Discover your favorite new artist as we open the 31st Annual Rocky Mtn Folks Festival with 10 solo singer-songwriters in our Songwriter Showcase.

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Michaela Anne had no way of knowing what lay ahead when she began writing her gorgeous and aching new album, Oh To Be That Free—sobriety, pregnancy, a global pandemic, and the hemorrhagic stroke that would nearly kill her mother were all just around the corner—but listening back in the warm glow of hindsight, it’s almost as if she was writing a survival guide for her future self. The songs are profoundly vulnerable here, hinting at everything from Brandi Carlile to Kacey Musgraves as they reckon with the flaws and faults that keep us up at night, and Michaela’s delivery is tender and empathetic, insisting that we’re worthy of love not in spite of our shortcomings, but because of them. And so the freedom Michaela sings of isn’t the wild freedom of youth or rebellion, but rather the spiritual freedom that comes from learning to accept what is rather than what ought to be, from learning to appreciate what you have rather than what you want, from learning to look in the mirror and love the person staring back.

Oh To Be That Free follows Michaela’s 2019 Yep Roc debut, Desert Dove, which helped land her festival invitations everywhere from Bonnaroo to XPoNential alongside praise from Billboard, USA Today, The Associated Press, Paste, and more. The World Café raved that “Michaela Anne’s voice shines like a beacon,” while NPR hailed her “stunning vocals,” and Rolling Stone named the album one of the year’s best country and Americana releases. 

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For folksinger Willi Carlisle, singing is healing. And by singing together, he believes we can begin to reckon with the inevitability of human suffering and grow in love. On his latest album, Critterland, Carlisle invites audiences to join him: “If we allow ourselves to sing together, there’s a release of sadness, maybe even a communal one. And so for me personally, singing, like the literal act of thinking through suffering, is really freeing,” he says.

Rooted in the eclectic and collective world of his live shows, Carlisle’s third album, Critterland takes up where his sophomore album, Peculiar, Missouri left off, transforming Peculiar’s big tent into a Critterland menagerie and letting loose the weirdos he gathered together. The album is a wild romp through the backwaters of his mind and America, lingering in the odd corners of human nature to visit obscure oddballs, dark secrets, and complicated truths about the beauty and pain of life and love.

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Sir Woman, Austin Music Award’s Best New Act of 2020, was primed to hit the road promoting its much-anticipated debut album Party City, when the world changed.

With fewer reasons to celebrate, soul-singer Kelsey Wilson (Wild Child, Glorietta) ditched the party vibe she planned for her maiden, solo debut in favor of a more aptly titled record for troubled times. Bitch, a genre-bending, Motown-influenced five-song EP, is set for an Oct. 16 release under Wilson’s acid-trip inspired stage name on Austin’s Nine Mile Records.

Wilson’s backing band — drummer Amber Baker (Jon Batiste) and back-up singers Spice and Roy Jr. — were joined on the album by guitarist Nik Lee and multi- instrumentalist Dan Creamer (Shakey Graves, The Texas Gentlemen), and critically acclaimed country-pop artist Robert Ellis.

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After touring his acclaimed, self-released 2019 debut album, Songs From the Valley, John Vincent III was ready for a bit of a break. Nearly four years later, the 27-year-old Los Angeles/Houston-based singer/songwriter has distilled that once-in-a-lifetime experience into his beautiful and evocative sophomore full-length, Songs for the Canyon.

Co-produced by Vincent with Tom Elmhirst (Adele, David Bowie), and featuring additional production from Tony Berg and Ryan Hadlock, Songs for the Canyon is a massive leap forward from a proudly DIY artist who has already built a diehard fan base on the strength of his heartfelt, stripped-down, folk-tinged sound.

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The Wood Brothers have learned to trust their hearts. For the better part of two decades, they’ve cemented their reputation as freethinking songwriters, road warriors, and community builders, creating a catalog of diverse music and a loyal audience who’ve grown alongside them through the years.

