The Nighthawks were over 10 years old and had baffled the mainstream industry before the term “roots rock” was coined to explain West Coasters like Los Lobos and The Blasters. By then, the affiliation with many of the living blues greats seemed to brand The Nighthawks a “blues band,” despite the fact that they played with Carl Perkins as well as Muddy Waters. The Nighthawks had its genesis when lead singer-harmonica player extraordinaire Mark Wenner returned to his native Washington, D.C., after six years in New York City. The band set off on a musical mystery tour that has taken them to 49 states and a dozen countries. They played alongside and backed up blues legends Muddy Waters, John Lee Hooker, Pinetop Perkins and Hubert Sumlin, as well as contempory players like Warren Haynes and Bob Margolin. The Nighthawk’s latest album, Last Train To Bluesville was recorded live at Sirius XM’s studio in downtown D.C

Sarah Siskind has been called "the best female singer-songwriter in America today" (Steve Binder, legendary TV director/producer) and Nashville's "Best New Voice" by Southern Living. She has toured with Bon Iver (he has also famously covered her "Lovin's For Fools") and The Swell Season, written songs for Alison Krauss (the GRAMMY nominated "Simple Love") and Randy Travis. Her previous album, Say It Louder, was called "a masterpiece" by Bonnie Raitt. Just out of a five-year publishing deal on Nashville’s Music Row, Siskind was inspired by the idea of exploring her sound as a musician and her vision as an artist. Bathing in this newfound freedom, her creativity burgeoned and she was soon setting up a microphone in the spare bedroom and hitting record. The result was her latest record, Novel, which was tracked and produced alone, in a single room. 

Lucy Wainwright Roche grew up in Greenwich Village. Her childhood was spent living out of a suitcase, either on the road with her musician parents, or being ferried around to different relatives in her big musical clan.  Although she took to writing songs at an early age, Lucy pursued her own path, leading her to attend Oberlin College, pursue a Master’s Degree in education and become a second and third grade teacher. But music was in Lucy’s blood, and when her brother Rufus Wainwright invited her to sing backup on a few tours in 2005 and 2006, she left the classroom to pursue her music. She hit the road full-time, playing across North America, Europe and Australia with such notable acts as Amos Lee, Dar Williams, and Neko Case. In 2010, Lucy completed her first full length album entitled, Lucy.  It features special guest appearances by the Indigo Girls, The Roches, Girlyman, Loudon Wainwright II and This American Life's Ira Glass.

The Milk Carton Kids, a harmonizing, minimalist duo, use two guitars and two voices to create a new combination of back-porch Americana and classic folk. Relying on compelling narrative, well-constructed harmony lines which play more like counterpoint melodies, and their natural stage chemistry, TMCK have drawn in and excited sold out crowds across North America since their formation in early 2011. The serendipitous meeting between the two (Kenneth Pattengale & Joey Ryan) led quickly to a shelving of the solo careers each had been pursuing. While early press has indeed been kind to the duo, their spirit of independence compels them to release all of their music on their own label directly to their fans first, for free, forever.

The Chandler Travis Three-O, like most things in life, started by mistake, as a result of Chandler having a hard time finding rooms large enough to house his nine-piece Chandler Travis Philharmonic. In 2009 or so, a couple of small, friendly bars opened on Cape Cod that asked Chandler about doing something with just another person or two, which wasn’t at all the direction he’d been going in. It gradually became evident that the Three-O could play just about anything the full version of the band could play, once they put in the time to adjust the arrangements, plus a few things it couldn’t; and it immediately became evident that audiences responded to the tighter focus in a delightful way, clearly picking up on the songwriting, which has always been at the heart of the matter in all of Chandler’s bands. The Three-O’s most recent release is Chandler Travis Blows.