Rosanne Cash (born May 24, 1955 in Memphis, Tennesee) is an American singer and songwriter. She is oldest daughter of Johnny Cash and his first wife, Vivian Liberto, born shortly before the release of her father's first single. She is also the stepdaughter of June Carter Cash and the stepsister of country singer Carlene Carter.

Cash released her first single in 1979, a duet with Bobby Bare called "We Don't Need No Memories Hangin' 'Round". Two years later, she had her first country No. 1 (and the biggest commercial hit of her career), "Seven Year Ache". Although Cash was a prominent country star throughout the '80s, alongside fellow decade-defining artists Emmylou Harris, Juice Newton, and Dolly Parton, her music was anything but traditional: She topped the charts with songs written not only by herself, but by her father ("Tennessee Flat Top Box"), John Hiatt ("The Way We Make A Broken Heart"), Tom Petty ("Never Be You") and The Beatles ("I Don't Want To Spoil The Party"), "I Don't Know Why You Don't Want Me", which won her a Grammy in 1985, and "It's Such A Small World", a 1987 duet with Rodney Crowell on his album Diamonds & Dirt, provided further hits. A sampling of these songs and more are included on the compilation Hits 1979-1989. In 1979, she married Rodney Crowell, who was to produce most of her hit records. Their stormy marriage lasted until 1992; its break-up is chronicled in Cash's Interiors and in Crowell's album Life Is Messy. Cash later married John Leventhal, who produced her albums The Wheel, 10 Song Demo, Rules Of Travel, and Black Cadillac.

To date, Cash has had more than twenty top 40 country singles, including eleven chart-toppers, but none since 1990, and she has left Nashville in both spirit and body to pursue her artistic vision. Although she had recorded all of her hits for Columbia Records' Nashville division, she released 10 Song Demo for the pop division of Capitol. Cash resurfaced in 2003 with Rules of Travel. The album features guest appearances by Sheryl Crow and Steve Earle, as well as a tune penned by Joe Henry and The Wallflowers' Jakob Dylan. Cash's latest album, entitled Black Cadillac, was released by Capitol Records in January 2006 to critical acclaim. Many of the songs were written by Cash and address the losses (within a 24-month span) of her step-mother, her father, her step-sister (Rosey Nix Adams) and then finally her mother on Cash's fiftieth birthday.

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Steve Earle (born Stephen Fain Earle on January 17, 1955, in San Antonio, Texas) is a singer-songwriter best known for his country music and rock 'n roll tinged "alt-country." He is also a published writer, a keen political activist (particularly in protesting against the death penalty in the U.S., as in his song "Ellis Unit One" from the movie Dead Man Walking), and has written and directed a play. Earle also had small roles on the HBO television shows "The Wire" and "Treme". His sister Stacey Earle is also an acclaimed singer-songwriter, as is his most recent wife, Allison Moorer, whom he wed in 2005. His first son from an earlier marriage is the singer-songwriter Justin Townes Earle, named for Earle's hero Townes Van Zandt.

In 1975, at the age of 20, Earle moved to Nashville and began working as a songwriter. In these early days, he recorded with Guy Clark and Emmylou Harris. He finally scored a country hit in 1981, writing Johnny Lee's top ten cut "When You Fall In Love." Earle's early work as a performer tended towards the rockabilly sound, popular at the time. In 1986, his first proper album Guitar Town was a critical and commercial success. It sold over 300,000 copies and led some to herald him as a saviour of country music.

Earle long struggled with drug abuse. His addiction eventually caused a departure from performing and recording after he was dropped by MCA in 1991. Whilst in jail on drug and firearm charges, he kicked the habit and returned to music after his release in 1994.

Earle's "second, post-jail, musical career" has been more stylistically diverse than his early material, dipping in acoustic, bluegrass, and roots rock sounds. I Feel Alright and Transcendental Blues met with good reviews and decent sales. 2002's somewhat controversial Jerusalem was one of the first albums to directly address the September 11 attacks. It brought Earle's leftist views to media attention, especially the song "John Walker's Blues."

His sister Stacey Earle is also an acclaimed singer-songwriter, as is his most recent wife, Allison Moorer, whom he wed in 2005.

His latest album of original material I'll Never Get Out Of This World Alive was released in 2011. Songfacts reports that one of the tracks, This City, got played on HBO's New Orleans based show Treme several months before the album's release. Earle, who plays a recurring street musician, composed the song especially for the drama series.

