Though emerging from the same Nashville-based Americana-folk scene as The Civil Wars, Elenowen deliver a sonic glow all their own. Amidst haunting harmonies and elegiac lyrics, their songs flow with an undercurrent of yearning, surrender and unexpectedly sharp edges. “We strive to maintain a certain vulnerability in our music,” Josh says. “We write a lot about our own lives as well as the truths about relationships that we relate to. We think it creates an intimacy that’s totally connected to the music.” The sound itself is roots-driven, with accents of cello and pedal steel cutting a deeply evocative facet. Even the name Elenowen is an authentic nod to heritage, with Ellen being Josh’s mom’s middle name and Owen being the middle name of Nicole’s dad. “They’re the sides of the family we each got our music from,” explains Josh. “What’s in our hearts will always come out in what we do.”

The singular power of Elenowen comes from the bond that can only exist between two people who’ve known – and loved – each other for most of their lives. “We were 15 and 16 when we met,” explains Nicole. “We dated for a year, broke up for a year and a half, then got back together and have been together ever since. After that first breakup, I think we both still knew that we were meant for each other, but we also knew that we weren’t what each other needed at that point in our lives.” At 18, Josh moved from Knoxville to Nashville to be with Nicole, writing songs and pursuing a music degree at Belmont University while Nicole worked as a homecare attendant, back-up singer and barista. Within a year of Josh’s graduation, the starkly candid debut album Pulling Back The Veil chronicled their first year of marriage with songs that were subsequently showcased on TV shows like ‘One Tree Hill’ and MTV’s ‘World Of Jenks’. Josh and Nicole began filming impromptu performances in their small basement apartment, with the resulting clips – called ‘The Basement Sessions’ – quickly garnering a following on YouTube and the No Depression website. In 2011, Elenowen made their national television debut on the top-rated premiere season of NBC’s ‘The Voice’. But it’s the five tracks on their new EP that now mean the most to the couple and convey what’s most real to audiences.

“We wrote all these songs around the same time,” explains Josh, “when Nicole and I were walking through similar issues and feelings. Most marriages are not all lovey-dovey, like most love songs claim. For us, these songs are as much about love as they are about the struggle of keeping love alive.” The EP’s opening track, “Flying For The First Time”, is co-written with acclaimed singer/songwriter Trent Dabbs and soars with uninhibited vocal harmony and lyrical beauty. “Blood And Bones”, also co-written with Dabbs, is a towering paean to the physical and emotional bonds of desire. “Head To My Heart”, co-written with EP co-producer Philip LaRue, reconciles intuition with passion via Nicole’s potent vocals. “We Were Better Off” is a shimmering reflection of lost innocence and mislaid dreams. And “Bittersweet” is a hushed and moody twist on traditional love songs in which a couple affirm they are ‘all I want/and nothing that I need’. “I absolutely believe in true love,” explains Nicole. “I also believe,” she adds with a laugh, “that true love is never easy.”

More and more, Elenowen are discovering that the truth of what they do is bringing them new fans nationwide. “I think audiences respond to our honesty,” says Josh. “When we perform these songs, people get the feeling they know who we are, because that’s what we’re putting out there. We are the heart behind our music.” For Nicole, the journey both starts and grows in a place of instinctive sharing. “When it’s 3 AM and I have an idea for a song,” she explains, “my best friend/music partner/husband can grab his guitar and the idea takes off. The songs that come out of those moments are part me, part him, and all us. When we formed Elenowen, I realized that I’m no longer a singer in the shadows. I’m now a half of something that means so much not only to us, but to other people as well.”

But what about that thing called chemistry? For Elenowen, it’s a one-of-a-kind formula that is about to become bigger than the both of them. “I think our chemistry is what keeps us going,” says Nicole. “We fight for it in our marriage, in our friendship and our music. These songs are so much a part of us and the emotion is so real, that every time we sing them its almost as if we’re feeling them for the first time. What Josh and I ultimately want is for people to get inspired and connected by what we do.” And for Elenowen, it’s a promise you can take to heart.

After one listen to this album, it’s clear that Carley is no stranger to picking directions and heading for the horizon. Born and raised in Milwaukee, WI, she always had a feeling that she didn’t fit in with the college-to-cubicle crowd. She was raised by musicians and friends of musicians, and showed a talent early on for hamming it up in front of an audience. She spent a few years denying her destiny before she finally had to admit that she could only ever be happy as a musician, and so she set out on her way. In January 2006, she moved to the more fertile musical climes of Portland, OR and began to make a name for herself as a clever songwriter possessing “a talent for bending your emotions with the pitch of [her] voice” (Kris Foster, The Sleeping Giant).

