Matteah Baim

Matteah Baim was born and raised in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. When she was thirteen, she purchased her first guitar and first record, the Doors bootleg Whiskey, Mystics and Men, from a basement pawn shop. In 1996 at the age of seventeen, Baim moved to California to study painting and drawing at the San Francisco Art Institute. After graduating, she moved to New York City, where she met Sierra Casady. In 2005 the duo began to write music together and formed the self-described "soft-metal band" Metallic Falcons. Their 2006 debut, Desert Doughnuts, was recorded in Brooklyn, Chicago, and New Mexico and featured appearances by Antony Hegarty, Devendra Banhart, Jana Hunter, and Greg Rogove. After only a few live performances, Metallic Falcons disbanded. Shortly thereafter, Baim moved to Los Angeles, where she began writing and recording material for her first solo record, Death of the Sun, released on Dicristina Stairbuilders in 2007. Baim continued to tour and also wrote and recorded material for her second solo record, Laughing Boy, which was released in January 2009. The album features performances by Butchy Fuego, Robert A. A. Lowe, Leyna Papach, Rob Doran, Emmett Kelly, Hisham Bharoocha, Birdie Lawson, and Rose Lazar. Baim lives and works in New York.
http://www.matteahbaim.com
www.myspace.com/matteahbaim

Devendra Banhart

Born in Houston, Texas, in 1981, Devendra Banhart moved with his mother to Caracas, Venezuela, when he was two years old. Eleven years later, his mother remarried, and the family moved to Encinal Canyon in California, where Banhart learned English and began to play music. After attending the San Francisco Art Institute for a year, he dropped out to begin a nomadic period, moving from Los Angeles to Paris to San Francisco to New York and then back to Los Angeles, all the while writing and playing music. At the age of twenty-one, then homeless, Devendra was discovered by Michael Gira, former frontman of the legendary New York group Swans and owner of Young God Records. Gira had received a tape of Banhart’s crudely recorded songs, which he decided to release as is. This became the critically acclaimed 2002 album Oh Me Oh My. In 2003, Banhart toured North America with Entrance and Gira’s band Angels of Light, and in 2004 released the albums Rejoicing in the Hands and Nino Rojo. A vocal champion of the underexposed musicians who preceded him, Banhart cites artists such as Karen Dalton, Linda Perhacs, and Vashti Bunyan as inspirations. He has generously supported his contemporaries as well, releasing with Arthur Magazine the 2004 compilation Golden Apples of the Sun, which included the musicians Vetiver, Joanna Newsom, Espers, Jana Hunter, Kevin Barker, and Entrance. In 2005 Banhart released the album Cripple Crow, followed by Smokey Rolls Down Thunder Canyon in 2008, the latter album crafted with musical collaborators Noah Georgeson, Luckey Remington, Greg Rogove, Andy Cabic, Rodrigo Amarante, and Pete Newsom. Banhart played at the 2006 music festivals Coachella and Bonnaroo, and curated his own mini festival, "Hypnorituals and Mesmemusical Miracles Hanging in the Sky: 5 Nights of Soleros and Bandoleros," at the El Cid club in Los Angeles, as well as a night of the British festival All Tomorrow’s Parties. In February 2007 he headlined the "Welcome to Dreamland" bill at New York’s Carnegie Hall, a lineup handpicked by ex-Talking Head David Byrne and featuring many of Banhart’s peers, such as Vetiver, Vashti Bunyan, and Cibelle. A visual artist as well, Banhart’s work has been exhibited at galleries all over the world, including the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, where he had a show with Paul Klee in 2008. Banhart lives in Los Angeles.
www.devendrabanhart.com
www.myspace.com/devendrabanhart

Kevin Barker

Kevin Barker started playing guitar after seeing the film La Bamba at age eleven. Growing up in Washington, D.C., he took the city’s DIY punk ethos to heart, founding a vinyl-only record label with his brother Derek as a sophomore in high school. While earning his MFA in film from Columbia University, he joined the band Aden as a guitarist and began recording solo under the name Currituck Co., releasing five albums (including the 2002 debut Unpacking My Library) and two singles. After moving to New York City, he began playing guitar and banjo on records and tours by Devendra Banhart, Joanna Newsom, Antony and the Johnsons, Vashti Bunyan, Vetiver, Espers, Ladybug Transistor, and Grass.
www.myspace.com/kwkbarker

