Canadian Julie Doiron is back with I Thought Of You, her first solo record since 2012’s So Many Days. Every bit an instant classic as only she can masterfully create, Julie Doiron emanates a radiative force with nothing more than her guitar and her unmistakably indomitable voice. Julie Doiron is a maker of songs and a teller of stories, wielding her instruments like a craftsperson would their tools. In her time away from the solo spotlight she has remained entwined with music, albeit in consortiums with others; releasing a critically acclaimed record with members of Cancer Bats and Eamon McGrath under the name Julie and The Wrong Guys, reworking some of her previous work in Spanish for Spanish label Acuarela and returning to her otherworldly collaboration with Mount Eerie for Lost Wisdom pt 2, to name but a few. These are additions to Julie’s long and storied history of collaboration, working with luminaries like Gord Downie, Herman Dune, a split record with Okkervil River, and the unforgettable and iconic Eric’s Trip, the first Canadian band ever signed to legendary American record label Sub Pop. Ever the bountiful songwriter, Julie had been writing songs in the 9 years since her last solo record, keeping them close and waiting for it to feel right to head back into a studio. When the time came, she enlisted close and trusted friends to collaborate in the process: the uber-prolific and multi-talented Daniel Romano, superstar drummer Ian Romano, and Quebecois songwriter Dany Placard on bass. Together the quartet retreated to a cabin in the woods to record Julie’s first solo offering in 9 years. The resulting album, I Thought Of You, is every bit a return, as Julie Doiron finds her way back with new songs to enthrall our hearts, while simultaneously finding her way back to herself. We live for these moments, when our dearest friends find their way back to the places they love, and we once again hear their voices rise back into our lives. It’s Julie’s voice that rises to meet us from the get-go. Album opener “You Gave Me The Key” welcomes us in, a quintessential Julie Doiron song where she announces with a joyful resignation “here I am, starting over again”. Title track “I Thought Of You” is a rolling twang-tinged Doiron jam, an instant classic. As we move towards the tail end of the record we share in “Darkness To Light” a soulful ballad ruminating on moving our way out of dark days and into lighter shades. On “Back To The Water” Julie sings over gently plucked strings “I’ve been here before” as she has, and so have we, and we are once again here together. I Thought Of You is a return of the breath and fire of Julie Doiron and we are lucky to find ourselves back in the embrace of her tender and powerful forces.

Mesmerizing folk duo Ordinary Elephant has spent the better part of the last decade on a never-ending tour that’s earned married couple Crystal and Pete Damore widespread critical acclaim and made fans of luminaries like Tom Paxton and Mary Gauthier. In 2017, the pair took home the International Folk Music Award for Artist of the Year on the strength of their breakout album, Before I Go, and two years later, they returned with the similarly lauded Honest, which the Associated Press hailed as “one of the best Americana albums of the year.” The band’s new stripped-down, self-titled collection is the purest distillation of their sound yet, showcasing the arresting power of the couple’s gorgeous harmonies and intricate fretwork. The songs are timeless, rooted in rich, character-driven storytelling, and the performances are similarly transportive, fueled by delicately intertwined banjo, guitar, and octave mandolin. Though the songs were born out of a period of deep uncertainty, the record itself is a work of profound self-assurance, one delivered by a duo whose personal and professional lives embody the limitless possibility of honest, organic collaboration. Press play on Ordinary Elephant and you’ll hear more than just a husband and wife; you’ll hear the sound of sincerity and commitment, of patience and gratitude, of learning to let go of expectation and revel in the simple beauty of the moment.

