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"I write songs because I need to," said Yellow Springs singer/songwriter Dawn Cooksey. "I would write them even if I didn't play them for anyone."

It's therapy, she said, and she knows a little bit about that because she is a therapist and a licensed social worker. For a time, she worked for an agency in Hamilton, and through her contacts began performing for the Farmer's Market, which in turn led to her upcoming appearance at the Music Cafe on Tuesday, Dec. 23.

Born in Dayton, Cooksey lived several years in Austin, Texas, where she performed in the folk/alternative rock band Dik Dam Dyk. It was in the Austin open mic nights that she overcame her fear of performing her own songs.

"I didn't think anyone would care about my problems," she said. "I'd be a wreck for days before a gig, but I told myself I'd go every week until I'm not scared anymore.

"It took a long time."

Her songs tend to be sad, mad and everywhere in between, she said. "There have been a few exceptions, but I generally don't write when I'm happy and enjoying my life — which is most of the time.

"There are a few exceptions that blow me away, but happy songs tend to be kind of dorky anyway," she said.

She has a band, 68 South.

 Dawn Cooksey on MySpace

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New York singer/songwriter Jaymay is part of the Hotel Cafe Tour 

The Hotel Café in Los Angeles has become an influential venue — “the place that breaks artists” — featuring the country’s up-and-coming singer/songwriters.

“The stellar songwriters that grew The Hotel Café scene into community and camaraderie are the focus,” said spokesperson Patrice Fehlen, and the Hotel Cafe Tour, stopping next week at Bogart’s, follows the same formula.

“There are no headliners, the band is shared and spontaneous collaborations between artists are encouraged,” she said. “With a revolving cast of songwriters jumping on and off the bus, each evening is unique, creating a feeling of 'these people in this place will never happen again.’”

Now in its fourth year, Over the Hotel Café Tour will feature an all female line-up for the first time. Nineteen female songwriters, both established musicians and hot rising stars such have embarked on this 34-city tour, featuring a different line-up on each stop.

“One bus, one band, and a bunch of girlfriends on the road,” Fehlen said.

Cincinnati’s stop features Rachael Yamagata, Meiko, Thao Nguyen, Jaymay and Alice Russell.

“It’s almost like a talent show,” Jaymay said. “The band gets all of our songs in advance, so we go out and do three songs, let someone else play for a while, go back and do two more.”

how to go

• WHAT: The Hotel Cafe Tour
• WHERE: Bogart’s, 2621 Vine St., Cincinnati
• WHEN: 8 p.m. Monday, Nov. 3
• COST: $13.50
• MORE INFO: (513) 562-4949; www.bogarts.com

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Cincinnati singer/songwriter Ellie Fabe is still finding her way back into the scene, making her second appearance at the Music Cafe at the Fitton Center on Tuesday, Oct. 28.

“I have two kids, and that can check you out for a while,” she said. “But they’re a little older, 10 and 14, so I’m just now checking back in.”

Admitting that it’s hard to negotiate her way this time around — there was no MySpace.com when she first started playing her songs — Fabe said her strategy is just to play as much as she can, especially in performer-friendly venues like the Music Cafe.

“Sometimes you find yourself in uncharted territory at open mic nights,” she  said. “But I’ve been writing regardless of whether or not I’m playing out, so you start to get into this ‘if a tree falls in the forest’ thing.

“So for now, I’m just trying to stay next to myself and not get too far out ahead.”

Part of that includes recording. Although she’s recorded some demos of her work, she’s not sure what to do with it all other than post it on MySpace.

“I’d love to make a record, but I don’t see that as something that will catapult you to the top,” she said.

Fabe, who is also a working visual artist, said her songs, laden with girl-longing themes, seem to be especially popular among teenage girls.

“My work is a little self-confessional,” she said, “writing about what’s going on with me — although a lot of it is fictional. I also like words that just go together well.”

Also performing at the Music Cafe will be Christian pop artist Kevin Stokely, Debbie Silverman and Mitch Lieberman playing novelty and parody tunes, singer/songwriters Myron Gabbard and Brent Burch, and folk/rock/country band Diamond Blue.  