Bat For Lashes

Singer/songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and visual artist Natasha Khan was born in England and spent her childhood summers in Pakistan. After earning a degree in film and music, she was working as a nursery school teacher when the inspiration for her song "Horse & I" came to her in a dream, and she began recording music as Bat For Lashes. The song served as muse for her 2006 album Fur and Gold, which was nominated for the Mercury Prize, and Bat For Lashes was nominated for Best British Breakthrough Act and Best British Solo Female Artist. Bat For Lashes’ first North American date was 2007’s SXSW festival, and the band joined Radiohead’s 2008 tour. Khan lives in Brighton, England, by the sea.
www.batforlashes.com
www.myspace.com/batforlashes

Vashti Bunyan

Vashti Bunyan was born in London in 1945 and studied at the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art at Oxford University, but was expelled for failing to attend classes and spending her time writing songs. At eighteen, she traveled to New York, where she discovered the music of Bob Dylan and was inspired to become a full-time musician. Returning to London, she recorded a single with Rolling Stones manager Andrew Loog Oldham, the Jagger-and-Richards-penned "Some Things Just Stick in Your Mind." This was followed by another single, "Train Song," but neither met with much attention. Bunyan subsequently decided to travel with her then boyfriend by horse and cart to the Isle of Skye to join the musician Donovan’s -commune. During the trip she began writing the songs that would -eventually become her debut full-length album, Just Another Diamond Day. Produced by Joe Boyd, the album was released on Philips Records in December 1970 and met with warm reviews, but struggled to find an audience. Disappointed, Bunyan left the music industry and spent the ensuing thirty years raising her three children. During this time, entirely unbeknownst to her, the original album became a highly sought-after record, selling on eBay for as much as $2,000. Just Another Diamond Day was re-released on CD (with bonus tracks) in 2000, influencing a new generation of artists such as Devendra Banhart and Joanna Newsom. In 2001 Banhart wrote to Bunyan asking for advice, which led to her connection with many of the contemporary performers who cite her work as inspiration. Since then she has appeared on releases by Devendra Banhart and Animal Collective, and in 2005, recorded and released her second album, Lookaftering, on FatCat Records, some thirty-five years after her first. Produced by composer Max Richter and including performances by Banhart, Joanna Newsom, Adem, Kevin Barker, and Otto Hauser of Espers, Lookaftering was well received by critics and fans alike. In the fall of 2006, Bunyan assembled a band and embarked on a brief North American tour, performing songs from both her solo albums, as well as some unreleased material. She is currently working on a third album with Andy Cabic of Vetiver.
http://www.anotherday.co.uk/
www.myspace.com/vashtibunyan

Cibelle

Brazilian-born musician Cibelle Cavalli Bastos’s early guitar lessons led her to try her hand at piano, percussion, and singing. As a teenager, she was recruited by the Ford talent agency, and after a few commercials and a brief stint on Brazilian MTV, she returned to music full-time, singing at local clubs and jam sessions around Sao Paulo. Through these she met Yugoslavian ex-pat and visionary producer Suba, who recruited her to sing several tracks on his 2001 album Sao Paulo Confessions. In 2003 Cibelle released her self-titled debut and shortly thereafter moved to London, where she began working on The Shine of Dried Electric Leaves, featuring Brazilian musician Seu Jorge and French MC/beatboxer Spleen. Released in 2007, the album blends classic samba and bossa nova with hints of electronic percussion. The first single, "London London," is a duet with Devendra Banhart that was written by their shared musical hero, Caetano Veloso. Cibelle released the four-track EP White Hair in 2008.
www.myspace.com/cibelleblackbird

Ariana Delawari

An Afghan/Sicilian-American, Ariana Delawari was born in Los Angeles in 1980, just after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Twenty days before she was born, her father’s family fled their homeland and moved to her parents’ house in Los Angeles. Delawari has studied performance and visual arts throughout her life. She began playing the guitar when she was thirteen and became obsessed with protest music. Shortly after 9/11, her parents moved back to Afghanistan to help in the reconstruction of the country. Her father became the governor of the Central Bank of Afghanistan and went on to become a minister advisor to President Hamid Karzai. Her mother started working for the United Nations. Delawari began documenting her travels to Afghanistan in October 2002 in photographs and songs. She met Devendra Banhart at Coachella in 2006 after a strange encounter with a Moroccan man who’d prophesized this occurrence. Influenced by John Lennon, Jimi Hendrix, Bob Dylan, Willie Nelson, Ahmed Zahir (also known as the Afghan Elvis), and traditional Afghan music, Delawari went on to form Lion of Panjshir in July 2006, naming her group after the Persian leader Ahmad Shah Massoud, who helped drive the Soviet army out of Pakistan. A year later she and her bandmates traveled to Afghanistan, where they recorded with three Afghan elder ustads. She finished her debut album in Los Angeles with several guest artists and producers, including David Lynch. Delawari has performed alongside Bat For Lashes, Jonathan Wilson, and Hecuba, and in the fall of 2008 held a residency at the Los Angeles venue Tangier.
www.myspace.com/lionofpanjshir

