About the Show
Music City Roots
A weekly concert and live radio show presented from The Loveless Cafe Barn in Nashville, TN.
By Craig Havighurst, Music City Roots Producer
Emi Sunshine, who plays between 100 and 200 dates a year with her family band and who is already an MCR alum, is younger than my marriage. Younger than my late dog. So young in fact that I have my date book close at hand for the year she was born, so out of curiosity I looked up what I was doing on her birthday, June 8, 2004, and it turns out I had lunch with my pal Kyle Cantrell, now head of SiriusXM’s Bluegrass Junction and then a star DJ and in-house historian at WSM radio. I was working on my book about WSM that year you see. OMG, Emi Sunshine is younger than my book. But Nashville and country music have a great track record (see Brenda Lee, Ricky Skaggs) of spotlighting, encouraging and elevating talented youngsters when they can jam. And we have proof from Emi’s last MCR set (when she was TEN) that she can jam. She’ll be part of a lineup this week of somewhat but not that much older musical colleagues offering Americana, rock and blues.
Miss Sunshine however is pure unadulterated country. Her Tennessee twang is proud and pronounced. Her textures come from mountain influences mixed with classic Nashville. She writes about the full range of Saturday night to Sunday morning human experience in all its darks and lights. One can only imagine how much deeper she can dive with the wisdom and insight only experience can bring. She’s already played the Opry a dozen times and earned the respect of legends like Vince Gill and Ricky Skaggs. Her very new album Ragged Dreams is but the latest gesture of a committed artist who will carry the torch of true country for a long time to come.
Also young-ish, especially for a bluesman, is Davy Knowles, who hails from England’s Isle of Man, a place nestled in the Irish sea that I associate with the world’s most outrageously amazing motorcycle race. Mr. Knowles took a more musical rocket ride, latching on to the wizardry of Peter Green, Mark Knopfller, Eric Clapton and other British guitar heroes to forge his own take on the blues. When he came to SXSW at age 19 ten years ago, he left fans and scribes with their jaws agape. He’s got the support of Peter Frampton. He’s played Bonnaroo and Red Rocks and other premiere venues. He’s jammed with Govt. Mule and Sonny Landreth and other contemporary greats. And that pretty much affirms Davy as a contemporary great himself. And he’s playing our little old radio show. This is going to smoke.
Blank Range hasn’t left much of a paper trail in terms of bio and facts but they’ve left vapor trails as they’ve crossed the country touring with some big deal artists like Drive By Truckers and Spoon. Nashville writer Marissa Moss took on the band’s story in 2015 for Rolling Stone, explaining that the guys (mostly émigrés from Illinois) got on Mike Grimes’s champion list playing The Basement New Faces Nights and followed that local buzz building with a win at the Road To Bonnaroo contest. Moss wrote of the music: “super-sticky riffs, restrained psychedelia and a sense of composition that’s restless, surprising and pretty fearless.” After MCR, the guys set out for tours with Jessica Lea Mayfield and Margo Price.
I learned about Hugh Masterson through the WMOT Young Americana series, which you should check out for early tips on rising stocks. He played and toured in bands with some Milwaukee pals who wound up moving to Nashville. He told YA that he’s in a rapid growth phase with his approach to music: “I wrote these songs (from EP Lost And Found) thinking I was going to have a band on stage with me, so I wrote them to be kind of fun songs, and some you can’t do by yourself. So I think a lot of the songs I’ve been writing, is with the idea that it’s going to sound great with a band but if I have to play solo shows that it’s going to transfer a lot better that way.” I can hear the masters of the craft nodding along to that. I really like the EP so this band-based set should be solid.