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It started out as a choice between acting lessons or violin lessons when Natalie Stovall was 4 years old. Because her mother had fiddled with a violin while carrying the child, music won out.

“I’m not even sure I understood what the instrument was at the time,” Stovall said, “but I had a lot of fun in class.

Practicing, however, was another matter.

“I liked the attention and I liked being on stage,” she said. “That was a big deal, but she couldn’t get me to practice until she figured out that if she took me to a park, people would gather around me to listen, and then I’d practice all day.”

She loved playing so much that her teachers sometimes chastised her for smiling too much during recitals. Music, after all, is serious business, Stovall learned, until she discovered the other side of the instrument, the fiddling side.

“You could play fast and you could play two strings at once and you could make it up as you go,” she said. “I continued classical training up until I was 16, just to work on technique, but I was really a fiddler by then.
When she was 10, she auditioned for a job performing in Opryland park when they asked her to sing something. She didn’t sing, she told them. Sing anything, they said. She sang “Happy Birthday” and got a job singing as well as playing fiddle, and taking voice lessons.

Stovall ended up studying at the prestigious Berklee College of Music in Boston, where she played in orchestras and formed her first band, taking them home to Nashville with her to play around there during the summers. The drummer in that band is still with her today, but it took her 27 different musicians to create the lineup, now together for two years, that will perform with her on Saturday at the Fitton Center.

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Although Mindy Smith spent some time in Cincinnati — and joined  her first band while there — one gets a sense that it was not exactly a memorable part of the native Long Islander’s life. For one thing, she was recovering from the death of her mother, her musical idol and inspiration.

“She had the most beautiful voice I’ve ever heard,” said Smith, who was 19 when her mother died of cancer. “She had the ability to touch people, to move mountains with her voice. If I learned anything from her, it’s to put all of your emotion into your performance.”

So she found herself enrolled at Cincinnati Bible College.

“I went there because I had some friends who went there,” she said. “I was a lousy student, but I needed to get out of New York. I tried to do a band-thing, but that only lasted about two months. It was fun, but...”

After dropping out, she re joined her father, who had relocated to Nashville, and that’s where she found her voice and her instrument.

“That was my version of college,” she said, “learning how to write. I started out singing them a capella, but realized I needed to learn how to play guitar to accompany myself. But I felt like that’s what I was meant to do: Write original songs.”

Smith got to work on her career, going to songwriters showcases and open mics nearly every night. Winning the Tin Pan South writer’s contest in 2000 led to a staff position at Yellow Dog Music. The company allowed her to earn a living writing songs for others while she made demos and generated a buzz that earned her an appearance with Lee Ann Womack at South By Southwest and as the only unsigned artist on the Dolly Parton tribute CD, “Just Because I’m a Woman.” She was singled out by Parton herself for that project.

She’s still on the road for her 2007 album “Long Island Shores,” her second, playing solo acoustic sets.

“That’s really the way I like to do things,” she said. “That’s how I started out, so I’m quite comfortable out there alone.”

Official site

MySpace 

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Oxford singer/songwriter Lisa Biales is taking her children’s show “Yellow Shoes” to New York City for her off-Broadway debut, but not before giving local fans a sneak peek on Sunday.

“It’s basically a collection of songs with a story about how I got interested in singing by singing for my mom,” Biales said. “All of the questions people ask me when I get off stage, I put into the show.”

Although it’s geared toward children with sing-alongs and audience interactions, it will also have some grown-up appeal, she said.

The title comes from a song she wrote about a boy who puts on a colorful costume — yellow shoes, purple suit, red hat — to catch a certain girl’s eye.

“When you’re in love, you let your defenses down,” Biales said.

The off-Broadway version will be staged at the Barrow Street Theatre in Greenwich Village, where she and her husband went to see the musical “Gone Missing” last summer.

“I’ve known the producer there for about five years and we started talking after the show,” she said. “He said he was looking for new shows to get people, especially families, into the theater on dark days.”