That evolution continues with Heart is the Hero, the band’s eighth studio album. Recorded analog to 16-track tape, this latest effort finds its three creators embracing the chemistry of their acclaimed live shows by capturing their performances in real-time direct from the studio floor with nary a computer in sight. An acoustic-driven album that electrifies, Heart is the Hero is stocked with songs that target not only the heart, but the head and hips, too.

“We love records that come from the era of less tracks and more care,” explains co-founder Oliver Wood. “When you use a computer during the tracking process, you have an infinite number of tracks at your disposal, which implies that nothing is permanent, and everything can be fixed. Tape gives you limitations that force you to be creative and intentional. You don’t look at the music on a screen; you listen to it, and you learn to focus on the feeling of the performance.”

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Winner of the 2023 Songwriter Showcase!

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Peter Mulvey has been a songwriter, road-dog, raconteur and almost-poet since before he can remember. Raised working-class Catholic on the Northwest side of Milwaukee, he took a semester in Ireland, and immediately began cutting classes to busk on Grafton Street in Dublin and hitchhike through the country, finding whatever gigs he could. Back stateside, he spent a couple years gigging in the Midwest before lighting out for Boston, where he returned to busking (this time in the subway) and coffeehouses. Small shows led to larger shows, which eventually led to regional and then national and international touring. The wheels have not stopped since.

Nineteen records, an illustrated book, thousands of live performances, a TEDx talk, a decades-long association with the National Youth Science Camp, opening for luminaries such as Ani DiFranco, Emmylou Harris, and Chuck Prophet, appearances on NPR, an annual autumn tour by bicycle, emceeing festivals, hosting his own boutique festival (the Lamplighter Sessions, in Boston and Wisconsin)… Mulvey never stops. He has built his life’s work on collaboration and an instinct for the eclectic and the vital. He folds everything he encounters into his work: poetry, social justice, scientific literacy, & a deeply abiding humanism are all on plain display in his art.

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Psychedelic Panamanian band Making Movies is on a mission– to reconnect with the rebellious spirit in Latin American folklore. Their music represents the culture of the Americas in a way that delivers the chills of hearing something singularly special, yet feels oddly familiar.The Latin Grammy nominated band has collaborated with Rubén Blades, presented at major international festivals and toured alongside Los Lobos, Maldita Vecindad, Ozomatli, Hurray For the Riff Raff, Flor De Toloache, Thievery Corporation, and many more.

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Margo Cilker’s sophomore album, Valley of Heart’s Delight, refers to a place she can’t return: California’s Santa Clara Valley, as it was known before the orchards were paved over and became more famous for Silicon than apricots. Margo is the fifth generation of Cilker’s born there, and in this 11-song collection, family and nature intertwine as guiding motifs, at once precious and endangered, beautiful and exhausting. The trees here are family trees, or they’re apricot trees, but suburban sprawl isn’t looking good for either. Cilker moved from California to the Pacific Northwest in her mid-twenties and wrote much of Valley of Heart’s Delight while living in Enterprise, Oregon, a small town near the Snake River and powered by the river’s massive, publicly-funded hydroelectric dams. The dams (part of the same system Woody Guthrie was hired to write about) provide clean electricity to much of the western US but make it extraordinarily difficult for anadromous fish (such as Steelhead Trout) to return from the ocean and spawn in their native streams. Valley Of Heart’s Delight feeds off of this tension - how we live in and off of nature, how we live within and without family, and why we return to the places we were born.

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San Francisco, CA: The Mother Hips are back with a new album, When We Disappear, a compelling new studio album. Based in Northern California, the Hips headed to New Mexico, spending time at Ghost Ranch before settling in at Jono Manson’s Kitchen Sink studio in Sante Fe in late 2021 for the sessions. Self-produced, When We Disappear features nine new tracks co-written by co-founders Tim Bluhm and Greg Loiacono — a collection of lit-psych rock songs Inspired by psychology and literature — as well as a raw, garagey cover of Buffy St. Marie’s 1964 addiction song “Codine.”

Hailed by the San Francisco Chronicle as “one of the Bay Area’s most beloved live outfits,” The Mother Hips’ headline and festival performances have became the stuff of legend, finding them sharing stages with everyone from Johnny Cash and Wilco to Lucinda Williams and The Black Crowes. Rolling Stone called the band “divinely inspired,” while Pitchfork praised their “rootsy mix of 70’s rock and power pop,” and The New Yorker lauded their ability to “sing it sweet and play it dirty.”

