Alanna Royale, Ruston Kelly, Dom Flemons & more!

This week on Music City Roots, we’ve got a cracking line-up for you straight from The Factory in Nashville, including such luminaries as Alanna Royale, Ruston Kelly, Dom Flemons, and Elise Davis! Tune in for an incredible hour of Americana right here on 90.1 FM KKFI.

About the artists:

2013 has been an explosive year for Nashville sextet Alanna Royale and with the speed of a runaway train; they show no signs of stopping. On August 14th, 2012 Alanna Royale arrived at The Basement in Nashville to play their first show without even a demo in hand and left that night with a room full of fans. After that first electric show, the word was out and Nashville was ready to embrace them with open arms. With a bombastic live performance, a handful of performances, and a growing fan base, Royale’s reputation continued to spread without even one recorded song. It was five months later in January 2013 when they released their debut EP Bless Her Heart at a sold out show and confirmed everyone’s suspicions that they were ready for something bigger.

Picking and choosing their favorite elements of soul, funk, Motown, and straight up Billboard pop, Alanna Royale has assembled their own unique style out of many. Not quite soul but not quite rock, Royale shines brightest when marrying their dirty rock n’ roll attitude with their smooth, retro roots. Sharing the stage with some of Nashville’s best and brightest stars of all genres, Royale seems right at home whether playing with a bluegrass band or a garage rock trio. Fronted by the larger than life personality of Alanna Quinn-Broadus the band is led fearlessly with quaking vocals and off the cuff sass. Known for her edgy attitude she will steal your heart, sing it a love song, and break it all in one set. While Alanna might draw you in, she is not alone in the act. It is the band as a whole that keeps you there. Backed by a solid rhythm section and a bouncing two-piece horn section, Alanna Royale lays down the groove, keeps the beat pulsing, and forces you along for the ride. Once Mike Grimes, the owner of the famous record store and venue Grimey’s and The Basement, declared Royale the “next big thing” coming out of Nashville, Royale has worked tirelessly to live up to the hype.

In eight short months, Royale has made two appearances at East Nashville Underground, Grimey’s Record Store Day, Music City Roots, and Scenic City Roots. They won BMI’s Road to Bonnaroo securing them a slot at the summer festival, and will be heading to Austin for Austin City Limits Fest in October. They have been featured in Garden & Gun, on NPR, and in a podcast spotlight with The Tennessean. Despite all of their accomplishments in such a short time, they did not wait to make their next move. Less than four months after the release of Bless Her Heart, Royale released a stunning 100-piece vinyl collaborative project including twenty local Nashville artists to release for Record Store Day. Featuring two new songs and a club banger remix of their single “Animal”, the records sold out within 15 minutes of the beginning of their set.

Armed with their smashing single “Animal”, Alanna Royale is looking forward to their next big step – taking their show on the road. Across the country, word of Royale’s dirty pop/raunchy soul has begun to spread and you can expect them to be turning heads everywhere they go. In less than a year of being a band, they have managed to not only plant their feet firmly in a community flooded with talented musicians but stand out among them. From headlining Nashville Gay Pride to Austin City Limits to Bonnaroo, Alanna Royale has just begun on an unstoppable journey and there’s no telling where they might be headed next.

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At only 25 years old, Ruston Kelly is gaining great esteem as a sought after songwriter on Music Row. He has procured a couple of major cuts – including the single “Nashville Without You” from Tim McGraw’s album 2 Lanes of Freedom– and is currently at work on his first full-length solo album.

As the former lead singer of Elmwood, Kelly has toured with the likes of O.A.R. and G. Love, and has made appearances at festivals such as Bonnaroo, Forecastle, and Wakarusa. As a solo artist, Sean Moeller, founder of Daytrotter, has called Kelly “a more countrified version of AA Bondy.” He has continued to tour with artists like Truth & Salvage Co., The Lumineers, Marcus Foster, and John Fullbright. Most recently,Kelly opened for the John Butler Trio at the Ryman Auditorium and received a standing ovation from the sold out crowd.

While Kelly continues carving out a place for himself as an artist, he has simultaneously started making a name for himself as one of Nashville’s most promising new, young songwriters.

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At age 11, Elise Davis knew she wanted to play the guitar and began taking lessons in her hometown of Little Rock, AR. Writing songs, let alone singing them in public, was never a conscious end-goal. She knew she loved music, but there was no telling how far its pull would shape her life.

One evening, after her parents forbid her to go to a concert in downtown Little Rock, she decided to run away from home and stormed out the door.

After a few hours of sitting in a cul-de-sac less than a mile from away, she grew tired of waiting for the arrival of her anxious parents searching desperately for her. After walking back into her living room, she was shocked to find her parents just as she left them; neither Mom or Dad had realized she was missing. The ploy for attention had the opposite effect, and she was furious. Stomping up the stairs, she grabbed her guitar, locked herself in the bathroom and wrote her first song start to finish in one sitting. At 12 years old, she knew it was her calling.

The Sandbox Lizards, Elise’s first band, played gigs in and around Little Rock throughout high school, and she released her first full-length album Love And Leaving halfway through her senior year.

She attended college at Southern Methodist University in Dallas for her first two years, but ultimately finished school at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville. She released an album each year at SMU and U of A, all the while playing gigs in hotel lobbies, dive bars and parties. She released “Same Vein” in 2010 immediately after graduation and was free to travel.

