News/Thoughts

Tag Archives: Greg Tutwiler

Lora Kelley’s Domystique

Lora Kelley is finding her way between the time of innocent youth and the silver-haired later years of womanhood—pressing into the gentle magic of middle-life, and sharing insights and encouragement along the way, by way of her music. Whether she is singing about childlike perspectives, the complexity of being an aging woman, or exploring the nuance of female-driven hospitality, on ...

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Voice Served Through Songwriting

Growing up with famous musician dad Al Cappi certainly set Louise on the road toward her own career in music. “When I got into high school I started to get very serious about singing,” she remembers. “He would take me on club dates and let me just observe, and then eventually bring me up with the band to sing a ...

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Taylor Rae’s Mad Twenties

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 ...

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Virginia’s Caleb Bailey

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 ...

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It Is Well With My Soul

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 ...

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Like A Bolt Of Lightening

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 ...

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Channeling Songs Through Muse

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 ...

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Merlefest: A Must See

“Merlefest, yeah I’ve heard of that! Isn’t that the festival named after Merle Haggard?” This is the “knowledge” most mainstream music fans have about the bluegrass/Americana festival that has been held on the Wilkesboro Community College campus for over a quarter of a century. If you ask a lot of musicians and attendees who return year after year, that misconception ...

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Israel Portnoy and the Healing Power of Music

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 ...

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Jesse Wilde’s Ongoing Musical Odyssey

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 ...

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