Eliza Douglas

While studying electronic arts at Bard College, New York-based musician Eliza Douglas joined the band BunnyBrains. In 2005 they opened for Devendra Banhart during his U.S. tour. Shortly after the tour ended, Douglas started playing with Banhart, and in 2006 she joined his band, touring with them for a year in the U.S. and Europe, singing through guitar pedals and playing sampler and occasional bass. At Banhart’s encouragement Douglas began playing her own shows, accompanied by Banhart on guitar. She continues to pursue visual art, and has played with Matteah Baim and Telepathe and toured with Antony and the Johnsons.
www.myspace.com/elizadouglas

Entrance

Born in Baltimore, Maryland, Guy Blakeslee became an obsessive music fan and lover of art and poetry at a very early age. At nine, influenced by a babysitter who turned him on to skateboarding, hip-hop, and punk rock, he began teaching himself to play his brother’s guitar, flipping the instrument upside-down (Blakeslee is left-handed), inventing his own tunings, and writing his own songs. At fourteen, he started playing in bands with older kids and helping book and organize shows at all-ages venues in Baltimore, putting up touring hardcore bands in his mother’s basement and making zines full of collage and stream-of-consciousness writings. At the age of seventeen, he went on his first tour, playing bass with the band Convocation Of, which initiated him into the life of a traveling musician. On September 11, 2001, he quit the band and went solo, calling himself Entrance and taking inspiration from recordings of American blues, folk, and gospel from the 1920s and ’30s. In 2002 he opened for Will Oldham on a West Coast tour, where he met Devendra Banhart, subsequently touring the United States with him. His first record as Entrance, The Kingdom of Heaven Must Be Taken by Storm, was released in 2002, followed by an international tour with Cat Power and the EP Careless Love. His 2004 album Wandering Stranger featured Tommy Rouse on drums and Paz Lenchantin on violin and piano. After a tour of the United States and Europe with the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Blakeslee settled in Los Angeles and began writing the rock opera Prayer of Death with drummer Derek James and Lenchantin, which was released in 2006. He is now playing and recording with Lenchantin and James as the Entrance Band. Blakeslee lives in Laurel Canyon with his partner, Maximilla Lukacs.
www.myspace.com/entrancerecords

Espers

Formed in 2003 in Philadelphia by singer/songwriters Greg Weeks and Meg Baird and guitarist Brooke Sientinsons, Espers later expanded to a sextet including percussionist Otto Hauser, cellist Helena Espvall, and bassist Christopher Smith. Taking the psychedelic folk and progressive music of the late ’60s onward as their jumping-off point, Espers followed the tradition of underground art and music collectives formed around common interests in forwarding the complex aesthetics of this era. A self-titled album was released in 2004, followed by an EP of covers, traditional songs, and originals (The Weed Tree) in 2005. Their second full-length album, II, was released in 2006 on Drag City. Espers has shared the stage with British folk luminaries Bert Jansch, Michael Hurley, Vashti Bunyan, and the Incredible String Band, as well as contemporaries Brightblack Morning Light, Devendra Banhart, Sir Richard Bishop, and Vetiver.
www.espers.org/
www.myspace.com/espers

Feathers

Comprising eight musicians, the Vermont-based collective Feathers is a leaderless group of songwriters. Beginning in 2004 as the duo of Kurt Weisman and Kyle Thomas, the band gradually grew through a circle of old and new friends, as musicians Meara O’Reilly, Ruth Garbus, Shayna Kipping, Jordan Morris, Greg Petrovato, and Asa Irons all became members. Feathers began playing extensively around New England before embarking on national tours with Smog and Espers. They self-released a series of EPs and CD singles, which they sold at their live shows. Drawing inspiration from art and literature, the group’s primarily guitar-based songs are colored by a wide range of instruments, including harp, sitar, and clarinet. Carefully arranged vocal harmonies also figure prominently in their writing. Recorded in Kyle Thomas’s bedroom in Vermont, Feathers’ eponymous debut album was released on Andy Cabic and Devendra Banhart’s Gnomonsong label in 2006. Feathers also contributed to several tracks on Devendra Banhart’s album Cripple Crow.
www.myspace.com/feathersfamily