Amy Rigby has established herself as one of America’s enduring underground/cult/indie artists, combining the insight and humor of country and folk songwriting with classic rock craftsmanship and punk DIY spirit. Raised in Pittsburgh, schooled in late 70s lower Manhattan, she formed pre-Americana country band Last Roundup and Richard Hell’s favorite girl group the Shams in NYC's East Village before launching a solo career with 90s classic album Diary Of A Mod Housewife. Amy’s honest, kinetic songwriting has earned her praise from critics (“pithy wisdom, acerbic pen and sterling American guitar classicism” MOJO) and other artists: “Think Randy Newman and Loudon Wainwright, at their best,” says Steve Earle. Her songs have been covered by Laura Cantrell, Ronnie Spector and John Flansburgh of They Might Be Giants. Her 2019 memoir GIRL TO CITY was called “an instant classic” by The Big Takeover. “You can smell the damp, see the clothes, hear the guitars!” says Goldmine. The follow up, GIRL TO COUNTRY, comes out later this year. New album Hang In There With Me (2024), eleven up to the minute songs written by Amy and recorded by husband Wreckless Eric, is a bracing look at mortality, aging and youthful missteps, refracted through Amy’s insightful lyricism. Some people turn to the moon and stars for inspiration while Amy Rigby looks to creative heroes like Bob Dylan and Mike Leigh. She finds poetry in haircuts, live chat boxes, bartending, and bookselling. Her music is the sound of everyday people getting by, just like the classic country artists she loved and learned to write songs from.

Folk collective, Floyds Row, explores the connections among early, classical, folk, newgrass, and world genres. The ensemble has performed throughout the UK and the US. Recent venues have included Club Passim (Cambridge, MA), King’s Chapel (Boston, MA), Winchendon Music Festival (Winchendon, MA), American Folk Art Museum (New York, NY), Association of Literary Scholars, Critics, and Writers (Washington, DC). “No two shows are alike, but the performances guarantee an eclectic mix of traditional pieces from composers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, covers from modern folk singers such as Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, and the Grateful Dead, as well as original compositions that pull from the meld of the traditional and the classical.” – North Potomac Times The collective evolved from a series of concerts at the University of Oxford. These first collaborations––organized by Chris Ferebee, along with Alistair Anderson, Andrew Arceci, and several guest musicians––led to the ensemble producing their début recording, The Oxford Sessions (Centaur Records, 2018). The 2025 tour will feature works arranged and/or composed by Hailey Fuqua, Asako Takeuchi, Jacques Lee Wood, Andrew Arceci, George Lykogiannis, and Mike Williams. ____________________________ “Roots-thick and shadowy…guided by velvety vocals. A delicate ebb and flow from uplifting to more penetrating.” – American Songwriter Winner of the 2017 Kerrville New Folk songwriting competition, Chris Moyse is a folk artist out of Nashville, TN. His debut album Bitter Ballads & Cynical Prayers shares an attention to lyricism with artists like Jason Isbell and Hayes Carll, with melodies that are reminiscent of Gregory Alan Isakov and John Moreland. He has recently shared the stage with Joe Ely, Mary Gauthier, Ben Kweller, and members of Old Crow Medicine Show and has appeared at music festivals across the country.

Jason Narducy is a Chicago musician. When he isn’t touring with Bob Mould or Superchunk, he writes and sings in Split Single. Greg Kot (Chicago Tribune, Sound Opinions) calls Jason “a first rate songwriter and band leader”. Jason has performed with Robert Pollard (Guided By Voices), Sunny Day Real Estate, The Pretenders, Liz Phair, Eddie Vedder, and many more. Jason and his first band, Verböten, were featured in the Foo Fighter’s HBO series Sonic Highways and in Dave Grohl’s NYT best seller, Storyteller. Playwright Brett Neveu wrote a musical about Verböten (featuring music by Jason) that opened in Chicago in January 2020. Verböten the musical garnered rave reviews and sold out performances and is currently being re-worked for a film adaptation. Jason has written and performed in comedy shorts such as The Sexiest Elbows in Rock (3 episodes all found on YouTube). The episodes feature Fred Armisen, Michael Shannon, Frank Black, Sharon Van Etten, Todd Barry, Dave Hill, Rick Nielsen, and Michael Cerveris among others.

