Kirsty McGee (UK)
With influences ranging from Louis Armstrong to Lhasa de Sela, Mulatu Astatke and Sister Rosetta Tharpe and a great love of the Great American Songbook, McGee’s own voice has been described as having the texture of ‘smoke and velvet’. Her ever-evolving, soulful sound has been described as ‘filmic, joyful and dirty with hints of gospel and blues’ and she continues to produce music that is hard to categorise but difficult to ignore.
Robert Garson (US)
Robert Garson was born in Arkansas and raised in the San Joaquin Valley in central California where his folks danced to Merle Haggard and Buck Owens performing at the Big Fresno Barn. He now resides in the high desert of Southern California near Joshua Tree. Steeped in the traditions of country, bluegrass and rhythm and blues, he marries ancient and new lyric sensibility to the deep grooves heard in roadhouses from Bakersfield to New Orleans.