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Jason Myles Goss

Pirate ships, rail yards, skee ball machines, blackberry brandy, and the Coney Island boardwalk—these are just some of the sights, sounds, and smells found in the dimly lit thoroughfares of A Plea for Dreamland, Jason’s third full-length album and first since relocating to Brooklyn. From the opening track it’s clear that this change of scenery (along with four years between records) has brought about many changes in Jason’s singing and songwriting, with a host of new influences at hand. Listening to Dreamland, Jason is heard singing in a notably lower, more resonant voice, with lyrics that are more acutely poetic, darkly playful, and, at times, just plain quirky.

“When I moved from Cambridge to Brooklyn, I began writing a lot. I bought this notepad for scheduling temp jobs and, since I always had it with me, I ended up scribbling all over it, whatever came into my head. Things just started connecting and it became fun piecing these characters and various threads together, without worrying how they related to me directly.”

As the title implies, these songs evoke a feeling of somewhere else—the ballroom of a seaside hotel, a bus station in Meridian, Mississippi, or a dingy car on the Coney Island Wonder Wheel. We encounter places and characters who are far from perfect but are making their way nonetheless. This is a common theme that runs through the album, with Coney Island taking center stage as a place where the bizarre and fantastical comes face to face with the grit and grime of city life.

Jason Myles Goss, Live @ Pete’s Candy Store

Vandaveer

VANDAVEER is the alt-folk song singing/record making/globetrotting project penned and put forth by DC-by-way-of-Kentucky tunesmith Mark Charles Heidinger. The son of a preacher whose father was a gambler whose father was both judge and US congressman, Mark Charles one day found himself in possession of a golden pocket watch owned, wound, and regularly counseled by each in this paternal line. On the backside of said watch was a family name engraved, passed down for a century or more like the timepiece that followed. That name was Vandaveer.

Vandaveer’s debut album, Grace & Speed, a mostly live, stripped down affair, swiftly entered this great big dusty world in the spring of 2007 garnering rave reviews and hyperbolic comparisons to Dylan, Waits, Drake, Simon, and the like. Touring continually on both sides of the Atlantic ever since, Vandaveer has played hundreds of shows, sharing stages with a host of humbling artists including Bon Iver, Alejandro Escovedo, Vashti Bunyan, Vetiver, Evan Dando, Scout Niblett, The Ditty Bops, Smog, Fleet Foxes, Alela Diane and his dear friends in DC’s ramshackle collective, The Federal Reserve. In addition to said Vandaveering, Mark Charles has been known to fraternize and conspire with other music-making hooligans, primarily as a bassist with fellow DCers These United States.

Vandaveer’s sophomore effort, Divide & Conquer, touches upon similar themes found in its elder sibling, winding timeworn themes of love & death, malice & goodwill, sin & perseverance into (mostly) four-minute vignettes. To see D&C through, Vandaveer enlisted the able assistance of longtime collaborator and producer Duane Lundy, brothers-in-arms/TUS bandmates Robby Cosenza and Justin Craig, and most notably, his fair sister Rose Guerin, supplying the loveliest harmonies this side of Eden. A decidedly more produced venture, D&C offers up a flourishing chamber folk companion to its bedroomy lo-fi folk/pop predecessor.

Rebecca Pronsky

“Pronsky’s tunes are literate, passionate and wry.” ~ Time Out NY

“Departures & Arrivals is most polished effort yet with a distinct country-pop flavor. Pronsky [is] one of the rising stars of Brooklyn’s indie music scene… With slicker, ballsier vocals and jazzier progressions than your average folksinger, she bridges the gaps between folk, Americana, jazz, and indie pop” ~ East Bay Express

Critics’ Pick Top Ten Album of 2008 “Rebecca Pronsky struck a deep chord on last year’s Departures & Arrivals, with a little twang and a lot of empathy.” ~ Philadelphia City Paper

“A huge voice with songs to match: file under talent yet to be discovered This is a definite grower as the songs reveal their secrets with repeated listens… a cut above your average female singer songwriter… I bet she’s phenomenal live.” ~ Americana UK
StarDweller

StarDweller is the current alter ego of Stephanie Davila, the former songstress of Americana-band The Winter Blanket. Her songs continue to be born out of necessity—a way to deal with ghosts passed and loves lost. But these new harrowing songs are particularly rife with evidence of sleepless nights and wrestled demons. Her whispery voice and barely-there guitar deliver unsuspecting secrets in the form of hushed lullabies.

A geographical misfit, Davila recently clawed her way out of small-town America and headed to New York City to let her imagination run wild and her inspiration grow rampant. The barebones, swallow-your-pride transparency of greats like Patsy Cline and Leonard Cohen have informed her sound, while her years sharing the stage with acts like Low and M. Ward have influenced her live performance.