Each month, we’ll be sharing a fresh batch of specially curated music from emerging and established artists, including Amy Petty, Mason Summit, Mac Saturn and others, on Spotify.
This inaugural playlist includes 34 tracks from acts based in Michigan, Ohio, New Jersey, California and the U.K. It nicely reflects the multi-genre approach we take with profiling and featuring different artists on “The Stratton Setlist.”
Take time to absorb and enjoy some of our favorite tracks from an incredible group of artists.
Mason Summit will release his fifth album, “Negative Space,” on April 3. Photo by Spencer Shapeero
Mason Summit brilliantly shines on the darkest January days.
The Los Angeles indie folk rock singer-songwriter thaws the winter blues with his latest magical single, “‘Round January,” which drops today via all streaming platforms.
Summit’s track fuses sorrowful acoustic guitar strums and delicate drum taps with vibrant electric and slide guitars – “I hope one day I can tell you this won’t last/And be right/Cuz I know how you get when the sun sets early/But there’s a better way/There must be surely/But maybe you’ll make it out alive/Maybe you’ll just survive.” It’s also ideally suited for a fruitful collaboration with Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy and Nels Cline.
“‘Round January” single artwork – Cover by Spencer Shapeero
In a sense, Summit’s exquisite combination of acoustic, electric and slide guitars represent the warring emotional factions within us. Deep inside, there’s a hope that wants burst through, but the darkness fights back with a vengeance.
“It’s specifically the month my dad died, and it’s also when I introduce the song now, and what makes it more broadly applicable to different people’s lives is seasonal depression. I probably experienced that unknowingly since before my dad died, you know the melancholy of those months, especially like the line, ‘when the sun sets early,’” said Summit, who also struggles with the lack of daylight in winter.
“It was just instant depression for me. It made me tired all the time, and I didn’t want to get out of bed. I don’t have it as bad as a lot of people, but it definitely influences my mood in a disproportionate way.”
Two years ago, Summit penned “‘Round January” as a response to a songwriting class prompt at the University of Southern California (USC). The prompt required students to write a song to their eighth-grade selves.
“And that was a week when a lot of people brought in some heavy stuff,” said Summit, a songwriting senior who will graduate in May. “It was just so provocative, and so I was thinking back to eighth grade, and middle school in general is when people tend to be struggling and trying to find out who they are.”
For Summit, the track also advocates the importance of therapy in tackling seasonal depression and other mental health challenges. He came from a family that believed in its long-term healing power.
“When I got to school, I met a lot of people who didn’t come from that and ended up having a lot of undiagnosed issues. They just didn’t know how to deal with it, and it took them so long to have the courage to go to therapy or go to a psychiatrist and start treating their illness with therapy and medication,” Summit said. “Whereas I had already started to sort that out by that time, there were actually specific people in my life I was writing it for as well as myself.”
Sunny State emits positive vibes through their uplifting reggae fusion. Photo by Arabela Espinoza
Sunny State keeps summer’s bright, carefree spirit alive well into the dark days of winter.
The San Jose, Calif., reggae fusion sextet instantly transports listeners to a three-minute mind trip filled with calm breezes, warm rays and stolen moments on their latest single, “When You Know.” It’s the kind of uplifting sonic magic that keeps people young at heart, full of love and ready for adventure.
“Life can be so heavy that we really need to enjoy the ability to let loose ourselves and embrace the positive vibes that music can bring to us. I think that’s just a byproduct of what we get to share with other people,” said Chris Reed, Sunny State’s lead vocalist, ukulelist and guitarist. “They get to forget their worries for that amount of time they’re listening to us in their car or on the dance floor while we’re playing live.”
“When You Know” also celebrates Reed’s longtime relationship with his wife and reminisces about their first date as teenagers while driving south along U.S. 101 toward Los Angeles.
Bright acoustic guitars and vibrant synths fill the ears as swaying reggae island bass floods the soul – “First it was a drive in my blue ’69/Didn’t have no map/We just headed south/We pulled off the road/Got out and climbed that hill/It was our first kiss/I was under your spell.”
“I’ve loved that woman for so long now through all the ups and downs that every relationship goes through. The birth of our first daughter, Violet, catapulted my love to the next level, and then a second time with Indigo,” Reed said. “I mean there’s so much love there. We joke around with our kids like how can we feel this much love for them, and our relationship together prefaced from that.”
