Taylor Smith + Andrew Mill + Todd Grebe

TAYLOR SMITH: Having toured through Europe each year since 2015 as leader of New Orleans-based jazz & blues group Taylor Smith & The Roamin’ Jasmine, bassist/vocalist/songwriter Taylor Smith was disappointed to have to cancel this year’s tour, which would have brought in two fantastic Italian musicians, and featured performances in Italy. But never one to dwell on misfortune, Taylor has taken advantage of the time off from performing to dig in on his piano and guitar playing skills, crafting stripped-down versions of his full-band arrangements and polishing up new original songs that were meant to be performed on this year’s tour. The solo arrangements are a refreshing medium for his soulful blues-tinged vocals to shine through, while maintaining the drive and energy of his usual full-band performances.

ANDREW MILL: In between releasing his two solo albums Andrew has rambled between stages, bars, festivals, bus stops, stations and ports, trying to work out what on earth this is all about.  A fork lift driving poet from Choctaw, Oklahoma; a peanut porridge seller by a burned down record shop on Orange Street, Downtown Kingston; a barman named Horace weeping and singing in his bar, the baptist choir across the road, and the brass players ripping it up in Central City, New Orleans. These are the good people, the ones that have brought tears and revelations and something towards the beginning of answers but maybe just more questions, but better and deeper ones… from Jamaica to Glasgow there are wonders of people and artists all around us… sometimes you have to go and look for something to find out what was around you all along.  The words of highland rock n roll poets, the cry of 13 fiddles in a room playing reels and laments as one, the soul of a lone banjo and a story, and all the good people, animals, art, mountains and seas, here, beyond, and in between.
He decided to make Govanhill in Glasgow his home and writing base, after years of touring and has now released his second album, Wandering Albatross, written in collaboration with writers, artists and musicians he is lucky to call his friends.  The brass has been swapped for accordions, banjos and fiddles, the gospel singers for friends and poets, the street jazz for bar room ballads and the raw Jamaican ska for their own Celtic soul music.
Tune in for songs of pigeons sleeping with lawnmowers, albatrosses falling for French girls, burnt deserts, bubbling sea graves, borrowed lovers and stolen wine, nursed loneliness, the biting cold, shotguns, old dogs and tire marks… weary-eyed goodbyes, teary skies, rivers dried, life sentence lies…

TODD GREBE: For all the ink spent arguing over who’s more “country” these days, folks tend to forget that you can hear country music first in the voice. It needs to be a little bit sad, a little bit weary, a little bit wise, and there should be just the hint of a smile at the edges. This is the kind of voice you hear from bandleader, songwriter, and real-deal country singer Todd Grebe on his new album, CITIZEN, with his band COLD COUNTRY. As a songwriter, Grebe crafts songs that stick with you, and though his clever wordplay as a songwriter is a key element, it’s the rough sheen to his voice that makes this music so country and so beautiful. Grebe’s got a voice tinged with the dust of the American West and the grit of Southern living, the kind of voice that first made country music great.