The transition from Wisconsin to Oregon is showcased in the album’s opening track, “Head West”, a banjo-backed travel anthem which sets a rollicking tone that the subsequent songs maintain with seeming ease. From there, she talks about pursuing her dream of professional musicianship (“My Cinderella”), dealing with unbearable bouts of writer’s block (“Dry”), and the over-arching theme of holding on to a sunny disposition in spite of a rainy outlook (“The Rain Song”), all with substantive lyrics and musical arrangement that defy categorization. The album finishes with a sweet, antique-sounding ukulele love song devoted to the idea that “when you don’t know what you’re looking for, there’s no telling what you’ll find” (“Paris”).

Carley has been slowly cultivating her musical following, mostly by word of mouth and the Internet. With the release of this album, she has also kicked off her own label, Ursula Music. She’s written and self-released two EPs and an LP (The Carley Baer EP, *Spare Change, and Still Life, respectively) and she has successfully booked and performed tours around the Midwest and East Coast. In 2009 she wrote “Underneath the Mistletoe” for the sole purpose of entering a Christmas song competition given by Paramount Music of Nashville, TN, and won the Grand Prize. Her finest achievement in her own mind is the fact that she has quit her day job and can now dedicate herself entirely to music; this album is hard evidence that she can indeed overcome any obstacle, whatever the weather.

To call Adam Levy a “well-traveled musician” would be a hell of an understatement. During a six-year stint touring as a member of Norah Jones’ Handsome Band, Levy went round the world several times and maxed out the pages of his passport—and then a second one—with country stamps and visas. He first played with Jones at the very beginning of the singer’s career and went on to be the featured electric guitarist on her wildly successful first three albums and DVDs. Levy held the enviable gig through 2007, ultimately leaving to follow his own path as a performing songwriter. Jones recorded Levy’s “In the Morning” for her Feels Like Home CD in 2004. Since then, Levy’s songs have appeared on discs by lots of successful independent artists—including Ana Egge, Amber Rubarth, and Clarence Bucaro.

Levy released two CDs under his own name while in Jones’ band, and has continued to release new recordings annually since then—some featuring his lyrical songs, some wholly instrumental. His latest is The Heart Collector, praised by No Depression online as “a great album overflowing with warm and soulful songs that enchant the ears and captivate the heart.” Other recent CDs include Washing Day and Live from Sun Studio—the latter tracked, of course, at the legendary Memphis mecca where Johnny Cash and Elvis Presley cut their first acetates.

Jones is not the only top-shelf artist whose music Levy has been party to. He can be heard on Tracy Chapman’s New Beginning (that’s Levy’s laid-back blues solo on “Give Me One Reason”), Amos Lee’s eponymous Blue Note debut (featured on the single, “Arms of a Woman”), Sex Mob’s Din of Inequity, Ani DiFranco’s Which Side Are You On?, and Anaïs Mitchell’s Young Man in America. He has performed onstage with all of these artists—as well as with Rosanne Cash, Lisa Loeb, Dan Hicks, Darol Anger, Joey Baron, and many others. Levy is also well-known as a writer and journalist, with articles appearing regularly in the pages of Guitar Player and Acoustic Guitarmagazines. And he has earned a reputation as an esteemed educator. He is the author of Jazz Guitar Sight-Reading (book) and Play the Right Stuff (book & DVD), and has led many workshops and masterclasses all across the U.S. and internationally.

These typically unrelated musical pathways intersected when both artists began experiment with the native folk music traditions of their ancestral homeland. Pajunen and Rundman met and collaborated together for the first time in 2009 when they were each invited to perform at the Kauneimmat Joululaulut, an annual concert of Finnish Christmas carols held in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis/St. Paul, MN. The duo quickly recognized their opportunity to provide a youthful and adventurous musical contribution to the Finnish-American community, and to the wider acoustic/folk audience as well. Kaivama’s music is drawn from the traditional pelimanni fiddle-tune repertoire of Western Finland, Nordic hymnody, and the aggressive prog-folk attitude of contemporary Scandinavian roots music. Pajunen’s violin virtuosity and Rundman’s rock solid foundation on guitar, harmonim, or banjo create sound and energy sure to find a home in performance halls, rock clubs, church sanctuaries, and folk festivals from Minneapolis to Helsinki and beyond.

