The story of Taylor Rae’s path to her upcoming debut album release starts off in a pretty straightforward manner. At age two, she says, “I just decided I was going to be a singer. It wasn’t really an active choice. It was just like, ‘I AM a singer. This is what I’m going to do with my life.’” Voice and ...

Hailing from the wellspring of bluegrass and country music, Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley, and living now at the foot of the Blueridge Mountains, Caleb Bailey is carrying on a family tradition rooted in the music of the hills. His great grandparents recorded music and were bluegrass promoters. His great uncle played with Tom T. Hall and Eddie Rabbit as a steel ...

It Is Well With My Soul is the title of the initial album by the group now called Soulful Femme, which was “born out of the need to interpret blues, funk, rock and jazz our way…” according to Stevee Wellons and Cheryl Rinovato, the dynamic female duo that created it. The record reached #2 on the Roots Music Report’s Top ...

Tedi Brunetti, a renowned drummer, singer and songwriter from Pittsburgh, grew up listening to songs on a transistor radio while banging away on a hamper and old hat boxes. Tedi traces her entrance into playing music, via the then atypical (for a girl) avenue of the drums, back to a birthday party she attended at age 11. “An older sister ...

Since the days before it was called Americana, Ad Vanderveen has been channeling his songwriting muse through a mixture of rock & roll, folk and country, working in many bands before finding his own voice as a solo artist in the early 1990s. He has since garnered a reputation as one of the finest singer/songwriters in the new folk and ...

On a hot day, about a month after a forest fire engulfed the village he lived in, along with all his worldly possessions, minus only one, Israel Portnoy picked up the last object he owned (a vintage 12-string he calls “Guilda”) and began an incredible healing journey. “Maybe I couldn’t bring myself to play her as I could sense some ...

Sometimes music grabs people at a young age, and never lets go, pushing them along from one milestone to the next along the musical journey of a lifetime. That’s how it’s been for Aukland, New Zealand native, Jesse Wilde. After seeing the Elvis ’68 Comeback Special at age 11, Jesse requested a guitar from his mom. He took lessons from ...

Born in a little farm town in northeast Iowa and raised in Kansas City, MO, Randy Seedorff grew up in some fertile ground for country music. The seeds that would later bloom into his current success were planted deep early on. He got his first guitar at age 11 from his mom, who was a country music artist known as ...

Growing up in a western Pennsylvania coal mining town with no red lights, one store and six churches, for Gary Pratt, music was always a passion. He started a band at age 16 and has been singing ever since. He was a “serious” musician from the beginning, as well. That first band included older people, which meant they went places ...

Singer-songwriter Larry Jay was a guitar player first. When he heard a cousin playing guitar, he says, “I just vibrated with the strings.” He spent his younger days in various bands, honing his playing skills mostly on cover tunes. When asked about his early influences, Gary quickly names the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Jimi Hendrix, Neil Young and Willie Nelson. ...