When she got home and sat down to write a proposal, she said she was thinking she wasn’t worthy to do an off-Broadway show.

“But then I put on a wacky hat to write and all of a sudden I saw the whole show in my mind,” she said. “I wrote an eight-page proposal and put together a CD of songs and put it in the mail.”

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In 2001, Lisa Walker was consoling her friend Chuck Cleaver as he was preparing himself at the bar for a pending “dreaded” pre-show performance as part of the Cincinnati Entertainment Awards.

Cleaver — a former member of the popular Cincinnati band Ass Ponies — didn’t like performing alone, Walker said, so she kindly offered to come up with him.

“I was familiar with his work,” she said. “I didn’t know all the words, but I knew how the songs went. I just wanted to cheer him up, but to my surprise he said OK.”

So Cleaver wrote some lyrics on a napkin, and (little did they know at the time) Wussy was born.

“It actually went over pretty well,” Walker said, “so we immediately started talking about doing it again — maybe even rehearse.”

The downside was that Walker had just moved to Columbus, so it didn’t seem like a good situation to start a band, but Cleaver kept calling her to sit in on gigs he had, so they “met in the middle” to practice.

“I felt like I left too soon,” she said, “so I moved back after a couple of months.”

The rest of the band just sort of came their way.

“We saw (bassist) Mark (Messerly) while we were out and about one night and Chuck said, 'I think Mark’s supposed to play with us,’” Walker said. “And another night out of the blue Dawn (Burman) came up to us and said, 'I’m supposed to play drums for you.’

“So we said we better learn how to play together because a band has formed. It really was that spontaneous.”

Cleaver already had a name picked out.

“He seemed to know what it was going to sound like before we even played,” Walker said. “I don’t doubt him anymore.”

Wussy started forming — probably — before it was really ready, operating under the principal that the best way to learn is to fall on your face in front of a crowd.

Now with the upcoming release of “Left for Dead,” Wussy will have three CDs and glowing national reviews in Blender and Harp magazine, Village Voice and RollingStone.com, among others.

WHAT: Wussy with the Kyle Sowashes
WHERE: The Comet, 4579 Hamilton Ave., Cincinnati
WHEN: 9 p.m. Oct. 12
COST: No charge
MORE INFO: (513) 541-8900; www.cometbar.com
 

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Heather Turner and Katie Wefer knew each other for 10 years, first at Highlands High School in Northern Kentucky, then at the University of Kentucky, but it was music that turned them into sisters.

Neither had even started playing guitar until late in their college days when unbeknownst to each other, both started learning to play at around the same time. Turner picked up an old guitar that had belonged to her grandfather and mother, while Wefer learned a few chords from a cousin on a $20 garage-sale purchase. Both were hard guitars to play and keep in tune, but something they couldn’t quite put a name to kept them going.

But it wasn’t until they both suffered heart-breaking splits with the men they presumed to marry that they latched onto each other and started playing out their sorrow.

They learned about five songs to start out, but it was the Cranberries’ “Linger” that made them discover they could harmonize, so when they’d go to a campus party together, they’d play it over and over again.

“Then all these guys who played guitar would come around and show us stuff,” Wefer said, and the learning continued.

They entered a few talent shows, and even won $100 in Austin, but it was about two years ago that they had their first big gig.

“My boyfriend’s band had a gig in Lexington and they let me play a couple of songs,” Turner said. “I started talking to the bartender and he asked me if I was in a band, and I said I was, so he booked us for a whole night.”

Although they packed the place and everyone seemed to enjoy it, they realized that they needed to work things out better — learn parts on the guitar rather than just both play the same thing.

While Wefer was on a trip to London two summers ago, Turner visited Ashville, N.C., and fell in love with a restaurant called Tupelo Honey.

“It was just one of the cutest places I’d ever been in,” she said. “They served flowers with every dish.”

And because they liked the Van Morrison song of the same name, they adopted it as the name of their developing act. They started writing music together in addition to playing the cover songs and decided to put together a band.