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In March 2020, the veteran singer-songwriter packed up and left his Los Angeles abode behind, putting his belongings in storage in anticipation of spending extensive time on the road in support of his then-forthcoming album, Rock Bottom Rhapsody. He couldn’t wait to head down to Austin a few weeks later to showcase those songs and launch the album with his band at South-by-Southwest. Then the pandemic hit and all of LaFarge’s well-laid plans went into thin air.

Stuck in East Austin with nowhere to go, LaFarge did what he does best: he got to work. Throughout his career, nine albums to date including a stint on Jack White’s Third Man Records, the singer-songwriter has never been one to look back in anger or disappointment. LaFarge used the sudden change in plans to his advantage, having perhaps his greatest period of personal growth in the midst of this crippling pandemic.

It came as no surprise that the songs instantly started to flow out of him. LaFarge is an artist who refuses to rest on his laurels and compromise. He’s always motivated and ready to create — and when he’s at peace in isolation like he was here, the results can be magical. Looking in, inspired by the deep soul not just from these shores, but from distant geographical places like Africa or South America, LaFarge set out to create a body of work that paired emotional lyrics with a killer groove and grabby melodies.

Written by LaFarge and co-produced with Chris Seefried, the album is one of LaFarge’s strongest and most mature lyrical efforts to date. The album’s title, In the Blossom of Their Shade, is taken from a lyric in the stunning, yet dusty “Mi Ideal.” That song sonically draws influences from the Southwest, South America and Caribbean. The distant warmth of the music, especially rhythmically, adeptly coincides with the longing that’s expressed in the lyrics.

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Things are looking up for The Harlem Gospel Travelers, who return here with a new album, a new lineup, and a new lease on life. Produced by Eli Paperboy Reed, Look Up! marks the group’s first full-length release as a trio, as well as their first collection of totally original material, and it couldn’t have come at a more vital moment. The music still draws deeply on the gospel quartet tradition of the ’50s and ’60s, of course, but there’s a distinctly modern edge to the record, an unmistakable reflection of the tumultuous past few years of pandemic anxiety, political chaos, and social unrest. The songs are bold and resilient, facing down doubt and despair with faith and perseverance, and the performances are explosive and ecstatic, fueled by dazzling vocal arrangements punctuated with gritty bursts of guitar and crunchy rhythm breaks.

Born out of an non-profit music education program led by Reed, The Harlem Gospel Travelers—singers Thomas Gatling, George Marage, and Dennis Bailey—released their debut LP, He’s On Time, to rave reviews in 2019, with Pop Matters hailing the album’s “musical transcendence” and AllMusic praising it as “dreamlike and joyous.” The record charted on Billboard, earned the Travelers high profile fans like Elton John (who invited them to appear on his Rocket Hour radio show on Apple Music), and landed them festival slots everywhere from Pilgrimage to Telluride Jazz.

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The Faux Paws have a problem. They’re a triangle band in a land of circles. Musically impossible to describe, they don’t even fit into todays often hyphenated-genre world. No fan, industry expert, nor member of the band can seem to sum up this band’s sound in any kind of marketable way. They continue to remain a singularly unique outfit in the acoustic music community, always on the fringes, always memorable and with an increasing number of die-hard fans who feel like they’ve uncovered a secret.

Is it bluegrass? Not usually. Old-time? Occasionally. Is it Celtic? Can’t quite say that. Is it Folk? Americana? Jazz? Singer-songwriter? None of the above, but members of the Paws have deep ties to all of these traditions and blend their elements effortlessly to serve whatever musical idea is being presented.

So what can we say? This band takes risks. They’re dynamic, exciting, sincere, irreverent, infectious, and surprising. They move deftly between moods, influences and instruments but always maintaining a “groove” that pulses through the music like a heartbeat (you may not always be aware it’s there but it gives the thing life).