She immediately booked a gig in Los Angeles at a small bar well off the beaten path. It was there that a smug bouncer struck up a conversation with a touch of sarcasm “so honey where are you from and when you moving to LA to be in the music industry?” After explaining she was from Arkansas and hadn’t considered moving to LA, the bouncer squarely told here “you will never get anywhere if you stay in Arkansas, you’ll never get anywhere.” On her flight home the next day, she made up her mind…she was moving to Nashville.

Without any sense of a safety net, and a mere three weeks after the in-flight decision to drastically change course, she was on the interstate headed to a town where she didn’t know a single living soul. Somewhat miraculously, the very week she landed in Nashville, she had arranged a group of studio musicians to record “Cheap Date,” which ultimately released November of 2011.

In March of 2013, Elise signed her first publishing deal with Horipro Entertainment. The opportunity was presented as a prize for winning a songwriting contest through American Songwriter and Martin Guitar in Nashville. That win planted her firmly in the middle of the Nashville songwriting community, and she began writing songs in the spirit of co-writes and collaboration.

On May 27th of this year, Elise released the Life EP in conjunction with her publisher Horipro Entertainment. The Life EP offers a peek inside the elation and hardships of a born musician making her way in the shadow of the neon circus of downtown Nashville. While the songs on Life could take a slight right turn and fit nicely on the Music Row hit parade, there’s an honesty and sharp-witted integrity fueling her creativity and constantly veering left.

The EP also encapsulates the mid-twenties turbulence stemming from the acceptance that there’s no settling down in Elise’s future, and it’s in direct contrast with the more traditional paths in her hometown of Little Rock. It’s a deft and honest exploration of a woman whose talent and drive will ultimately land her in the public eye at the sacrifice of a life that was expected of her. There’s a bit of a wavering perspective on Life, one that looks at a simpler path in envy while wholeheartedly embracing the fact that there’s no chance for any semblance of picket fences and wedding vows if she is to pursue her goals.

“Never Was Never Is” explores the role of men when investing in a relationship isn’t an option, and “Almost A Woman” details the break-up which helped solidify the decision to keep potentially substantial relationships at an arms length on purpose. Life is not always pretty, and it doesn’t quite fit with most albums coming out of Nashville because of it.

Ultimately, staying true to her message may place her beyond the periphery of country label machine, but it simultaneously allows true music fans the opportunity to focus on a songsmith destined for a different kind of limelight.

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Dom Flemons is the “American Songster,” pulling from traditions of old-time folk music to create new sounds. Having performed music professionally since 2005, he has played live for over one million people just within the past three years. As part of the Carolina Chocolate Drops, which he co-founded with Rhiannon Giddens and Justin Robinson, he has played at a variety of festivals spanning from the Newport Folk Festival to Bonnaroo, in addition to renowned venues such as the Grand Ole Opry.

Raised in Phoenix, Arizona, Dom’s involvement with music began by playing percussion in his high school band. After picking up the guitar and harmonica as a teenager, he began to play in local coffee houses and became a regular performer on the Arizona folk music scene. Dom wrote his own songs and produced 25 albums of singer-songwriters and slam poets in the Phoenix area, including six albums of his own, during this time. He took a brief break from playing music in order to pursue slam poetry (he majored in English at Northern Arizona University) and performed in two national poetry slams in 2002 and 2003. Aside from exploring slam poetry, he spent his early adulthood listening to records and discovering a love of folk music, blues, jazz, jug band music, country music and ‘50s rock ‘n’ roll. Dom became interested in folk musicians such as Phil Ochs, Dave Van Ronk and Mike Seeger, as well as musicians such as Mississippi John Hurt, Howlin’ Wolf, Hank Williams, Chuck Berry and Carl Perkins. After stepping away from the slam poetry scene, he rekindled his interest in music, this time focusing on the old-time blues music of the pre-WWII era.

A multi-instrumentalist, Dom plays banjo, guitar, harmonica, fife, bones, bass drum, snare drum and quills, in addition to singing. He says that he incorporates his background in percussion to his banjo playing. Dom’s banjo repertoire includes not only clawhammer but also tenor and three-finger styles of playing. He first picked up the instrument when he borrowed a five-string banjo from a friend who had removed the instrument’s fifth string. As a founding member of the Carolina Chocolate Drops, an African-American string band, Dom was able to explore his interest in bringing traditional music to new audiences. The band won a GRAMMY for its 2011 album Genuine Negro Jig and was nominated for its most recent album, Leaving Eden, in 2012.

Dom says he would like to use the traditional forms of music he has heard and immersed himself in over the years to create new soundscapes that generate interest in old-time folk music. Focusing very much on creating music that is rooted in history but taking a contemporary approach, Dom hopes to reexamine what traditional music can become.

In July 2014, Dom released his third solo record with Music Maker Relief Foundation, and his first since leaving the Carolina Chocolate Drops. Prospect Hill finds Flemons digging deeply into ragtime, Piedmont blues, spirituals, southern folk music, string band music, jug band music, fife and drum music, and ballads idioms with showmanship and humor, reinterpreting the music to suit 21st century audiences. He was featured on NPR’s Fresh Air with Terry Gross and his new album has received praise from The Boston Globe, Paste Magazine, Living Blues Magazine, and more.


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