Ruthann Friedman

Born in the Bronx in 1944, Ruthann Friedman started playing Hoot Nights at the Troubador in Los Angeles when she was sixteen. During the Great Hippie Migration, she sang up and down the coast of California. In San Francisco, Friedman lived with members of the Jefferson Airplane in Haight-Ashbury, sang with Country Joe & the Fish at the Avalon Ballroom, and learned the pleasures of Southern Comfort from Janis Joplin while hunting for hot smokey links in the Fillmore District. While living in David Crosby’s home in Beverly Glenn Canyon, Friedman wrote the song "Windy"; when the Association recorded it in 1967, the song’s success gave her the freedom to do whatever she wanted. She released her first solo album, Constant Companion, on A&M Records in 1970. Married with two daughters, Friedman openly shares her gratitude to Devendra Banhart, who, as she says, "brought me out of obscurity" by publicly declaring his enthusiam for her music, and inviting her to perform in 2006 at the Banhart-curated mini festival "Hypnorituals and Mesmemusical Miracles Hanging in the Sky: 5 Nights of Soleros and Bandoleros" alongside Feathers, Jana Hunter, the Entrance Band, and Adam Tullie. Constant Companion was re-released in 2006 on the San Francisco label Water, followed by Hurried Life, a compilation of Friedman’s rare and previously unreleased home recordings from 1965-1971. Now residing in Venice, California, Friedman continues to tour and record music.
www.ruthannfriedman.com
www.myspace.com/ruthannfriedmanmusic

Noah Georgeson

Noah Georgeson was born in Marin County, California, and was raised in Nevada City. His mother, Mary, has played music and sung her whole life, and at the age of sixteen was offered a record contract with Decca Records, which she declined out of shyness. His father, Andrew, a boxer and Navy man turned yogi, plays flute. Noah has two brothers, one older, Jon Eric, and one younger, Amar, who lives in China and plays classical piano. As a teenager, Noah played in various punk bands and took classical guitar lessons, where he met Gyan Riley. The two would practice and write together at Gyan’s parents’ ranch, where they would listen to Gyan’s father, composer Terry Riley, improvising on piano. After studying classical guitar in college, Noah turned his focus to music composition, earning a bachelor’s degree from San Francisco State University and a master’s degree from Mills College. After finishing school, Noah produced, recorded, sang, and played guitar on Joanna Newsom’s 2004 debut album The Milk-Eyed Mender, later touring with Newsom and with Georgeson’s own band, the Pleased. In autumn 2004 he began touring as a guitarist with Devendra Banhart, and in January 2005 the two moved to Woodstock, New York, to record Cripple Crow, which Noah produced, engineered, and performed on. The rest of 2005 was spent touring with Banhart, though he also found time to produce Mason Jennings’ album Boneclouds and arrange strings and play on Vetiver’s To Find Me Gone. In 2006 he moved with Banhart to Venice, California, where he produced albums by Constance Verluca and Bert Jansch, and released his solo debut, Find Shelter, that same year. Much of 2007 was spent in Topanga Canyon, California, writing and recording Banhart’s Smokey Rolls Down Thunder Canyon, which he produced, engineered, co-wrote, and played on. He also produced the self-titled debut album Little Joy, and upon finishing joined the band. He currently resides in Topanga Canyon and is working on a second solo record.
www.myspace.com/findshelter

Benjamin Oak Goodman

Benjamin Oak Goodman was raised in the Victorian gold-mining hills of Nevada City, California. After spending time in San Francisco and New York City, he now lives in the Northern California coastal mountain town of Jenner. An independent recording artist, Goodman writes, performs, and records in a minimalist style. His releases include Yes, My Heart (2007) along with a series of DIY singles and EPs, and he is featured on the Grass Roots Records compilation Family Album. A multi-instrumentalist, he played drums and percussion on Devendra Banhart’s Smokey Rolls Down Thunder Canyon and has performed and/or recorded with Noah Georgeson, Alina Estelle Hardin, Night Court, and Alela Diane.
www.myspace.com/benjaminoakgoodman

Hecuba

A project created by Isabelle Albuquerque and Jon Beasley, Hecuba was formed in New York City in 2003, when the pair met while working on a film about alien abduction. Their collaboration evolved into a science-fiction music project called Aldiss (after the science-fiction writer Brian Aldiss), later becoming the experimental and eclectic group Hecuba. Beasley was born and raised in Montgomery, Alabama, where his mother sang in the church choir and he was an organist. He played in several bands before becoming interested in making electronic-based music and programming beats. Albuquerque was born in Los Angeles and spent much of her childhood traveling with her artist mother to sacred sites across the globe, where they installed art pieces associated with the Earthworks movement. Albuquerque met Devendra Banhart when they were neighbors in Encinal Canyon; they later attended high school together. Hecuba’s live appearances often incorporate aspects of performance art and feature guest performers. The band’s debut EP, Dear Sir, was released in 2008. Albuquerque and Beasley live in Los Angeles.
www.myspace.com/hecubahecuba
hecubahecuba.com

