Veteran Nashville songwriter Trent Summar calls the music he creates these days “farm rock,” his own unique blend of traditional and contemporary country with heartland rock & roll and honky tonk. Trent sums up his initiation into music succinctly: “My third grade music teacher put me on-stage for a ‘Hee Haw’ show and it got in my blood…Any time anybody ...

Vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Darren Beachley has made a name for himself in the straight-up bluegrass world, but his latest effort reveals a different approach as he takes a stroll down a new bluegrass/Americana road his latest solo album, The Road Not Taken. He set his musical direction pretty early, learning to play when he was just a lad. His dad ...

Raised on a small farm in southern Saskatchewan, JJ Voss began his journey in music at age eight, and has been following in the footsteps of legendary troubadours like Steve Earle, Tom Petty and Bruce Springsteen ever since. The Americana artist draws from the well of his farm upbringing to craft songs about real life. JJ recalls the challenges and ...

Born in Manitoba and raised mostly in the Vancouver area, Canadian, Kevin Arizona (a.k.a Kaz) was bitten by the performance bug at age 13. After an early childhood in a home immersed in music, including a mom who was into drums (“She set me up with spoons and upside-down Tupperware”) and dedicated to singing, Kaz, remembers a particular moment when ...

Despite growing up about an hour away from New York, Pete Miller has been drawn away from the bright lights and big city toward a rural existence and an authentic way of being a “blue collar” singer-songwriter. Bob Dylan was a big influence in high school and set him on the songwriter road early on, although he kept his creativity ...

Starting as a casual jam band back in 2008, Volume Five is a Mississippi-based group that has grown into one of bluegrass music’s most distinctive and popular acts. Soulful lead vocals by fiddler Glen Harrell along with the band’s tight instrumentals and vocal harmonies have earned the group two IBMA Awards, numerous other nominations, and many accolades. Joining Glen to ...

Around the age of 12 or 13, Vince Vangard got his first guitar, an acoustic. “I wasn’t allowed to start with electric, so I got an acoustic,” he remembers with a chuckle. “I had to learn a few songs, my dad’s particular requests, in order to earn the electric guitar…” His father was a blues fanatic, (who named his son ...

Growing up in Mountain View, Arkansas (home of the Ozark Music Center), for singer-songwriter Pam Setser, it all began with her family. “I started singing when I was 5 years old,” she recalls. “My dad was already playing some guitar; mom played some autoharp…so we started playing as a family band, The Simmons Family.” She feels blessed to have been ...

With her husband and co-writer Tommy Parham, Tia McGraff is a skilled songstress who has been making impactful and thought-provoking art for well over a decade. With nine international CD releases and multiple film and TV placements over the years, her recorded catalog is certainly a proud accomplishment, but where Tia truly shines is in her live performances. Her love ...

Lynn Crossett started playing music while he was also beginning his professional journey as a college student in Austin, Texas. The highway that he hopped on leading him to success in the legal profession always had a parallel service road toward singer-songwriterdom. He now lives in San Marcos, Texas and teaches there full time as a law professor at Texas ...