TOURISTS is honored to be hosting electronic music legend DON SLEPIAN as he tours the US celebrating the 45th anniversary of his seminal record Sea of Bliss. A composer, performer, and music technologist, Slepian is revered as a pioneer in the ambient and new age music movement, blending classical influences with cutting-edge electronic techniques. From serving as artist-in-residence at Bell Laboratories and Synthesizer Soloist with the Honolulu Symphony to performing at esteemed venues like Lincoln Center, WNYC’s New Sounds, and the Centre Pompidou, his career spans decades of innovation and acclaim. Recently, he has sold out shows at the Philosophical Research Society, accompanied therapeutic psychedelic ceremonies, lectured at Stanford University, and appeared on Dublab radio. Now based in the Pocono Mountains, Slepian continues to compose, perform, and build innovative instruments, cementing his legacy as a visionary in the field.

JUDE BROTHERS is a folk derived singer-songwriter from Arkansas, with a penchant for whimsy and tender heartedness. Brothers’ distinct writing style is marked by congenial contrasts: passionate & playful, calculated & relaxed, approachable & quirky. Their lyrics communicate a simultaneous existential dread and intoxicating thrill of living and loving, a practice in raw and shameless vulnerability shared through song. All of this is transmitted through nimble vocal frolicking- a shapeshifter voice crawling, leaping, pirouetting through a mystical landscape of their own creation. .....Let’s say you are in a forest, and you don’t know how you got there. A strong voice lilts from an autumnal quiet to a riveting loud stream to sing you the spell of their story. Is it a mockingbird? The spirit of an ash tree? A mischievous, but benevolent forest sprite? Nay! Tis but your new friend, Jud. Or Jude. Or Judith. With harp, guitar, and sometimes tenor banjo in tow, this freaky little Ozark bard comes bearing gifts- songs from somewhere between the real and the ethereal landscapes of their life. ___________________________ HAMILTON BELK is a multi-instrumentalist producer from the depths of Maine by way of the Carolinas. In 2013 Belk picked up the sad machine and a tig welder and took a deep dive into the world of steel. He spent his days working as an assistant for nail sculptor, John Bisbee, and his nights in a waterless shack, woodshedding steel guitar. His studio, Roughly Nowhere, was born. Belk toured in various alt-country and folk noir bands out of Maine before falling into Denver, Colorado’s re-burgeoning honky tonk scene. As of 2020 he’s back in New England, performing in bands like Cut Worms, the Yawns, Jeffrey Silverstein, Dead Gowns, and Wildflower. Hamilton Belk’s songs are humble affirmations that paradox is the only way forward, born on the shards of time between tours and overdub sessions. His influences draw from the country-folk lexicon, slacker rock, years of recording parts for everything from Urdustani folk to petrosexual pop country, and the timeless, lonesome tears of the steel guitar. Belk has contributed to records by Brigid Mae Power, Henry Jamison, Peter Broderick, Message to Bears, Dead Gowns, Aeseaes, and hundreds more. His work has been featured in the PMA Biennial, the Camden International Film Festival, and Meow Wolf's Denver and Housoton locations, and American Idol.

Effortlessly moving between unity and dissonance, voice and instrumentation, rhythm and melody, Lyle de Vitry seamlessly integrates the comfort of folk music with the spine-shivering emotional release and intentionality of classical compositions. In so doing, he manages to create a sound as dynamic and honest as the ocean’s eternally flowing tides or the planet’s ever-changing seasons. An acclaimed songwriter and multi-instrumentalist, de Vitry was selected as one of ten finalists for the 2023 Telluride Troubadours contest and was named runner-up in the 2023 NewSong LEAF Singer-Songwriter Competition.