Things really started coming together for them last fall when they took two weeks off their day jobs to visit a friend in Dallas. They went through Memphis, took the tour of Graceland, then decided to go to Tupelo, Miss., Elvis’ hometown, to get a picture of themselves under a “Welcome to Tupelo” sign.

While doing that, a group of young men stopped and asked them if they were in a band, so they not only serenaded them under the “Welcome to Tupelo” sign and even played at a party for them that night.

“That was a great trip,” Wefer said. “When we got back, we started getting everybody together.”

With the release of a seven-song CD — two by Turner, two by Wefer and three written together — Tupelo Honey is ready to play, and plan to do a lot of it this summer.

how to go
WHAT: Tupelo Honey CD release party with guests Lauren Houston, Wojo, Kelly Thomas and The Fabulous Pickupsm and Pete Dressman.
WHERE: Southgate House, 24 E. Third St., Newport, Ky.
WHEN: 8 p.m. Saturday.
COST: $5.
MORE INFO: (859) 431-2201; southgatehouse.com.
 

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Mary Chapin Carpenter's The Calling, her first release for Zöe/Rounder, is unique among a body of work that has earned her five Grammy Awards and helped her sell 13 million records in the first 20 years of her career. While her writing continues to be deeply personal, this new collection of songs also unequivocally addresses issues both public and political: from the after-effects of Hurricane Katrina to religious zealotry to the trial-by-radio of the Dixie Chicks. Thematically, the album is about faith, vocation, commitment, responsibility, and the ways these are wielded for various - often, competing - agendas.

Samples 

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Go! FEATURE

When Lisa Biales was a child, they couldn’t get her to quit singing.

“My parents were both musical,” she said. “My dad played upright bass and my mom sang and acted in community theater.

“I started writing plays as a child, casting and directing my playmates in our garage that I turned into a theater for the day. No matter what the play, the big finale was always me belting out ‘Moon River.’”

When she was about 12, a student at Sacred Heart School in Fairfield, she approached her older brother to teach her to play a song on the guitar that she could sing to.

“He taught me the chords to ‘I’m So Glad,’” she said. “It was just moving an E chord up and down the neck. It was easy, but I was hooked.”

She soon started performing at the Sacred Heart Church’s guitar mass and filling in the breaks of her father’s Dixieland band when it would play at LeSourdesville Lake, where she first started performing her own compositions. By high school, she was in a band, Paragon, playing gigs at Waterworks Park, school dances and parties almost every weekend.

Her latest album, “Chasing Away the Blues,” has earned a bit of acclaim with one of its songs, “Where the Buckwheat Blooms,” climbing to the Top 40 at the On-Line Folk Festival, an Internet-based radio station.

“That was a song written about my mom when she was a little girl,” she said. “Her family moved around a lot after the war. Her father had a hard time finding a job and drank a lot, but she would remember riding in a truck in the middle of nowhere with the buckwheat in bloom. It was a favorite time in her life, but it was a bittersweet time.”

While she said she didn’t particularly intend to make a blues album, the bluesy tone seemed to emerge anyway.

“The blues has crept in periodically throughout my career,” she said. “Those are the songs that the great singers sing č something to sink your teeth into č and my vocals lend themselves to that bluesy feeling.

“Each song is an individual, each with its own life,” she said.

In addition to her solo work, Biales is also a member of a folk duo, Prairie Orchid, with Sarah Goslee Reed, and a trio, Tres Lunas, with fellow Oxford residents Bonnie Allyn and Laurie Traveline.

Biales has a standing monthly solo gig at the A-List Wine and Martini Bar, located above Alexander’s Restaurant in Oxford, where she tries out her new material to see what sticks.

“People really respond to the bluesy songs I do,” she said. “I can see their reaction up close and personal, and it’s been wonderful to have that venue.”

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 PRESS BIO

It’s long been said that the blues -- in all its forms -- is one of the most potent means to transform pain into beauty. Lucinda Williams has known that since she began devouring music as a youngster growing up in Louisiana, and she’s been finding new ways to perform that alchemical reaction ever since.