Jana Hunter

Jana Hunter was born and raised in Pantego, Texas, in 1978. After spending much of her youth training as a classical violinist, she began to pursue songwriting as a teenager, performing at open mics and local house parties. She moved to New York City at age eighteen, then back and forth between New York and Houston before settling at age twenty-nine in Baltimore. Her debut album, 2005’s Blank Unstaring Heirs of Doom, was the debut release on Andy Cabic and Devendra Banhart’s Gnomonsong label, and was followed in 2007 by There’s No Home and its accompanying EP, Carrion. Hunter has performed and/or recorded with numerous bands and artists, including Castanets, Matteah Baim, Metallic Falcons, Phosphorescent, and CocoRosie.
www.myspace.com/janahunter

Michael Hurley

Born in 1941, Michael Hurley grew up in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. He discovered country music at a young age and left home when he was seventeen, hitchhiking to New Orleans, New York, and Mexico. Inspired by folk music, blues, and rock ‘n’ roll, he learned to play the guitar and began writing his first songs, recording his debut album, First Songs, in 1965 on the same reel-to-reel machine that had taped Leadbelly’s last sessions. In the late ’70s Hurley made three albums for Rounder Records. His 1976 recording, Have Moicy, a collaboration with the Unholy Modal Rounders (so renamed due to the absence of group member Steve Weber) and Jeffrey Frederick & the Clamtones, was named "the greatest folk rock album of the rock era" by the Village Voice’s Robert Christgau. In the late ’90s, Hurley toured with Son Volt and received high praise from younger performers like Lucinda Williams, Vic Chesnutt, Calexico, and Cat Power. On his latest album, Ancestral Swamp, released in 2007 on Devendra Banhart and Andy Cabic’s label Gnomonsong, Hurley is backed by longtime associate David Reisch of the Holy Modal Rounders along with Tara Jane O’Neill and Lewi Longmire. Hurley has played shows with Vetiver, Matteah Baim, and Entrance, and Vetiver and Espers have covered his songs.
www.snockonews.net
www.myspace.com/snock07

Bert Jansch

PhaseSinger/songwriter and guitarist Bert Jansch was born in 1942 in Glasgow, Scotland, but was raised in Edinburgh. As a teenager, he bought an acoustic guitar and

spent much of his spare time at local folk club the Howff. In 1963 he traveled to London with his Edinburgh flatmate Robin Williamson, who would go on to form the Incredible String Band in 1966. Jansch recorded his self-titled first album on a reel-to-reel tape deck with a borrowed guitar. Upon its release in April 1965, the album caused a sensation with Jansch’s innovative guitar technique and songwriting, and notably popularized the Davey Graham instrumental "Anji." Jansch went on to record over twenty-five albums, and his musical influence can be clearly heard in the work of other British guitarists of the mid to late ’60s, including Nick Drake, Ian Anderson, and Jimmy Page. In 2001 Jansch received a lifetime achievement award at the BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards. In 2006 he released the album Black Swan, produced by Noah Georgeson and including collaborations with Devendra Banhart, Otto Hauser (Espers, Vetiver), Helena Espvall (Espers), and Kevin Barker. Later that year he received the MOJO Merit Award at the MOJO Honors List ceremony. Jansch is also a member of the group Pentangle.
www.bertjansch.com
www.myspace.com/bertjansch

Little Joy

The Los Angeles-based band Little Joy comprises members Binki Shapiro, Rodrigo Amarante, and Fabrizio Moretti. Amarante (Los Hermanos) and Moretti (the Strokes) met in 2006 at a music festival in Lisbon, Portugal, where they were both performing, and discussed collaborating in the future. In 2007, when he was in Los Angeles to record with Devendra Banhart on Smokey Rolls Down Thunder Canyon, Amarante renewed his friendship with Moretti. They were later joined by Binki Shapiro, who was introduced to the pair through mutual acquaintances and encouraged them to focus on their music. Soon after, the three began writing original music as a band. By the end of 2007 they had moved into a house in Echo Park to demo songs, and with the help of producer Noah Georgeson, who had recorded Banhart’s music, they soon finished their self-titled debut, Little Joy, which was released in 2008 on Rough Trade Records. The following fall, Little Joy toured the West Coast with Megapuss and Entrance.
www.myspace.com/littlejoymusic