Vermont’s TROY MILLETTE is equal parts thoughtful and lively– a cocktail of rock, pop, folk, and americana music that grapples with love, loss, and the human experience. Millette’s emotive and relatable lyrics, as well as his energetic, banter-filled live performances have made him a staple of dives, clubs, theaters, and festivals across the northeast United States and Quebec. His work as a frontman and solo performer garnered the title of Vermont’s “Best Folk Group” from Seven Days Magazine in 2022 and 2023 (some guy named Noah Kahan beat them in 2024. No big deal). His “Errors Tour” and “Less Than 1% of the World Tour” have taken Millette to more than 20 states since Fall 2023. In addition to hundreds of headlining shows, appearances at renowned music festivals such as SXSW, Grace Potter’s Grand Point North, Waking Windows, and Twiddle’s Tumble Down, and a campaign run with Senator Bernie Sanders, Troy Millette and the Fire Below have shared bills with the likes of Counting Crows, Grace Potter, Guster, Bowling for Soup, Matt Quinn (of Mt. Joy), Chadwick Stokes (of DISPATCH), +LIVE+, Richard Marx, Rick Springfield, Wheatus, Brett Dennen, the Revivalists, Steven Page (of Barenaked Ladies), the Marcus King Band, DEER TICK, the Front Bottoms, American Authors, Josiah and the Bonnevilles, Fantastic Cat, Willie Watson, Lee DeWyze, Gabe Dixon, Fantastic Cat, the Ballroom Thieves, and more! The debut solo EP from Troy Millette entitled “Living With A Ghost” is a five-song collection that Seven Days says is “sure to strike a chord with fans of storytelling Americana troubadours such as [Jason] Isbell and the radio-friendly stylings of Kip Moore.” The singles that followed, “I Miss You,” and “Stay (Please)” have received recognition as a “Monthly Best” from Seven Days Magazine and entertainment blog County Tracks.

GRAMMY Award-winning cellist Andrew Yee will be in residence at TOURISTS creating a new album of solo cello works by Bach and American cellist and composer Arthur Russell. Yee has been praised by Michael Kennedy of the London Telegraph as “spellbindingly virtuosic”. Trained at the Juilliard School, they are a founding member of the internationally acclaimed Attacca Quartet who have released several albums to Critical acclaim including Andrew’s arrangement of Haydn’s “Seven Last Words” which thewholenote.com praised as “ . . .easily the most satisfying string version of the work that I’ve heard.” They were the quartet-in-residence at the Met Museum in 2014, and have won the Osaka and Coleman international string quartet competitions. Their newest recording of the string quartets of Caroline Shaw won a GRAMMY for best Chamber Music/Small Ensemble performance. As a soloist last season Andrew performed John Taverner’s The Protecting Veil and Strauss Don Quixote. In 2019, they won the first prize at Oklahoma University’s National Arts Incubation Lab for their pitch of a wearable garment that translates sound into vibrations for the hard of hearing. They like to make stop-motion videos of food, draw apples, cook like an Italian Grandma and have developed coffee and cocktail programs for award-winning restaurants (Lilia, Risbobk, Atla) in New York City. Their solo project “Halfie” draws on their experience as a bi-racial and non-binary person in having access to multiple communities at once, while not feeling at home in any of them. The works commissioned feature a wide range of composers all for solo cello. They play on an 1884 Eugenio Degani cello on loan from the Five Partners Foundation.