Ania studies guitar at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles.
In her latest video, Ania shreds her way through the streets and stages of Los Angeles.
The heavy metal singer-songwriter and guitar virtuoso released a gritty new video today for “Doors Close,” a 4.5-minute banger filled with fast alternate picking and arpeggios against a raw bassline and driving drumbeat.
“We wanted to show a modern rock band playing, and we went around LA and filmed in public places and highlighted the rock-grunge scene,” said Ania, a University of Southern California (USC) guitar student. “We also filmed some of it at USC in our songwriting theater where we have a tiny stage and wanted to showcase that we can play instruments, have fun and rock out.”
Ania eloquently demonstrates her electric guitar chops alongside USC classmate and drummer Megan Adcock on stage while simultaneously wandering the nighttime streets and sitting in front of a rainbow-colored graffiti wall. Bassist Carson Rhode also plays on the track, but isn’t featured in the video.
While the “Doors Close” video artistically captures dingy LA nightlife, the single politically tackles the complications of Catholicism in Ania’s native Poland.
“I just wanted to write a song that changed the key signature, and it’s funny because the song is about Adam and Eve and how the whole Catholic thing is very weird,” Ania said. “We grow up, and we’re like, ‘Wow, religion is just kind of fake,’ and everyone has a different perspective.”
Ania developed her own perspective about religion and music after moving from Koszalin, Poland to Chicago with her mother at age 15. While growing up near the Baltic Sea, she watched Polish MTV and longed to play electric guitar.
“I didn’t play instruments until I moved to the States because where I come from in Poland we never had music schools,” Ania said. “It would be impossible to play electric guitar or be in a rock band. There was one music school, and all the kids that went there had been trained since they were four years old.”
Los Angeles’ Tauri delivers an experimental fusion of indie pop and R&B on her latest single, “Time 2 Kill.”
With deep synths, quirky lyrics and funky basslines, Tauri hits an indie pop bullseye on her latest single, “Time 2 Kill.”
The 3.5-minute single eloquently weaves accessible elements of indie pop and R&B with avant-garde electronic rock to forge a growing experimental sound emanating from the West Coast.
It’s akin to combining the mainstream appeal of Lorde with the progressive, industrial sounds of Muse and Nine Inch Nails. Throughout “Time to 2 Kill,” Tauri creates a forward-thinking track devoid of pretense.
“We weren’t afraid to get really weird with this one, and a lot of people are responding really well to it,” said Nicole Orlowski, aka Tauri, who co-wrote the track with Alex Monasterio and Liz Gavillet. “This only encourages us to be super weird.”
Weirdness does run rampant on “Time 2 Kill,” but in a refreshingly lyrical way. The track opens with catchy lyrics – “Pen names/Switch blades/Turn real fast/But you’re driving in the slow lane” – and even references an “Easy Bake Oven.”
“It was kind of nightmare to put together actually because we were trying to put it out a lot faster than it ended up happening. We all sat down and spitballed it, and it came from this loose concept of a love story about a trust fund kid,” Monasterio said. “The idea behind the ‘Easy Bake Oven’ lyric relates to somebody trying to get something without actually doing the proper grownup work for it.”
“Time 2 Kill” also features vocals inspired by Bikini Kill and a heavy industrial synth section, which cleverly anchors the two indie pop sections on both sides.
“For such a period of time, we thought the song wasn’t going to function based on how our previous singles had done,” Monasterio said. “They have their moments definitely, but they’re much more contained. They have their tangents, but they don’t necessarily say ‘fuck it’ quite as much.”
The Los Angeles-based independent jazz label is releasing two newly discovered Wes Montgomery and Bill Evans recordings, “Back on Indiana Avenue: The Carroll DeCamp Recordings” and “Evans in England,” on limited-edition 180-gram 2LP for Record Store Day and deluxe 2 CD/digital on April 19.
“Back on Indiana Avenue” surveys the early music of Montgomery, a jazz guitarist, made in his hometown of Indianapolis during the years before he rocketed to fame after signing with Riverside Records in 1959. The 22-track album features studio and live recordings of Montgomery’s music along with Indianapolis pianist and arranger Carroll DeCamp.
It’s the sixth archival release of Montgomery’s from Resonance Records and includes an essay by jazz scholar Lewis Porter and jazz guitar giants George Benson and John Scofield. On the DeCamp recordings, Montgomery is heard in full flight in a variety of settings – piano quartets, organ trios, sextets and drummer-less Nat “King” Cole-style trios, including “Round Midnight,” “Jingles,” “Whisper Not” and others.