Earle has also released a tribute album of material written by friend and mentor Townes Van Zandt, entitled Townes.

For more information and photographs of Steve Earle go to his official website, www.SteveEarle.com.


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The Mountain Goats is the musical project of singer-songwriter and guitarist John Darnielle. The New Yorker magazine referred to him as "America's best non-hip-hop lyricist". In its June 2006 issue, Paste magazine named Darnielle one of the "100 Best Living Songwriters". Darnielle's lyrics are literate and filled with imagery that reference classic literature, religion and mythologies, pop culture, art and history. Others are vague references to his stepfather, and with the 2005 album The Sunset Tree Darnielle finally offers a more intimate account of his experience as an abused child.

Darnielle began performing under the name the Mountain Goats in 1991 in Claremont, California, where he attended Pitzer College and worked as a psychiatric nurse. The band's name, the Mountain Goats, is a reference to the Screamin' Jay Hawkins song Yellow Coat. Darnielle released his first album, Taboo VI: The Homecoming, on Shrimper Records. Many of his first recordings and performances featured Darnielle accompanied by members of the all-girl reggae band, The Casual Girls, who became known as The Bright Mountain Choir. One of this group's members, Rachel Ware, continued to accompany Darnielle on bass, both live and in studio, until 1995.

Highly prolific, since the early 90s Darnielle has released over a dozen Mountain Goats albums, 6 full-length cassettes, various 7" singles, 10" and 12" EP's and has contributed to compilations and label samplers too numerous to mention. As of November 2006, the Mountain Goats' song catalog encompasses 452 songs, a fair number of which have only been played live. Among this bewildering number of tunes is a song cycle named the "Alpha" series, about a dysfunctional couple, as well as one named the "Going To..." series, about people going someplace or other, usually not for fun but rather to flee from a bad situation in their lives. The last series alone totals over 40 songs to date. Additional song cycles from Darnielle's extensive repertoire include the "Standard Bitter Love Song #..." series, the "Orange Ball Of..." series, and the "Pure..." series, as well as a series of songs whose titles are simply chapters and verses from the Bible ("I Corinthians 13 8-10", etc.).

Although his last six albums (since Darnielle signed with 4AD Records) have seen more hi-fi production values, most of the Mountain Goats' recorded output is extremely lo-fi, the only accompaniment to Darnielle's razor-sharp lyrics being an acoustic guitar and the occasional input of backing vocals, and then the sound of the tape recorder permeating the track at all times, effectively serving as a backing track in its own right.

In addition to his work with Mountain Goats, Darnielle has also collaborated with Franklin Bruno (of Nothing Painted Blue) in the Extra Glenns.

Darnielle's song "Cotton" was featured in the the Showtime show Weeds. It can be heard in the middle and at the end of the 9th episode, The Punishment Light.

The songs "No Children", "Old College Try", and "Love Love Love" were each featured in separate episodes of the television series Moral Orel's third season, which has featured major running themes of alcoholism, regret, and domestic discontent.

For more info, MP3s, contact information, guitar tabs and various and sundry other items of interest, please see http://www.themountaingoats.net.

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Vocalist and guitarist for Irish rock group The Frames. Hansard quit school at age 13 to begin busking on local Dublin streets. He first came to public attention as guitar player 'Outspan Foster' in the Alan Parker film The Commitments, a role he subsequently regretted, believing it distracted from his music career. In 2003 he presented the first series of Other Voices: Songs from a Room, which showcased Irish music talent on RTÉ. He released The Swell Season, his first solo album, on April 21st 2006, in collaboration with a Czech singer and multiinstrumentalist Markéta Irglová, Marja Tuhkanen and Bertrand Galen.

Glen recently starred in the movie 'Once' alongside Markéta Irglová which won a prestigious Sundance Audience Award in 2007, as well as the 2008 Academy Award for Best Originial Song (for "Falling Slowly"), beating out three songs from the Disney musical "Enchanted" and one song from "August Rush" (both were heavy contenders). Its Irish release took place on 23rd March 2007 and appeared in cinemas further afield later in the year.