The ”Polka Chicks” is an energetic folk music duo from Finland. Fiddler Kukka Lehto and accordionist Teija Niku revel in picking through the dusty shelves of folk tune archives to find hidden musical gems and then polish them anew in a uniquely Polka Chick way. They also compose their own music. Kukka and Teija enjoy the extremes in music – they share a love for dynamic, almost impossibly fast polkas but they do have a tender side as well, which they're not afraid to show in songs filled with emotion and experiences from everyday life. Previously known as a trio, the Polka Chicks was chosen ”Band of the Year” at the Kaustinen Folk Music Festival in 2009. That same year their self-titled debut recording was released by Ääniä Records. During the years 2004 through 2009, the band performed in many festivals as well as private events in Finland and also toured in the USA, Denmark, Russia and Germany. Since 2010, Kukka and Teija have continued their work as the Polka Chicks duo, playing succesful concerts in Finland, Germany, Croatia, Sweden and the USA.

Their new CD "Viulu ja viinantilkka" (A fiddle and a drop of liquor) was released in August 2011. Kukka Lehto has studied in both Helsinki Pop & Jazz Conservatory and at the Sibelius Academy Folk Music Department. She is known for her ability to play in a range of styles from bluegrass and folk to classical music and pop. Kukka works as a musician at the Helsinki City Theatre. She also tours with various bands (e.g. Ruuti, Hilja Grönfors, Katriina Honkanen, Erin, Jari Sillanpää) all over the Europe and has contributed to a number of recordings in the course of years. Teija Niku is an accordion player with extensive experience in performing ever since she was 7 years old. She has graduated from the Sibelius-Academy Folk Music Department in 2009.

During her studies Teija specialized in folk music from the Balkan area and Nordic countries, but her wide repertoire includes also tango, French musette, schlager, etc. Teija has reached the second prize in the Golden Accordion competition in 2000 and first prize in the Finnish 2-Row Accordion Folk Championship in 1996 and 1998. She has had the honour to learn from great accordion masters such as Lelo Nika, Sasko Velkov and Maria Kalaniemi. Teija plays in bands such as Teija Niku & Grupa Balkan, Karuna and Polka Chicks and does a lot of freelance work with different kinds of duos and trios. She also teaches folk accordion at the Käpylä Music School and Sibelius Academy Folk Music Department in Helsinki.

She has been included in Relix Magazine and Washington D.C.s Citys Best lists of artists to watch and is a multi WAMA (Washington D.C. Area Music Award) winner for her 2010 release Exact Change and for her work as a Folk-Contemporary vocalist. Also, Vox appeared on the Jay Leno Show to demonstrate her perfected mouth trumpet! Currently, Vox is a nominee in the Independent Music Awards for both Adult Contemporary Album of the Year and Album Design. Originally from Green Bay, WI, Vox now lives in Baltimore, MD and performs 125+ shows a year. Betsy Tanenbaum is a classically trained vocalist with a background in musical theater. She kicked off her performance career in kindergarten with a performance of I’m Being Swallowed by a Boa Constrictor at the Bethesda Elementary School talent show. She went on to perform in Carnegie Hall by the age of 12. Betsy has been surrounded with music throughout her life. Her mother was a folk musician and a music teacher, so her musical influences include Joni Mitchell, Donovan, Simon & Garfunkel (and of course, Paul Simon), Cat Stevens, The Byrds, Bob Dylan and Judy Collins. Her primary instrument is piano, but is self-taught on accordion and baritone ukulele. Betsy has a degree in Musical Theater from UW-Green Bay, a Masters Degree in Arts Administration and enjoys her daily work as Director of New Visions Gallery, a nonprofit art gallery located in the lobby of Marshfield Clinic.

Recorded in just three days in Los Angeles and featuring Eric Heywood (Pretenders, Ray Lamontagne) on pedal steel, baritone and electric guitars; Billy Conway (Morphine, Cold Satellite) on drums; Jennifer Condos (Ray Lamontagne, Sam Phillips) on electric bass, and Van Dyke Parks (Lowell George, Brian Wilson, etc) on keys and accordion, with backing vocals and cellos from Kris Delmhorst, Horse Latitudes seamlessly merges the ferocity of rock and the honesty of country behind the plaintive wonder in Foucault's weathered voice.

