Produced by Bonny Light Horseman’s Josh Kaufman, "Audience Of One" is the latest page in CHARLOTTE CORNFIELD’s beloved and flourishing songbook. Once described as “Canada’s best-kept secret” by Rolling Stone, Cornfield’s critically lauded craft has long led an impassioned trail of discovery behind her, with an ever-expanding circle of fans and esteemed peers. “Audience of One” follows the release of Cornfield’s fifth album, 2023’s Could Have Done Anything – which the FADER praised as “full of the remarkable tenderness and deft storytelling,” and eloquently described by Pitchfork as being “a brief and lovely alt-folk record, vivid and unmoored from place and time.” SIMA CUNNINGHAM is a Chicago-based musician, songwriter, producer, presenter, and a founding member of Finom. Her second solo album, High Roller, will be released in August 2024 on Ruination Records. Over the past 15 years she has worked as a recording and touring musician with Jeff Tweedy, Richard Thompson, Iron & Wine, Edith Frost, Chance the Rapper, Twin Peaks, and been featured on multitudes of records. In 2015, Sima formed Finom (fka OHMME) along with Macie Stewart, and it has been her primary project for the past decade. An Armenian-American artist and descendant of genocide survivors, Sima has focused much of her work on building connections and healing divides through music.

Mike Frazier hails from the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia but relocated to Seattle, Washington in 2022 with his wife, and author Stephanie Bruno. Frazier spent the last decade touring relentlessly, and releasing half a dozen records. Since his move to Seattle he has continued to tour around the United States. Frazier is carrying on the tradition of record craft with a focus on authentic songwriting and high quality production. Frazier draws inspiration from the valley he grew up in, his travels around the world, protest movements, and the classic folk music storytelling he is so deeply inspired by.

Pascale Cheron is a singer-songwriter and producer based in Monterey and the Bay Area. Her music draws on legacies of jazz, folk, and experimental music. She has recorded and released three albums since 2018 all while touring nationally and internationally as a solo artist and as accompanist for others. Sophia Eliana is a Denver-based folk musician, florist, and dancer from Monterey, California. She fosters the craft of storytelling through songs that resemble overgrown meadows blossoming with wildflowers and artwork reminiscent of a warm hug from a loved one. She has opened for The Ballroom Thieves, Emma Klein, Marielle Kraft, and Spectre Jones. Anticipate her studio sophomore album, recorded at Wonderhaus Studios with Jacob Williams and Noah Dearbon, summer of 2025. Avery Friedman is a Brooklyn-based artist (via Cleveland, Ohio) who will release her debut album, ‘New Thing,’ via Audio Antihero on April 18, 2025. Playing her first show in July 2024, she soon shared stages with h. pruz, Dead Gowns, and Sister., and she impressed the latter’s James Chrisman enough that he offered to record her debut album. The result is a sonically deep and layered record that sees Friedman explore her trauma and queerness with a raw open-heartedness inspired by artists like Adrianne Lenker, Squirrel Flower, and Babehoven.

Usually when folks describe JJ Slater’s music, words relate back to nature, the outdoors, the warm sun and the cool breeze. His UMASS Amherst psych-rock band Humble Digs was a mainstay at Stockbridge School of Agriculture events, and ten years later tours are often routed with ulterior, National Park-related motives. Based in New England, he has toured much of the US, playing festivals, basements, and club gigs, at times opening for artists like Kat Wright, NRBQ, Johnny A, and David Wax Museum. In 2022, he completed a residency at the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation, where he wrote his new record “The Silver Key”. It was recorded with a Mass Cultural Council grant in 2023, released at the end of 2024, and you’ll find him touring and playing the full record in 2025. He’ll also be touring with his Americana-Blues road-dog project Signature Dish, co-fronting the band with partner Lexi Weege and lending his songs to a dynamic, soul-journey set. In between rock bands, funk jams, and jazz brunches, JJ’s guitar playing is always centered and relentlessly rhythmic, with lead work that quotes both gutsy blues and celestial jazz. His songwriting is playful, with an ability to write a catchy hook and chorus, but take you down a minute-long rabbit hole with a wink and a grin- all with a soft, smoky approach to singing that recalls a burn ride with an old friend.

Elsewhere Shakespeare is a small collective of actor-managers that began in 2019 in an attempt to apply the DIY ethos of the punk scene to producing Shakespeare. They stage their free 90min shows in unconventional spaces like bars, art galleries, basements, and occasionally folks' living rooms. They believe that most things that make Shakespeare plays cheaper, faster, and easier to produce also make them more enjoyable both for actors and audiences.

Soul, Rock & Roll, a dash of Americana storytelling, all bundled into a Venezuelan American workhorse of an artist who hates pants and loves good champagne. Austin artist Sisi has gained tremendous momentum since releasing her debut record in 2023 with songs "Who's Gonna Worry About Me" and "Lyin’ Cheat." After playing the Tito's stage at ACL, singing the national anthem at the Austin FC stadium, landing some of SXSW's favorite showcases like South by San Jose and Soco Stomp, and a showcase featured in Rolling Stone magazine’s "Rancho Pillow Presents: All Together Now", Sisi is lining up 2025 to release her debut full-length album "High Tides". The single "Sugar", released in 2024, was placed in BMI's Texas Top Ten in the Spring. This eagerly awaited record was produced by Chris Boosahda (Shakey Graves, Wild Child, and others).