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The Carolina Chocolate Drops are a group of young African-American string band musicians that have come to together to play the rich tradition of fiddle and banjo music in Carolina's Piedmont. Rhiannon Giddens and Justin Robinson both hail from Durham, North Carolina while Dom Flemons is native to sunny Arizona. Although they have diverse musical backgrounds, they draw their musical heritage from the foothills of North and South Carolina. They have been under the tutelage of Joe Thompson, said to be the last black traditional string band player, of Mebane, NC and they strive to carry on the long standing traditional music of the black and white communities. Joe's musical heritage runs as deeply and fluidly as the many rivers and streams that traverse their landscape. They are proud to carry on the tradition of black musicians like Odell and Nate Thompson, Dink Roberts, John Snipes, Libba Cotten, Emp White, and countless others who have passed beyond memory and recognition.

http://www.carolinachocolatedrops.com

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Rich Robinson's talents are already familiar to the millions of fans who've embraced his work as guitarist/songwriter/co-founder of the Black Crowes. But his debut solo effort Paper is a potent musical statement that's likely to come as a pleasant surprise to even his most ardent admirers.

The self-produced album - on the artist's own Key Hole label - finds Robinson singing lead and playing most of the instruments on 14 original compositions that reveal the young veteran to be both a distinctive, eloquent lyricist and an engaging, expressive singer. While rockers like "Know Me," "Enemy" and "Yesterday I Saw You" embody the ballsy, rootsy crunch that put Robinson's former band on the map, Paper also encompasses a more thoughtful, introspective side, as well as an unmistakably adventurous sonic vision that manifests itself in the acoustic, orchestral and psychedelic textures of such tunes as "Veil," "When You Will," "Falling Away" and "Forgiven Song."

Paper is the product of a lengthy period of personal and musical self-discovery that began when the Black Crowes - the band Robinson formed with his vocalist brother Chris while both were in their teens - went on indefinite hiatus early in 2002. During their 13-year, seven-album recording career, the group almost singlehandedly restored raunchy, no-frills rock 'n' roll swagger to commercial prominence, while earning a near-mythical reputation for its combustible internal chemistry.

"After the Crowes broke up," Robinson explains, "I sat around for a few months and spent time with my family, and then I started trying to figure out what I wanted to do. It was a struggle for awhile, because at the time there were a lot of family deaths and various weirdness that happened all at once, and I'd never really had to deal with that kind of stuff before. And I'd been in the Crowes for my whole adult life, so when it stopped, it was like, 'Well, what the hell am I supposed to do now?'"

Robinson built a recording studio in his Connecticut home, did some writing and producing with other artists, and made his first venture into film soundtrack work by writing and performing the score for the 2002 feature "Highway". He also developed his longstanding interest in painting into a fulfilling creative sideline. Meanwhile, he continued to write songs.

As an outlet for the new compositions he'd been accumulating, Robinson formed a four-piece band, Hookah Brown, which hit the road in early 2003 for an extended club tour that won enthusiastic notices from fans and critics alike. But, having spent his entire musical career as a team player, he eventually realized that he was in no rush to return to the politics of band life, choosing instead to shoulder the burden of a solo career.

"Eventually I just said 'Screw it, I'll just do it myself,'" he recalls of his decision to become a frontman. "I'd never really sung lead, so I started taking singing lessons, and the first lesson showed me what I'd been doing wrong, and I immediately became a stronger singer. I started thinking about writing lyrics that worked for my voice. And I tried playing some shows and singing, which was fun, and that built up my confidence about singing."

Robinson recorded Paper largely on his own, cutting tracks in old-school analog style and playing most of the instruments except drums, which were provided by Joe Magistro. The album also features guest appearances by ex-Black Crowes keyboardist Eddie Hawrsch and BR549's Donnie Herron on fiddle and pedal steel.

"It was a little weird," Robinson admits, "because I'd never made a record without my brother before and I was used to having a bunch of people in the studio. But it was also cool, because I was learning new things and because I felt like I was able to create something new, without the baggage of my musical history."

Robinson took Paper's iconoclastic focus a step further by deciding to build his solo career from the ground up, bypassing the music industry's unwieldy machinery. "At some point I realized that I just didn't want to deal with record companies anymore," he states. "I don't want to deal with anyone telling me to change my songs or what producer to use. I don't want to spend six million dollars making a record and then worry about having to sell six million records to pay for it. So I decided to try doing it myself. The music business is kind of like Rome burning right now, and I don't think the traditional record-company methods work anymore. I think that music's going back to the underground way of doing things, and I'm excited about being a part of that."

Rather than coasting on his formidable past successes, Rich Robinson is clearly thrilled to be conquering new creative territory. "This whole project," he asserts, "has been a completely positive situation from the start. There's no stress, no bullshit, and I'm really excited about the whole thing. I'm really happy with this record, which was my only goal. And now I'm looking forward to getting it out there and playing these songs on tour, and seeing what happens."

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