Musician: NOBODY’S GIRL Video: “Waterline”  NOBODY’S GIRL KICKS OFF BLUE ROCK’S COOL NIGHTS 21 THIS THURSDAY, OCTOBER 21 Nobody’s Girl (Grace Pettis, Rebecca Loebe, BettySoo) will be featured at the Blue Rock aLive! Cool Nights 21 live streaming concert series—this Thursday, October 21. You can buy a Season Pass for only $105—and have a seat in the house by sending in your headshot. They will place the large headshot on a... 

VIDEO FEATURE & WEB-EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW Musician:  BONNIE BISHOP Video: “Poor Man’s Melody” Songwriters: Bonnie Bishop & Jimmy Wallace BONNIE BISHOP Web-Exclusive Interview with M Music & Musicians magazine publisher, Merlin David Photo credit: Jeff Fasano “Dreams are lifetime visions,” says Grammy-winning songwriter Bonnie Bishop. “And life is valleys and mountains. And if you can accept that, you’ll be fine.” Bishop... 

KREE WOODS HOMETOWN: Memphis, Tenn. INFLUENCES: Joni Mitchell, Patty Griffin, John Mayer ALBUM: Talking Underwater, out now WEBSITE: kreewoods.com After graduating from Auburn University with a degree in musical theater, Kree Woods was headed to New York City. That is, until a meeting in Nashville with Grammy Award-winning engineer and producer John Jaszcz. Sensing her potential, he convinced her to reconsider and record a few tracks. Her self-titled... 

   MAY  THE BAMBOOZLE  Headliners: Bon Jovi, Foo Fighters, Blink-182, Skrillex, Brand New, the Gaslight Anthem, All American Rejects, Jimmy Eat World, Incubus, Mac Miller Where: Asbury Park, N.J. When: May 18-20 Website: thebamboozle.com Promoted as the largest beach-based music festival in the U.S., the 10th annual Bamboozle offers more than 100 acts. This year the sounds will continue well into the night, as the lineup has expanded to include... 

SHAWN COLVIN All Fall Down [Nonesuch] Procuring master guitarist and Nashville alt-country staple Buddy Miller as producer ensures authenticity in the Americana world—just ask Robert Plant, who tapped him for 2010’s Band of Joy—but Shawn Colvin needs no such thing for her first new album in six years. Her history with Miller is very different. She sang in his band early on and later toured with him, Emmylou Harris and Patty Griffin as Three... 

MEIKO HOMETOWN: Roberta, Ga. INFLUENCES: Fiona Apple, Patty Griffin, Sade ALBUM: The Bright Side, out now WEBSITE: meikomusic.com Growing up in a small rural hometown with a population of 800, Meiko Sheppard learned to entertain herself. She picked up her father’s guitar and was writing songs by age 5; three years later she made her public debut singing “White Christmas” at church. “Being an awkward, bored middle-schooler was really helpful... 

FOLK FORWARD – ESSENTIAL FOLK DUST BOWL BALLADS (1940)  WOODY GUTHRIE  In a whirl of autobiography and activism, Guthrie reinvents American song. The Oklahoma native recorded this 1940 gem in two days, laying the groundwork for thousands of guitar-strumming followers. These are dusty, hard-bitten ballads that somehow gleam and soar more than 70 years after their creation. THE FREEWHEELIN’ BOB DYLAN (1963)  BOB DYLAN The folk bard’s... 

  FOLK FORWARD How a sound born of tradition is thriving in the modern day   By Peter Cooper It’s the other “F” word. And like its more obscene counterpart, it means different things to different people in different contexts. In the 1950s, it was sweater-vested political subversives. Later, it was shape-shifting musical revolutionaries and introspective singer-songwriters. It has been used to describe troubadours who specialize in journalistic... 

JAY JOYCE Whether it’s country, indie rock or something in between, the vibe is king By Michael Gallant For Jay Joyce, producing isn’t a matter of hitting every right note, tracking with the finest mics or working with the hippest software plug-ins. Nope, it’s all about the vibe. “My job is knowing when and where a beautiful moment is happening, and capturing it,” he says. “Making records is a totally spiritual thing.” Joyce’s approach... 

PATTY GRIFFIN + Downtown Church Patty Griffin is, by her own religious estimation, a lapsed Catholic of no certain faith. So she might seem like an odd duck to be doing a “gospel album”—except that hers is a voice you hope to hear sing not only the phone book but also the Bible, Koran and Bhagavad Gita, if possible. In any case, there’s nothing pat or predictable about the quietly stunning Downtown Church, which finds Griffin focusing on black...