NICO SOFFIATO, Italian guitarist, composer and educator, currently lives in Brooklyn, NY. After receiving his Master’s degree in philosophy with a thesis on the ontology of music, he moved to Boston. There he attended Berklee College of Music, thanks to a Best Entering Talent Students scholarship, and graduated magna cum laude. At Berklee, he studied performance and composition with David Tronzo, Jon Damian, Hal Crook, Ed Tomassi and Jeff Galindo to mention a few. Nico was also selected to be part of an all-guitar ensemble whose members included notable alumni like Bill Frisell, Kurt Rosenwinkel, Mike Stern and Wolfgang Muthspiel. In New York, aside from being the front man of OST Quartet, he leads the improvised music group Paradigm Refrain. The group has a diverse cast and guests have included: David Tronzo, Darius Jones, Jesse Stacken, Jason Nazary, Nate Wooley, Sunny Kim, Marco Cappelli, Zeno de Rossi, Fraser Campbell, Marco Buccelli, Noah Kaplan, and many others. Nico co-leads a duo with Grammy-award winning trumpeter Josh Deutsch and they have toured nationally and internationally to promote their records Redshift, Time Gels and Reverse Angle. Together they co-curate the “2x3 series" in New York, which brings together three duos in one night for a mix of separate performances and collaborations. The series has featured many outstanding musicians with established duo projects. __________________ KIM ANDERSON is a composer, songwriter, singer, multi-instrumentalist, gardener and mother based in Upstate New York. Raised by jazz musician parents in New York City, she grew up absorbing a diverse blend of musical genres, going on to study composition formally at conservatory and to write music for an eclectic range of different ensembles. Her music is decidedly difficult to pin down or define by genre; its throughline remains attention to detail, intimate and personal lyrics, and a deeply thoughtful approach to arrangement and texture. Her first studio album, ‘Yarrow,’ was produced by Benjamin Lazar Davis and released on Biophilia records in 2018. Her sophomore album ‘Asphodel,’ also produced by Davis, was released in 2023 on Sempervirens Studios. Kim has always sought to capture in her music the strange and delightful encounter between the organic and the human-wrought, that shoreline on which truly wild things, raised in a world of rhyme and reason, find their escape.

Dyan is the solo project of film composer, Alexis Dyan Marsh. Between scoring the TNT television series, Animal Kingdom, or composing for feature films (Jazzy, The Unknown Country, NextGen), Marsh started writing songs to fill in where directors wanted music with lyrics. Her first album, Looking For Knives, was the result of producing songs that made it into cuts and some that didn't. The effort showed Marsh a different way to release music, apart from the screen, but still aiming to create sound that evokes imagery. Midwest is Marsh’s second album of songs, written while moving back and forth between Los Angeles and Cincinnati, eventually settling in the midwest with her partner and son. It was there where Marsh was able to build a studio of her own to write, produce, and mix Dyan songs while she continued to compose for film. Her latest film score was written for Morrisa Maltz’s secondfeature film, Jazzy, which premiered at the 2024 Tribeca Film Festival. The film has gone on to screen at SXSW Sydney, the Rome Film Festival and was nominated for the John Cassavetes Award as part of the 2025 Film Independent Spirit Awards.

A compact luxury convertible pulls into the roundabout in front of the Hotel Paradiso. A dapper gentleman kills the engine and pulls himself up onto the curb, cracking a thin but affable smile. He hands his keys to the valet, removing and dusting off his woven, off-white hat and closing his eyes for a moment in satisfaction. He stops to marvel briefly at the Art Deco lobby, as luxurious and finely detailed as he remembers from his last stay. The architecture is minimalist and Baroque in all the right places; everything feels in balance at this palatial estate at the edge of the world. Guests come from their own respective Nowheres to enjoy a weekend or month away from their troubles and, perhaps, the vain trappings of their identity. After rubbing the edges of his mustache for a moment in contemplation, the unknown gentleman decides that his best course of action is to change his suit, make a reservation for a fine seafood dinner in town, and mix his first martini of the afternoon. He takes in a bird’s eye view of the marina and the citrus trees from his room’s stucco balcony; eventually, he will no doubt make his way down to the pool, and from there, to the lounge. It may not be this particular man, but composer and vintage keyboard maestro Moon Mullins wrote Hotel Paradiso—his newest work of programmatic exotica for Ruination Records—from the perspective of some lone, context-free traveler. They are at loose ends, eager for a few days in another open-ended, simpler life; from their vantage,we see, hear, and feel Paradiso. Mullins creates his imagery through a singular, meticulously blended combination of synthetic and acoustic sounds, played largely by him with help from friends. The scenario inspires the most ambitious and orchestrally-minded set of compositions the Brooklyn-based musician has yet released. Its predecessor, Water Your Flowers, felt more pointillistic and comprehensively electronic, conjuring images of utopian tiki bars, bonsai gardens, beaches on distant planets, and more. The palette of Hotel Paradiso is even more kaleidoscopic, creating moments of transcendent atmosphere that recall, at turns, Japanese ambient music, the early mood LPs of Henry Mancini, and the ethereal harmonies of Maurice Ravel. Hotel Paradiso takes place in less than 24 hours, and ends with the onset of blissful slumber. We aren’t forced to imagine the Traveler in any discomfort, suffering the after-effects of their nighttime jaunt or having to leave their weekend oasis at checkout time. The wider world is left outside of the picture, as if it could disappear entirely if we kept listening. In this unabashedly idyllic music, Mullins demonstrates his acute command of how to create a prolonged scene in sound, and his ever-expanding gifts as an arranger. But at no point does the cleverness and sophistication of Mullins’s writing on Hotel Paradiso upstage the story he is trying to tell: one paying tribute to the healing power of beautiful spaces and—if only for a fleeting moment or a single paycheck—the finer things in life.