Megapuss

Megapuss began as a band that wrote only song titles, not songs. Eventually founding members Gregory Rogove and Devendra Banhart put music to their titles and composed most of the songs that would comprise their debut album, Surfing, while on tour in support of Banhart’s record Smokey Rolls Down Thunder Canyon. In March 2008 they recorded Surfing in a few days in a cabin in Los Angeles, using mostly first takes. For the song "Theme from Hollywood," they enlisted the help of Fabrizio Moretti of the Strokes. Moretti has since become a regular member of the band, and plays drums for their live performances. Surfing was released by Neil Young’s label Vapor Records. In the fall of 2008, Megapuss toured the West Coast together with Entrance and Moretti’s group Little Joy.
www.myspace.com/megapuss
www.megapuss.net

Joanna Newsom

Born in 1982 and raised in the tiny town of Nevada City, California, Joanna Newsom began playing harp at the age of eight, learning Celtic, Senegalese, Venezuelan, and Western classical harp. She studied composition and creative writing at Mills College in Oakland, California, where she met musician Noah Georgeson. In 2001 Newsom played keyboards in the San Francisco-based band the Pleased, which included Georgeson and Luckey Remington. She self-released an EP of her first home recordings, Walnut Whales, in 2002. Initially given out only to friends, the EP soon caught outside attention. Newsom was subsequently signed to Drag City and released her full-length debut, The Milk-Eyed Mender, which was produced by Georgeson, in 2004. Later that year, she toured the United States with Devendra Banhart and Europe with Smog. Newsom’s second record, Ys, came out in late 2006, and included collaborators Bill Callahan, Steve Albini, Jim O’Rourke, and Van Dyke Parks. The album became one of the year’s most critically acclaimed releases, and Newsom spent the end of 2006 and early 2007 touring in support of it, embarking on an Orchestral Tour featuring orchestral arrangements by Van Dyke Parks and including performances with the London Symphony Orchestra, Australia’s Symphony Orchestra, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and the Los Angeles Philharmonic. Newsom has performed in such venues as the Royal Albert Hall, Sydney Opera House, and the Walt Disney Concert Hall. In the spring of 2007, she released the EP Joanna Newsom & the Ys Street Band, which was recorded and mixed in three days. She has also played on records by Smog, Vetiver, and Vashti Bunyan.
www.joanna-newsom.com

Pete Newsom

Pete Newsom was raised by a musical family in the town of Nevada City, California. His parents and two sisters played cello, piano, guitar, and harp. Newsom began playing drums at age eleven and the piano at twenty-four. In 2003 his sister Joanna introduced him to Devendra Banhart. While Newsom was visiting New York in 2006, Banhart asked him if he’d like to sit in on piano for his show at the Hammerstein Ballroom. This led to more performances with Banhart, including playing at the Bridge School Benefit in California in 2006 and Carnegie Hall in early 2007. Newsom also joined Banhart’s band for the recording and touring of the album Smokey Rolls Down Thunder Canyon. He is currently writing his own music and living in the Northern California foothills.
http://www.myspace.com/471662

Linda Perhacs

Born in Santa Monica, California, Linda Perhacs began writing music at the age of six. In the early ’70s, while working as a dental hygienist in a Beverly Hills periodontal office, she played a tape for friend and dental patient Leonard Rosenman that she made herself on a cassette recorder in the kitchen of her Topanga Canyon home. An accomplished avant-garde composer and film director, Rosenman found her work promising, and subsequently recorded her album Parallelograms. Unfortunately, the record received little notice and quickly went out of print. Perhacs returned to her career as a dental hygienist and gave little thought to her music until 2000, when Michael Piper, founder of the collectable/reissue record label the Wild Places, contacted her to let her know the album was considered to be one of the great lost records of the ’70s and was cherished by those fans lucky enough to find it. Parallelograms was re-released in 2005 as Parallelograms Deux II. Perhacs also collaborated with Devendra Banhart, a devoted fan who had tracked her down. After her music was featured in the Daft Punk movie Electroma, Perhacs gained the attention of a new generation of fans. Still living in Topanga Canyon, Perhacs is working on a new record.
www.lindaperhacs.com
http://www.myspace.com/lindaperhacsdeliciousrain

Priestbird

Priestbird comprises the musicians Danny Bensi, Saunder Jurriaans, and Gregory Rogove, who had formerly performed and recorded as the instrumental trio Tarantula A.D. Following a change in musical direction from cinematic, classical-influenced instrumentals to song-based, psychedelic rock, the band added vocals and renamed themselves Priestbird. They have played with Pearl Jam, Dungen, the Sword, Grizzly Bear, and Devendra Banhart. Their debut album, In Your Time, was released in 2007.