Download samples at Lost Highway Records.com.

LucindaWilliams.com

MySpace 

Video: The Making of West 

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PRESS BIO

It’s long been said that the blues -- in all its forms -- is one of the most potent means to transform pain into beauty. Lucinda Williams has known that since she began devouring music as a youngster growing up in Louisiana, and she’s been finding new ways to perform that alchemical reaction ever since.

Download samples at Lost Highway Records.com.

LucindaWilliams.com

MySpace 

Video: The Making of West 

Continue reading "Lucinda Williams: "West"" »

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 PRESS BIO

Continue reading "Martha Scanlan: "The West Was Burning"" »

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 PRESS BIO

 A sold-out crowd waits in semi-darkness. Outside, a van pulls up and five beautiful rag-tag misfits carrying all manner of instruments saunter through the back door. They head unapologetically, past the frantic promoter, and onto the stage.

Po'Girl starts the show. In typical Po'Girl fashion. On time…and at the last minute.

Pogirl.net 

MySpace 

Continue reading "Po'Girl: "Home To You"" »

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PRESS BIO

Continue reading "Anaïs Mitchell: "The Brightness"" »

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ChicksRockFest.com

April 5-8 at the Poison Room in Cincinnati.

Go to the next page or to my Chicks With Guitars main page to see who's been booked so far...  Complete schedule to come....

Continue reading "Chicks RockFest announces line-up" »

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BARSUK RECORDS BIO 

The word 'artist' these days is used to refer to pretty much any musician, but few songwriters or performers approach their musical life with the degree of intense concern as does Jesse Sykes. Although originally a visual artist, Sykes sings that "only music sets my soul free." She's always, however, brought a deep visual sense to her textually (and texturally) rich songwriting.

 Full album stream

MySpace.com

Free Downloads

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OFFICIAL BIO 

Samples on Rickie's MySpace page

THE SERMON ON EXPOSITION BOULEVARD, the new album by Rickie Lee Jones and her first for New West Records, is a beauty--soul-satisfying and sonically unique. RICKIE LEE sounds completely tapped in, alive and vital, heading down some mighty interesting roads and discovering new magical essences. Lots of creative sparks here--plenty of them. She sounds like she's going through a transformation throughout the album in a way that's reminiscent of Van Morrison's performances on his classic album Astral Weeks. There’s Rickie’s spellbinding performance on the eight-plus free-flowing minutes of “I Was There,” and so many other highlights here, including “Where I Like It Best,” “Gethsemane,” “Falling Up,” “Circle In The Sand,” “7th Day” and “Elvis Cadillac” and especially “Nobody Knows My Name.”

NOTES ON ALBUM ART: The album cover was designed by Lee Cantelon in the winter of 2006, using a self-portrait collage that was created by Rickie Lee Jones. Rickie created her collage from the photograph of a very old Mexican religious painting that she purchased years ago. Details, such as the dove image, were added by Lee Cantelon from photographs he took of graffiti in the Arab quarter of Jerusalem in 2006.

 "I wanted the album cover to have the feel of a battered sacred book, street art mixed with icons and and east-meets-west," Lee Cantelon says of his design. Cantelon has designed five previous albums for Rickie, including "Naked Songs," "Ghostyhead," Live from Red Rocks,"   the award-winning (Best 100 Album Covers of All Time), "It's Like This," and "Duchess of Coolsville," anthology. 

View more album art details 

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OFFICIAL BIO

 Patty Griffin's new album Children Running Through (ATO) continues the remarkable creative evolution that's quietly established Griffin as a vital and singular musical force. It also belies her persistent sensitive-singer-songwriter image - a limiting perception that fails to fully convey the emotional depth and breadth of her songwriting or the emotive power of her fluid, soulful singing. Indeed, the new disc's 12 Griffin originals maintain a timelessly truthful resonance that echoes a variety of styles, most notably the classic R&B and gospel music that have long been a source of inspiration for the artist.

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