“‘Back on Indiana Avenue’ is a very important release of previously unissued material from guitarist Wes Montgomery, and it’s not music, it’s 2LPs, 2CDs worth of unissued material and nearly a 50-page book with all sorts of different people who have a story to talk about, a narrative of these recordings in provenance and where they came from,” said Zev Feldman, Resonance Records co-president and independent producer.
“We tell these stories, and we put out these projects, and George Klabin, God bless him, my co-president and the founder and owner of Resonance Records, he is so generous allowing this to happen. This is like fantasy land, and every day, I wake up in this different dimension and wonder, ‘Is this really my life?’”
The Secret Emchy Society will host an intimate night of acoustic country music, sing-alongs and fellowship Thursday night at San Francisco’s The Lost Church.
The Lost Church show will double as a “Mark’s Yard: The Campfire Covers” album release party for the Oakland, Calif., queer country music collective and feature Americana legends The Muddy Roses as a special guest.
During the show, The Secret Emchy Society will provide “hymnals,” or booklets with lyrics, to audience members so they can sing along to songs from “Mark’s Yard,” a new covers album the band released in December.
“This room has wonderful acoustics, and we’re actually not going to amplify, but we’re definitely going to do most of the album,” said Cindy Emch, frontwoman, guitarist and accordionist for The Secret Emchy Society. “This album was made with the intention of serving up a community experience. There will be swaying, stomping, laughter, dorkery and stories about songs that will surely go off on tangents.”
Dubbed as the “First Lady of Queer Country,” Emch leads a rotating old school country music collective that appeals to fans of June Carter Cash, Lydia Loveless, Neko Case, Dolly Parton and Porter Wagoner. She’s been sharing her dark, sexy, boozy ballads, off-kilter anthems and cowboy songs with the Bay area queer country music scene for more than a decade.
Mark’s Yard album art
As a follow-up to 2017’s “The Stars Fell Shooting into Twangsville,” Emch’s latest release, “Mark’s Yard,” includes her own renditions of esteemed country classics from Rhubarb Whiskey, Hank Williams Jr., Tom Waits, Tolan McNeil, Johnny Cash, Carolyn Mark and more.
The album allows Emch to come full circle with her love of country music after hearing the likes of Willie Nelson and Crystal Gayle as a child and watching her mother play the accordion.
For the album, Emch teamed up with Hans Winold (upright bass, harmonica), Michele Kappel (percussion), Mya Byrne (lap steel, mandolin), Nick Foley (backing lead guitar) and Deleina Mae (backing electric bass) and recorded it over three hours one August Sunday night in her neighbor’s backyard.
The Secret Emchy Society will bring their foot stompin’, heart breakin’ Americana music about good friends and hard times to the Big Apple tomorrow night.
The Oakland, Calif., queer country music collective will share their dark, sexy, boozy ballads, off-kilter anthems and cowboy songs at the Branded Saloon, 603 Vanderbilt Ave., in Brooklyn from 8 p.m. to 11 p.m. Saturday.
Hosted by the Gay Ole Opry and Queer Country Quarterly, the show also will feature country music compadres Karen & the Sorrows and Viva.
“It’s New York, oh my God, that’s how I feel about it,” laughed Cindy Emch, frontwoman, guitarist and accordionist for The Secret Emchy Society, in late September during a phone call with The Stratton Setlist from the Bay area. “That’s the Michigan native playing New York, and that gets people excited.”
Emch will make her sole stop in New York City Saturday as part of a short fall tour, which also includes a Nov. 18 gig during the Queer Country Showcase at the Ivy Room in Albany, Calif., with Lavender Country and Velvetta.
“The Ivy Room started doing this great thing the third Sunday of every month where they do a 4-9 sort of country music showcase, and they have different local bands doing it,” Emch said. “I feel like there’s a lot of good Americana coming out of the Ivy Room right now.”
Dubbed as the “First Lady of Queer Country,” Emch leads a rotating old school country music collective that appeals to fans of June Carter Cash, Lydia Loveless, Neko Case, Dolly Parton and Porter Wagoner. She’s been helping spearhead that flourishing music scene in San Francisco for more than a decade.
The Stratton Setlist 