Will Dailey’s seventh album BOYS TALKING is the one he’s not releasing. Oh, you’ll get to hear it, if you buy a vinyl copy, CD, or download it directly from him. But it won’t be a matter of opening up a streaming platform and pressing play on a chosen date with thousands of other releases. With a record he considers his best work, Will wanted to find another way to celebrate and enjoy the process of sharing the album for more than a day or week. “Music is supposed to be a joyful expression of self that connects us to other people,” Will says. “I want to instill a more personal, joyful process of sharing my work.” Originally from Boston, Massachusetts, Dailey has spent the last decade-and-a-half mastering a twisted, Americana psychedelia that evokes underground legends like Cass McCombs, Kevin Morby, and Jeff Tweedy. Like these beloved, offbeat icons, there’s no bending to the music industry machine in his catalog. Rather than try to slot himself into a single genre, era, or sound, Will has always let the songs do what they want—marketing plans and genre programming be damned. Independent but not really indie, the strains of the blues, rock, funk and folk continue to permeate his sound across the years. Rather than a brand of sound, Dailey is a student of the American roots songbook, and a champion of masterful pop hooks. In fact, the most consistent through line of his career is recognition from artists of a certain caliber. He’s repeatedly performed with Eddie Vedder, played alongside Peter Buck of R.E.M., spent 2023 opening for Jakob Dylan and The Wallflowers, and was tapped to pay tribute to Richie Havens at the 2024 Folk, Americana, Roots Hall of Fame induction. In that sense, BOYS TALKING is a culmination of sorts. Not just concerning the idiosyncratic methods of an artist who’s routinely gone the long way around, but as a mountaintop release from a musician, writer, and performer who is a visionary artist in every sense of the word.

Led by kindred spirit songwriters Steph Stewart and Mario Arnez, BLUE CACTUS got their start among the active honky-tonk circuit of North Carolina, developing an electrified twang that now branches out effortlessly into folk, alt-country, and psychedelic-tinged rock. Blue Cactus has supported a diverse set of artists over its eight-year history (The War & Treaty, Town Mountain, and Steve Gunn, among others), Stewart’s introspective lyricism and Arnez’s skill for lush arrangements making the band potent in the studio and on stage. Praised by No Depression for their ability to paint “beautiful pictures of limitless possibility” in roots music, Blue Cactus has drawn comparisons to Gillian Welch and Emmylou Harris. Aided by gusts of thoughtful calm issuing from his pedal steel, the ever-present veil which has historically separated the abstract from the expressed finds itself gently parted at the storied hands of LUKE SCHNEIDER. Releasing his debut solo work with Third Man Records in May of 2020, Altar of Harmony was constructed inside the mind of a man who was always changing places. Whether it was touring with raucous-joyous Natural Child, contributing his signature tone to artists like Caitlin Rose and William Tyler or, later, supplying Grammy-nominated Margo Price with pedal steel across the United States and the wider world with appearances on SNL, Late Night, and more, Luke was subconsciously incubating what would, with time, deliver him to his future. Whereas devotional music has often been reserved for some lofted, untouched ideal, Schneider creates a unique type of music dedicated to the quiet power of the present moment. Glowing in cupped hands, like a secret, Schneider offers listeners a moment of calm to combat the frenzied atmospheres that attempt to thwart peace-of-mind. Schneider continues to create, adding his longing, familiar tone and psychedelic edge to projects from Orville Peck, S.G. Goodman, Kyle Hamlett, and longtime friend and collaborator William Tyler.

CARDUME is a brand-new percussion trio founded by Rogério Boccato, Keita Ogawa, and Cleber Almeida, three highly accomplished musicians with decades of collective experience in the world of improvised music. The name CARDUME comes from Portuguese translating to "school of fish”. Their music reflects that fluid, spontaneous connection found when fish move as one through the water, with movements that are similarly leaderless and, apparently based on an endless series of reactions to reactions. Together, they bring their deep experience to the stage, creating spontaneous, listening-based performances that explore the rich textures and rhythms of the percussion world. The trio draws on the diverse expertise of its members, each of whom has collaborated with top-tier artists (Snarky Puppy, John Patitucci, Maria Schneider Jazz Orchestra, Brian Blade, Hermeto Pascoal, the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Cécile McLorin Salvant, Toninho Horta to name a few), and have performed at prestigious venues, including Carnegie Hall, Village Vanguard, Blue Note Clubs, Kennedy Center, Symphony Hall and many more.

The music of Little Mazarn is a cool float a few feet from the ground through a dimly lit, almost familiar forest. It is quieter than silence, big as everything, still but always moving. If you’ve ever had flying dreams, or an amazing nighttime bike ride on LSD, this might be a world for you. Chords are made up of notes; Little Mazarn gives them all their own moment. There are NO superfluous notes played here. Lindsey’s kind and twisting voice ambles along over the spare sounds of Jeff Johnston’s saw bowing, Ralph White’s electric mbira wanderings, and her own slow banjo. Like DJ Screw, Bohren & Der Club of Gore, and anyone who chooses to walk instead of ride, Lindsey realizes the amazing power of slow… slow… slow music. Lindsey is at once a baby and a wise old man. Get in this canoe at dawn on some Texas river that remembers when Comanche slept under the stars.

Rich Hinman vs. Adam Levy is an instrumental trio featuring Rich Hinman on pedal steel and lap steel and Adam Levy on guitar. They have played together on and off for almost 30 years and share a common improvisational language as well as a wide repertoire of jazz, blues, country and soul tunes, standard to obscure to original. The vibe is both funky and atmospheric, festive and sombre. Collectively, these musicians have worked with kd lang, Norah Jones, Mark Guiliana, Tracy Chapman, Rosanne Cash, Hiss Golden Messenger, Sara Bareilles and many others.