A singer and songwriter from Westerly, Rhode Island, Zachary Alexander Cholewa started Number One Babe in 2020 as a vehicle for his indie folk & Americana twang after spending formative years writing and performing with garage rock band Sydney's Armour. His debut album, 2022's Ecstatic Function brought many jangly, raucous shows to the greater northeast, culminating in an electrifying set at Newport Folk Festival in 2024. Cholewa's next LP under the Number One Babe moniker Loving, lLaving is set to release November 14 via Funnybone Records and will prove to be the songwriter's most defining body of work to date. ________________________ Western MA indie rock mainstays Lost Film have released new singles in 2025 via Relief Map Records. The jangly dreampop centered by synthesizers and driving bass chords is the first new music from the guitar pop veterans since 2023’s Keep It Together and mostly picks up from where that collection left off. There is however a notable jump in production from the typically DIY project led by main songwriter Jim Hewitt thanks in part to new collaborations with engineer John Panagotopulos and drummer Jeremy Woods. Using a perfect blend of bedroom and studio recording techniques, the track is lifted up without losing the lo-fi charm Lost Film has become known for. Lost Film continues to play across the Northeast- most notably with an appearance at Western Mass’s Green River Fest in June alongside Waxahatchee, MJ Lenderman, Courtney Barnett and others.

“Over the last couple of decades, East Nashville fixture Amelia White has built a folk-pop catalog that's as unfussy as it is consistent in quality, and full of insinuating hooks, slyly sleepy singing and lean, jangly backing. “Rhythm of The Rain," looks at the current political frenzy from a seasoned, bohemian remove.” Jewly Hight, NPR No teenage starlet, Amelia shouldered her guitar in Boston for years, then Seattle, and now in East Nashville, where she’s been in the trenches for a good many years. Google “paid her dues” and there she is, with her reddish-brown shoulder length locks, eyeglasses and a smile. Then the unthinkable happened – her 2019 record “Rhythm of the Rain” actually stuck to the wall, doing well in the charts and spring-boarding Amelia from playing Tuesday nights for tips to actually headlining venues and god forbid getting somewhere! It couldn’t happen to a better artist, and one listen to “Love I Swore” will be a very convincing listen to one of America’s great “new” singer-songwriters. She just wants to get up and sing and she couldn’t care less about any ice on the wing." ________________________ Linda McRae’s love of Canadian, American, and British music early on in her career resulted in multiple band configurations from roots-rock to punk to folk. These bands included the platinum selling group, Spirit of the West. Her deep contribution to the Canadian music scene resulted in her being honored as a 2016 British Columbia Entertainment Hall of Fame “Pioneer” inductee. Linda manages to bend the rules and the genres proving that stripping a song clean brings one back to their roots. A singer-songwriter musician of the old school with decades of experience you may think you know what Linda McRae is up to. That is until she throws you a curve with a new twist: David Bowie on Banjo?! When Linda steps onto a concert stage, into a recording studio, workshop or mentoring session, there is an effortless passion, a love of what she does and a connection with fans and friendships built and treasured. A multi-instrumentalist Linda works tirelessly as a touring singing songwriter, performing at premiere venues across Canada, the US and Europe while turning out new works. McRae has offered seven critically acclaimed recordings throughout her years as a solo performer and is featured on multiple artists’ albums. Numerous accolades and top radio charting have landed Linda a Canadian Folk Music nomination for Contemporary Album of The Year for “Rough Edges and Ragged Hearts,” two Escape to Create Residencies in Florida, Winner of the Family Folk Chorale for “Be Your Own Light”. Linda is also highly sought after as a teacher, mentor, juror, panelist and workshop facilitator.