Like a clap of far thunder, the deep transient rumble of the bass drum announces the title track, paired with a few tentative sliding figures on an old hollow-body bass as they pause, briefly, and resume motion and the pedal steel enters with a single glassine phrase, a bent voicing that seems to suspend time. Foucault's 47 Gibson joins them dust dry, the strings raked backward over a minor chord and were in: ten songs trimmed to the bone, admitting no extraneous detail, no wasted word:

Drifting into Horse Latitudes
The language of thirst
A false communion
The iron taste of blood
In your mouth
The wild blue

Clocking in at just 2:33, Pretty Girl in a Small Town could be an early REM B-side, its angular changes and oblique narrative shifting gears into to a classic rock bridge, the story of small town claustrophobia and hidden love, while the haunting Starlight and Static muses on the nature of desire, on fame and its price:

I saw you up there
Like a city in the footlights
Shining in the darkness
I couldn't see your eyes
They all thought they knew you
Nobody knew you
And I wanted no one
To know me too

From the shotgun seat of a 78 Oldsmobile Foucault paints the desperation and longing of 17 in stark couplets on Goners Most, while for the elegiac Passerines, Foucault pares the language back so far it recalls the Zen poet Basho:

Everyone knows
No one knows
A winter night
A hundred crows
Flying down the valley.

A cross-country collision of rock, country, and folk idioms, Horse Latitudes alights with equal grace on full-band ragers and whispered solo pieces, delivering a collection of songs that inhabit the borderlands of heartbreak and memory. Eric Heywood's astringent electric guitar and desert-dry steel, atmospheric and raggedly ethereal; Billy Conway's deep gravity and just-bridled ferocity; the geometry and spark of Jennifer Condoss' deeply musical bass lines; Kris Elmhurst's textural and sidereal voice; the choice embellishments of the legendary Van Dyke Parks on keys and accordion deepening the proceedings like varnish on an oil painting; Each part is necessary, nothing is wasted. Combining the wide-open electricity of Neil Young with the brooding spaciousness of early Richard Buckner, Horse Latitudes shows Foucault in the fullness of his powers as a writer and producer, offering a compelling vision of modern American music.

THE GOOD STUFF, Peter Mulvey's fifteenth record, is a collection of standards which promptly rejects the accepted definition of Standard in favor of a more vivid, open approach. The music of Tom Waits is right there with Duke Ellington; Willie Nelson next to Thelonious Monk; Jolie Holland juxtaposed with Bill Frisell. Mulvey (along with his band, the Crumbling Beauties) address each tune with a true artists touch. His mirthful, gravelly baritone is front and center from moment one, and every track is a master class in restraint, phrasing, and commitment.

Twenty-odd years on the road, performing songs from his own catalog and from a vast, varied, and deep well of classic and obscure covers, has prepared Mulvey to deliver this collection. Night after night, the process of divining the heart of a song, being alert to where the moment can lead, has shaped him as an artist. To each rendition, he brings the soul of a singer, a light touch in a heavy world. Recorded in just three days at Signature Sounds Studios in the Connecticut Woods, the performances feature upright bassist Paul Kochanksi, violinist Randy Sabien, guitarist David Goodrich, and drummer Jason Smith. The arrangements run from quintet-in-full-swing down to hushed trio.

The centerpiece of The Good Stuff is a sequence in which a bluesy take on the Ellington classic Mood Indigo is sandwiched between Tom Waits obscure Green Grass, lovingly relocated from the guttural, and a charmingly haphazard rendition of Jolie Holland's Old Fashioned Morphine. This triptych represents not so much the diversity of songwriting on the record as the commonality. Id put those three artists in the same drawer in the big bureau of songwriters, says Mulvey. They're from different eras, and considered different animals -- jazz composer, bohemian beat poet, Americana revivalist -- but to my ear they're the same, in that they're always trying to write a timeless song.

Throughout the recording session Peter Mulvey was constantly throwing curveballs at the band . . . and at himself. He'd scan the list of songs he put together ahead of recording to find one unfamiliar to some or all in the room, and they'd create an arrangement on the fly and record it immediately. When everything isn't planned ahead of time, it can be magical how each musician finds a way into the song, says Mulvey. When the performance comes alive, its such a charge. You know that old expression That's really happening? Its literal. Its such a beautifully concise description of what it means when music is really, really alive: its literally happening. The point of departure for this happening is a great song, a classic, whether enshrined in the canon or not. This record is an argument for the Great American Songbook not as a musty tome but as a living, breathing document, always open to renewal and revision. Something meant not just to be revered, but also enjoyed. In other words, The Good Stuff.