Ramblin’ Jack Elliott

Born Elliott Charles Adnopoz in Brooklyn, New York, Elliott ran away when he was fifteen years old to join the J. E. Rodeo in the mid-1940s. It was there that he saw his first "singing cowboy," a rodeo clown who sang songs on guitar and banjo. Elliott traveled with the rodeo for three months before his parents tracked him down and he was sent home. Back at home, Elliott taught himself how to play guitar and started busking. Around this time, he met folksinger Woody Guthrie, and soon became his protege and close friend. Elliott and Guthrie wandered the country over the next five years playing music together off and on. In 1954 they drove to Los Angeles, California, where Elliott met his wife-to-be, June Hammerstein, through her then husband, James Dean. After relocating with June to England in the mid-1950s, Elliott was surprised to find that American rural music had become Top 40. He toured Great Britain and Europe and had a lasting effect on the music scene abroad, making three folk albums for the British label Topic by 1960. Returning to the United States, Elliott discovered that he had become well known within the folk scene; he went on to release more than forty EPs, LPs, and CDs. In 1995 his album South Coast earned him his first Grammy, and he was awarded the National Medal of Arts in 1998. Elliott’s flatpicking guitar style and command of Guthrie’s material as well as early American roots music such as country, blues, bluegrass, and folk have earned him a special place in musical history. Over the years Ramblin’ Jack has acquired an extensive list of musician friends and admirers, including fan Devendra Banhart, who invited Elliott to play at the 2005 British festival All Tomorrow’s Parties, and Jonathan Wilson, with whom he played a show in Los Angeles in 2006.
ramblinjack.com
www.myspace.com/ramblinjackelliott

Luckey Remington

The son of a lumberjack and a daughter of the Gold Beach, Luckey Remington was born in Eugene, Oregon. From 2001 to 2004 he wrote and performed with the Pleased, which included members Noah Georgeson and Joanna Newsom, and recorded one full-length album with the band, Don’t Make Things. Remington has toured and recorded bass with Devendra Banhart since 2005, and currently lives in Paris, France, where he makes short films and is producing an album of his own work.
http://www.myspace.com/3961396

Rio en Medio

Most of the material that comprises The Bride of Dynamite, Rio en Medio’s first album, was written by Danielle Stech-Homsy upon her return from a trip to Russia, where she had been translating poetry. Recorded on her own with no intention of commercial release, the music features Stech-Homsy’s ukelele, layered vocals, samples, electronics, and other sounds as well as texts from William Blake, Paul Eluard, John Ashbery, and a 1920s Baghdad travelogue. The songs were overheard by Devendra Banhart, who pleaded for her to release them; the album subsequently came out on Gnomonsong in 2007 with contributions by musicians including Andy Cabic, who provided production assistance. Following its release, Rio en Medio began playing in New York with accompanists Justin Riddle and Christian Lee. The band’s second album, Frontier (2008), was written as a series of interrelated poems that were later set to music and recorded in Stech-Homsy’s home in northern New Mexico.
www.myspace.com/daniellestechhomsy

Spleen

Born in Paris, France, in 1982 to a family of Cameroonian origin, Spleen grew up in a strict household with his three siblings. He became increasingly interested in music and art, and as a teenager found himself in the middle of the Parisian music scene, where he participated in improvised jam sessions with his musician friends. Singing in both French and English, Spleen began to mix gospel, poetry, hip-hop, and soul music with vocal beatboxing and vocal blues. While attending a show at a jazz club in Saint-Germain-des-Pres in 2004, Spleen met Bianca and Sierra Casady of CocoRosie. He went on to collaborate with CocoRosie on their second record, Noah’s Arc, and toured extensively with them throughout Europe and the United States. During this time he met fellow musicians Antony and the Johnsons, Devendra Banhart, and Cibelle. In 2005 Spleen released his first solo record, She Was a Girl, and shortly after produced and released the compilation The Black & White Skins Vol. 1, with tracks from artists including Antony and the Johnsons, Devendra Banhart, Jana Hunter, Bat For Lashes, and Danielle Stech-Homsy. Spleen collaborated with Cibelle on her 2007 release The Shine of Dried Electric Leaves, performing on the duet "Mad Man Song." In the fall of 2008, Spleen released his second solo record, Comme un Enfant, on Remark/Universal Records.
www.myspace.com/mynamespleen
www.spleenspace.com

Becky Stark

Becky Stark grew up in Maryland, just outside of Washington, D.C. When she was eleven years old, a classical music teacher took an interest in her singing and worked with her for the next five years, until she was told that her future as a classical singer was limited by her tiny ribcage. She soon learned about another side of music after seeing the D.C. punk band Fugazi in concert. While attending Brown University, Stark began writing and performing punk operettas. After college, she continued performing as part of Providence’s music scene, finding particular success with her play Birdsongs of the Bauharoque, which was popular enough to spur a national tour in 2003. Stark played the main character, a bird-woman named Lavender Diamond, whose job was to invent peace on earth. After moving to Los Angeles, Stark formed the band Lavender Diamond with drummer Ron Rege Jr., pianist Steve Gregoropoulos, and guitarist Devon Williams. Their debut recording, the four-song EP The Cavalry of Light, was released in 2005. Over the next year the band recorded with Vetiver, Brightblack Morning Light, and Devendra Banhart and released the full-length album Imagine Our Love in 2007.
www.myspace.com/lavenderdiamond
http://www.lavenderdiamond.com