HAYDEN PEDIGO: man, myth, master of disguise; un-picker, finger-picker, absurdist, perfectionist. An innovator of the instrumental genre, challenger of the stereotypical, son of a truck-stop preacher. His new album, 'I’ll Be Waving As You Drive Away' is, Hayden reflects, not a straightforward solo guitar record, but in a sense “a micro-dose psychedelic album." Unafraid to push the parameters of American primitive, the walls of the album’s world are fuzzed-up and glimmering. Pedigo’s trademark, highly skilled guitar compositions, more intricate than ever, are augmented by influences he’s never been able to achieve on previous records, drawing strongly from the uncanny psychedelia of larger-than-life culture in the American South, so often bigger, stranger, more unnerving than fiction. Throughout 'I’ll Be Waving As You Drive Away', moments of genre-defying, unapologetic exuberance are carefully balanced with delicacy and intricacy. ___________________________________ Who on earth is Jens Kuross? He's been hiding in plain sight: a fumbled career as an LA session musician and songwriter, a cabinet maker in Idaho. Crooked Songs, his debut for Woodsist, is mysterious, warm, and heart-stirring. Using just voice and electric piano, the music delicately enswathed by ambient synth – minimal without losing sight of his songcraft Crooked Songs suggests an otherworldly naturalism akin to a ghost returning to earth to observe the passing of time, life, and light.

Stephen Clair's grandfather was always singing from behind the wheel while occasionally opening the car door to spit. It was Grandpap who played young Stephen a Johnny Cash record when he was five years old, and that's everything Stephen remembers from his youth. Best known for his wry humor and guitar stylings, the Beacon, NY musician has been a fixture on the Americana, alt-country, and dorky independent rock scene since his 1997 debut, Altoona Hotel, named for the town his grandfather called home.
 He's released many more albums over the years and toured and done all the things, experiencing
all the near misses of life in the biz. Critics and his family love him first. Everyone else has come
around in their own sweet time.
 Rawboned, his latest effort, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, features only Clair and a
guitar, except when it's Clair and a rickety piano. The songs are miniature stories, the essence of
emotion, and the arrangements and performances fit accordingly. "Every note, every part — including the air around it — is intentional," says Clair. "I recorded it alone, in a room, over months, guitar in my lap, mousing with one hand, groping through the microphones surrounding me. I recorded take after take of each song. What you hear are complete, intact performances of each song. No punching in, no edits, no cutting and pasting. Each track on the record is a complete performance."
 There's air in these songs, for sure. Every melody counts, as does each breath, word, and the
space in between. Repetition is another device Clair takes full advantage of. Repeating words or
lines can show longing, anticipation, and even obsession. The singer in "Watering the Flowers"
and "Pizza and Fairy Tales" uses this to full effect. The sanguine narrator provides the play-by-play as they incessantly water the flowers, waiting, wondering, attempting to keep their shit together.
 Clair first came to prominence when the late Rita Houston pronounced her love for "Jen in Her
 Underwear," adding it to regular rotation on WFUV, thereby putting Clair on the map and the road. His next effort was Under the Bed, followed by What Luck (2007.) In 2019, Clair teamed up with celebrated producer Malcolm Burn (U2 and Emmylou Harris), the result, an epic garage album, Strange Perfume. Paste Magazine declared "Clair's lyrics are everyman poetry with a dash of self-deprecation and gallows humor to go with his otherwise uncluttered views of the world around and within him.”