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Praised by NPR’s Bob Boilen as a “powerful voice whose tender performance commands attention and fosters connection,” Alisa Amador made history in 2022 with the first-ever Spanish language song to win the prestigious Tiny Desk Contest. Now, two years later, the bilingual singer/songwriter is formally introducing herself with her stunning full-length debut, Multitudes. Recorded with co-producers Tyler Chester and Daniel Radin, the album is a bold, captivating self-portrait, one that serves not only as a testament to how far Amador has come (she’s earned dates with everyone from Hozier and Brandi Carlile to Lake Street Dive and Maggie Rogers), but also as a celebration of where she comes from (her roots span Puerto Rico, New Mexico, Argentina, and New England). Slipping effortlessly between Spanish and English and featuring appearances from Gaby Moreno, Madison Cunningham, and Quinn Christopherson, the collection is raw and vulnerable, at once steeped in devastating loss and uncertainty, but also laced with the hope and resilience of young woman learning to find her voice and stand her ground. Certainly, Multitudes is a beautiful record—the way Amador’s crystalline voice cut through the album’s lush synthesizers, dreamy guitars, and cinematic string arrangements is nothing short of spellbinding—but more than that, it’s a fierce work of discovery and affirmation, a profound, revelatory meditation on triumph and loss, endings and beginnings, identity and belonging.

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Everything Is Alive, Darlingside’s fourth LP, marks a subtle but remarkable departure for the Boston-based quartet NPR once described as “exquisitely arranged, literary minded, baroque folk-pop.” While the album retains much of the lushness and sophistication of Extralife (2018) and Fish Pond Fish (2020), the band’s latest work decisively exposes and differentiates the individual voices of the four songwriters—a daring reinvention for a group known for ubiquitous vocal harmonies. Grappling with change both personal and universal, with quandaries domestic and existential, Everything Is Alive is an album about loss and the struggle for a semblance of redemption.

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Long before their entwined voices took them around the world — first as harmony singers for Jenny Lewis, then as leaders of their own critically-acclaimed band — The Watson Twins grew up in the American South. They sang in the church choir. They listened to gospel classics and country standards. Those sounds became part of their musical foundation, connecting the siblings to their Kentucky hometown even after they relocated to Los Angeles and, years later, settled in Nashville.

Chandra and Leigh Watson’s southern roots break through the surface once again with Holler (6.23.23). Recorded with their Tennessee-based touring band and produced by Grammy nominee Butch Walker, it’s an album that highlights the identical twin sisters’ songwriting chops and vocal chemistry. Songs like “Two Timin’” and “The Palace” make room for Telecaster twang and honky-tonk harmonies, while ballads like “Never Be Another You” are countrified classics for the modern world. Together, these 10 songs nod to the siblings’ old-school influences while boldly pushing forward into new territory. Captured during a series of live-in-the-studio recording sessions, Holler isn’t just The Watson Twins’ most collaborative album to date — it’s their strongest, too.

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Jamestown Revivalis an internationally recognized Americana/Roots Rock band from Austin,TX who affectionately describe their music as “Southern & Garfunkel.”

Jamestown Revival’s newest album, Young Man, is the band’s first album without electric guitars and their first to be recorded in a studio. With themes like coming of age and settling into an identity,Young Man was produced by Robert Ellis and Josh Block (Leon Bridges, Caamp). 

The band has performed at iconic music festivals, such as Farm Aid, Coachella, Stagecoach,Lollapalooza, Willie Nelson’s 4th of July Picnic and Austin City Limits, have been featured in publications ranging from Rolling Stone to the Wall Street Journal, and performed and toured with the likes of the Zac Brown Band, Nathaniel Rateliff, Ryan Bingham and Willie Nelson.

Jamestown Revival has released three critically acclaimed albums (Utah,The Education Of A Wandering Man and San Isabel) and two equally praised EPs (Field Guide To Loneliness, an intimate collection of songs reflecting recent times whereby human contact is limited more than ever, and Fireside With Louis L’Amour, featuring songs inspired by stories from author LouisL’Amour’sThe Collected Short Stories of Louis L’Amour, Volume1: Frontier Stories.

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