Adam Tullie

Born in 1982 in Boston, Massachusetts, Adam Tullie has lived in Southern California most of his life. At age seven he was given a sombrero and an acoustic guitar from his parents as a birthday present. He spent teenage days surfing the ocean, skateboarding around San Juan Capistrano, making works on paper, and painting on walls. In 2001 Tullie moved to Los Angeles to attend art school, but left shortly thereafter to travel through Europe. After returning to the United States, Tullie began to record short, improvised songs on a four-track in his Skid Row room in downtown Los Angeles. In 2005 he founded the clothing line Cavern with design partner Angeline Rivas, and together they have collaborated with Devendra Banhart and Beck on visual projects and designing the artists’ merchandise. In 2006 Tullie performed an acoustic guitar-driven set with his friend Elijah Forrest at the Banhart-curated mini festival "Hypnorituals and Mesmemusical Miracles Hanging in the Sky: 5 Nights of Soleros and Bandoleros" at El Cid in Los Angeles. He also wrote and recorded the score to a short film by Maximilla Lukacs revolving around Cavern’s Spring/Summer 2008 collection.
www.myspace.com/adam_tullie
www.caverncollection.com/

Vetiver

Growing up in northern Virginia, Andy Cabic spent a few years in Greensboro, North Carolina, playing guitar, writing music, and recording as a member of the rock band Raymond Brake. After moving to San Francisco in 1998, Cabic joined the rock band Tussle, simultaneously recruiting local musicians and friends including Alissa Anderson, Otto Hauser, Carmen Biggers, Kevin Barker, Sanders Trippe, Brent Dunn, and Devendra Banhart to form Vetiver. Vetiver’s self-titled debut album was released in 2004 to high critical praise. Following its release, Cabic toured extensively with the band and various incarnations of Banhart’s touring ensemble. In 2006 Vetiver released their second album, To Find Me Gone. Vetiver has toured and collaborated with Vashti Bunyan, the Shins, Michael Hurley, and Joanna Newsom and played at the February 2007 "Welcome to Dreamland" show at Carnegie Hall in New York. In 2008 the band released Thing of the Past, a set of covers of songs by some of Cabic’s favorite artists.
www.vetiverse.com
www.myspace.com/vetiverse

Warpaint

Los Angeles-based Warpaint is made up of sisters Jenny Lee Lindberg and Shannyn Sossamon and their childhood friends Theresa Wayman and Emily Kokal. The pairs met and befriended each other at a jam session on Valentine’s Day 2004 at their friend Dave Orlando’s music studio in Hollywood. Only Kokal had ever played music in a band before. The group began playing together regularly and formed Warpaint, traveling to Canada to write material. Returning to Los Angeles, they moved into a house in Los Feliz, where they continued to write and began playing shows to share their experiment with their friends. After recording their first EP, Exquisite Corpse, which was released in September 2008, Sossamon left the band and was replaced by Orlando. Warpaint has performed with Entrance, Ben Goodman, Megapuss, and Hecuba.
www.myspace.com/worldwartour

Jonathan Wilson

Musician and producer Jonathan Wilson was born in Spindale, North Carolina. In 1995 he founded the band Muscadine with Benji Hughes. He recorded a solo album, Frankie Ray, in 2007, which received positive reviews but was never officially released. He is working on a new record featuring guest appearances by Barry Goldberg, Chris Robinson, Gary Louris, Andy Cabic, Otto Hauser, Josh Grange, Gary Mallaber, Z Berg, Adam McDougall, and Johnathan Rice. Wilson has recorded with Elvis Costello, Jenny Lewis, Farmer Dave Scher, and Phil Lesh, among others. The private jam sessions he hosts at his home in Laurel Canyon have received international attention for their unique "Canyon Folk" feel, and have included Cabic, Louris, the Black Crowes, Wilco, Electric Flag, Paul Butterfield Blues Band, Jakob Dylan, Entrance, Jenny Lewis, Jonathan Rice, David Rawlings, members of the Jayhawks, the Cars, Pearl Jam, and members of Van Morrison, Bruce Springsteen, and Steve Miller’s bands.
www.myspace.com/songsofjonathanwilson