Final Show at The Factory

The Factory in Nashville has been the home of Music City Roots for the past few years and here we present our final live program from this historic venue.  Listen to great artists Anthony DaCosta, Dawn Landes, The Whiskey Gentry, and Suzy Bogguss putting down an excellent event to close out our season.  We’ll be on the road for the next few months with gigs from various cities as our new digs are constructed in downtown Nashville.

Anthony DaCosta

Anthony DaCosta‘s songs don’t extend metaphors or spin yarns. They shoot straight. The singer-songwriter and guitarist speaks plainly, from the heart and the gut.

da Costa grew up listening to everything: folk singers, rock icons, bluegrass revivalists, roots-rock storytellers like Dylan, as well as the pop on the radio. “I grew up listening to boy bands, singing in the church choir, performing in school musicals,” recalls da Costa. “There’s always a pop aspect to what I do, but one of my favorite singers is George Jones,” whose influence resounds in da Costa’s often tender tenor.

A seasoned sideperson, he’s toured extensively with Grammy-winning performers (Sarah Jarosz) and Americana darlings (Aoife O’Donovan). He’s shared the stage with everyone from Judy Collins to Kenny Loggins, played major festivals and late-night shows (CONAN), and written songs with hitmakers (Steve Poltz).

With his latest work, including his recent solo album DA COSTA, he adds the musical force of some of American folk and roots’ seminal cities to his forthright style. “In the past few years, since I moved from New York to Austin and then to Nashville, I’ve found my voice as a songwriter,” muses da Costa. “I’ve honed my band, made strong musical friendships. I felt like I started over and found what I needed to say.” You can hear it clearly in his songs, whether they are steeped in rock-country grit or frank folk.

Dawn Landes

Dawn Landes is a unique musical artist who presents the following as her bio…

“Other echoes inhabit the garden. Shall we follow? Quick, said the bird, find them, find them, round the corner. Through the first gate, into our first world, shall we follow

The deception of the thrush? Into our first world.

There they were, dignified, invisible, moving without pressure, over the dead leaves, in the autumn heat, through the vibrant air, and the bird called, in response to the unheard music hidden in the shrubbery, and the unseen eyebeam crossed, for the roses had the look of flowers that are looked at. There they were as our guests, accepted and accepting. So we moved, and they, in a formal pattern, along the empty alley, into the box circle, to look down into the drained pool.

Dry the pool, dry concrete, brown edged, and the pool was filled with water out of sunlight, and the lotos rose, quietly, quietly, the surface glittered out of heart of light, and they were behind us, reflected in the pool. Then a cloud passed, and the pool was empty.

Go, said the bird, for the leaves were full of children, hidden excitedly, containing laughter. Go, go, go, said the bird: human kind cannot bear very much reality.
Time past and time future

What might have been and what has been point to one end, which is always present”

The Whiskey Gentry

Following the release of their first two acclaimed albums, Please Make Welcome (2011) and Holly Grove (2013), the Atlanta-based band The Whiskey Gentry are set to release their third full-length studio album entitled Dead Ringer this spring. On it, the husband and wife duo of Lauren Staley & Jason Morrow and bandmates have created an effort that builds on many of the sounds of their previous albums – incorporating deep country, Americana, honky-tonk, bluegrass and a stiff shot of gritty rock ’n’ roll, yet it also finds the band testing themselves and pushing beyond their own boundaries.

Dead Ringer deals with growing up, and how that’s affected the band’s relationships, and the places they’ve gone and people they’ve met in the process. As singer/songwriter Lauren Staley puts it, “There’s also a lot of questioning where you are in your life: are you going to follow your dream, or are you going to do what society thinks you should do?”

It’s apparent with this effort that Staley & Co. have opted for the former. “A common lyrical thread throughout this album are stories about being on the road,” Lauren admits, “and chasing your dreams and the outcomes – either good or bad – in doing that.”

Stepping outside of the comfort zone of their previous recordings, the band has moved in a different direction musically. “Sonically, the biggest difference of this record is that we recorded it live together in the same room at Echo Mountain Recording Studio (Asheville, NC),” Lauren explains. “There are less overdubs, which makes it sound more like how it would if you were to see us in person – it’s raw, it’s not perfect. We worked with a producer for the first time (Les Hall), and he had so many amazing ideas we’d never thought of and really pushed us to think outside of our box. There’s an energy on this record that we’ve never captured before, and I think it was a complete game changer for our sound.”

Dead Ringer has more guitars, more attitude and more of an edge than anything the band has done before. It’s not such a massive departure in sound that fans won’t understand it, but they will notice. “We are not a different band,” Lauren explains, “but we’ve definitely grown up and are changed people from the time we started this band. I think we’re better musicians, better songwriters. We’ve learned lessons and we’ve worked hard, and we want to tell our current fans and new fans the stories of what we’ve experienced on this journey. Musically, there are still elements of bluegrass and honky-tonk in our sound, and there always will be. However, I think we’ve expanded the scope of what we can offer people – there’s something for everyone on this record.”

The Whiskey Gentry has been tearing up the road for the better half of the last decade, logging over 150 shows each year, and winning over crowds at major festivals such as Shaky Knees, Shaky Boots, Merlefest, Bristol Rhythm & Roots Reunion, FloydFest and many others. With the release of Dead Ringer they’ll continue this trend, bringing their raucous, high-energy shows to audiences from coast-to-coast.

The Whiskey Gentry’s Dead Ringer will be available on limited vinyl, CD and digital formats on April 7th via Pitch-A-Tent Records.

Suzy Bogguss

Suzy Bogguss didn’t set out to craft a Merle Haggard tribute record. Some might call that serendipity; she just calls it Lucky.

“Merle Haggard is a hell of a storyteller,” says Suzy. “When I hear his songs, I feel like I’m listening in on someone’s life.” On her new album, Lucky, a collection of songs all written by Haggard, Suzy does more than just listen—the CMA, ACM and Grammy Award-winning singer makes the country rebel’s compositions her own, reinterpreting classics like “The Bottle Let Me Down,” “Silver Wings” and “Today I Started Loving You Again” from a female point of view.

“Merle is one of the most masculine songwriters I’ve ever heard, and I’ve been watching boys cover his music for years. I just thought, ‘Why couldn’t a girl do this?’” Suzy says.

Turns out, a woman can—especially if that woman is Suzy Bogguss, one of country music’s most pristine and evocative vocalists. With the release of the Illinois native’s 1989 major label debut, Somewhere Between, Suzy quickly became one of the key artists that defined those golden days of ’90s country. She scored a string of Top 10 singles with country radio staples like “Outbound Plane,” “Drive South,” “Hey Cinderella,” “Letting Go” and “Aces,” and her 1991 album of that name was certified platinum. In addition, she scored a trio of gold albums and notched more than 3 million sales.

With Lucky, released on Suzy’s own label Loyal Dutchess, the singer comes full circle, returning yet again to her early inspiration.


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