fusing his love of roots and blues in two band LPs, two solo EP’s, and several songs for film.  Now a full-time musician living in the Tennessee woods, RJ’s toured from Canada to Florida and throughout the U.S., earning official showcases at SXSW, Canadian Music Week, and various songwriter’s festivals—steadily garnering critical acclaim and building a fanbase. One Last Kiss is RJ’s first solo LP—a collection of songs from a man who transcended hardships few people escape.  RJ’s songs are both conversational and poetic, deftly straddling traditional and contemporary Americana and Blues.  With a baritone voice that can be powerful, ragged, or soothing, RJ shows the emotional and experiential range of a man who once only knew how to fight or flee, but slowly learned to live and prosper, and eventually learned to love. Some Nashville notables contributed to One Last Kiss, creating a primarily acoustic sound that is classic but never stock, and is always distinctly RJ.  Grammy-winner Randy Kohrs—renowned for his work with talents as diverse as Jim Lauderdale, Dolly Parton and Dierks Bentley—shows the full range of his abilities on One Last Kiss, from the insane resonator solo on the hallucinogenic “Desert Mama” to his swaggering riffs on “Bad Day in Paradise.”  Fiddler Daniel Foulks from the Parker Millsap band adds his signature freight train fiddle to joyful tracks like “Under a Lover’s Moon” and quietly mourns with RJ on the bluesy ballad “One Last Kiss.”   Foulks also leads the fiddle & cello duo fluidly accompanying RJ’s longing and regret on “If I Could be Water”—achieving a sound that is at once profoundly intimate and yet also cinematic. One Last Kiss was produced by Shawn Byrne in his Nashville studio. One of Nashville’s most sought out multi-instrumentalists and a SESAC Writer’s Award winner, Shawn is also gaining a reputation as a producer—having trained under the guidance of Grammy winning producer Nathan Chapman. Byrne’s challenge was to create a musically coherent sound for an album that includes joyful love songs to a song about the kiss of death and for a singer that belts, growls, and whispers.  Around an acoustic backbone of percussion, fiddles, guitars, and harmonica, Byrne fleshed out the sound for each song by selectively incorporating cello, keyboards, mandolin, electric guitar, or accordion.  The result is a sound that preserves the timeless qualities of acoustic Americana & Blues, invokes the open space of rural life, but is updated for the increasingly urban 21st Century audience. “Every day people may find a lot to relate to in this record and will hopefully be entertained and inspired.” RJ says.  “I’m a guy who loves my wife of 22 years, drives a truck, and lives in the forest.  But I once abandoned my dreams and was on my way to being a young corpse or an old inmate.  Instead I made a success of my life and was given a second chance to make music.  All that is in this record.”

Amy Lawton has released the video for her new single ‘Hurts Like Paradise’. The new single is an upbeat country-pop love song reminiscent of the likes of Suzanne Vega, Alanis Morrisette and country-era Taylor Swift. The video finds Amy acting out the story of the song as she explains, “‘Hurts Like Paradise’ is a song I wrote when I was at school. It’s kind of a story about a relationship from start to finish, only it’s told from the perspective of someone who feels like they’re an outsider. I like that there are details in the song which show this character as they talk about their experiences. Even though it’s a sad song, I like to juxtapose sad lyrics with upbeat sounds.” About recording the video she continues, “The filming of the video was a fun day as we tried to visualise the song and acting out a story for a video was a new experience for me. We shot the video down the same road where the track was recorded and where I write most of my songs in London. I really enjoyed shooting at the locations – great spaces and it was nice to be in familiar places!” ‘Hurts Like Paradise’ has been created alongside the multi-platinum selling hit songwriter Matty Benbrook (Paolo Nutini, Jack Savoretti, Dido) who discovered the fresh-faced singer on the London live scene. She has announced two London shows to celebrate the release of ‘Hurts Like Paradise’ and will to play Ronnie Scott’s on June 5th and The Lock Tavern, Camden on June 12th.

Texas’ genre-bending rock ‘n’ roller Israel Nash announces his fifth studio album ‘Lifted’,a modern day hippie-spiritual, which finds Nash continuing his tradition of creating a sonic landscape that is at once both vast and intimate – soaring and untamed at times, placid and sincerely personal at others. Accompanied by his longtime band, with arrangements by Jesse Chandler (Mercury Rev, Midlake), horns by members of Austin’s cumbia/funk compadre’s Grupo Fantasma, and strings from Kelsey Wilson and Sadie Wolf (Wild Child), Nash, alongside co-producer and engineer Ted Young (Kurt Vile, The Rolling Stones), presents an album that soars with meticulously crafted, multi-hued rock and psychedelia. ‘Lifted’ opens with an extended instrumental introduction before blossoming into lead single ‘Rolling On’. The track acts as the album’s manifesto, an anthem of urgency, encouraging the listener to let go of yesterday’s troubles and move forward with positivity. The album was recorded at Israel Nash’s own studio, a Quonset hut structure called Plum Creek Sound at his home in Dripping Springs, Texas. During the process the studio became a sanctuary for Nash, a creative environment where he often reached a meditative state of escapism, creating a space where he could leave behind his downhearted feelings about the current political landscape and the bigger, existential questions those concerns raise. Being able to finally use Plum Creek Sound to its full potential, Nash set about recording found sounds and field recordings from his Texas ranch, with the aim of creating a listening experience that was almost an immersive representation of his environment. Drums played in rain collection tanks, water rushing against the limestone, frogs, crickets, and even a rattlesnake all appear throughout the record. Taking inspiration from methods pioneered by John Cage, Nash then randomized the sounds and music before rearranging them according to the I Ching (The Book of Changes). This process of experimenting, as Nash explains, was key to the making of ‘Lifted’ “It’s all about finding, searching for little sparks of inspiration. It may be a sound, a groove, a colour, or even an object. Old things are inspiring. Whatever it is, when you find it, it spreads like a conflagration that is out of your control. It doesn’t matter if you’re making a record or living your life, find these inspirations with a vigil eye and watch them change both you and your world.” ‘Lifted’ is Israel Nash’s opus, a fully realised, psychedelic, experimental, Americana rooted epic. From the familial harmonies of ‘Sweet Springs,’ recalling the Beach Boys at their most joyous (almost all performed by Nash himself), to the country rock of ‘Lucky Ones’ and ‘SpiritFalls’ to the sunshine laden album closer ‘Golden Fleeces’, it is a startlingly accomplished work from beginning to end. In support of the release, Israel Nash and his full band will tour across Europe in November 2018. This will be preceded with two special solo shows in Oxford and Guildford this June. Pre-order ‘Lifted’ HERE.