Music – Stray At Home

T.B. Ledford

Tommy Bryan Ledford is a journeyman musician who was born in the Mississippi delta and raised in the piney hills on the Louisiana side, where his childhood was spent in creeks, woods, and baptist church. After spending some formative time in the New Orleans area, he settled in North Mississippi’s Lafayette County, where he was fortunate enough to perform in numerous bands of local fame and regional reknown (including the Sincere Ramblers, the Kudzu Kings and the Taylor Grocery Band). Along the way, he and some friends accidentally created the Governor’s Award winning Thacker Mountain
Radio Hour, a statewide southern culture radio program which features musicians, authors and others in front of a live audience and is now in its thirteenth season.
Currently, he resides in Fondren, Mississippi, and plays “electric catfish music”, a collision of traditional jug band, bluegrass, country blues, and gospel stylings with various outfits, including Horse Trailer and the Dixie Nationals. He recently put the finishing touches on his first solo record Butcher Bird, an original southern gothic assemblage of waylaid love songs, murder ballads, and brush arbor hymns recorded with Dirk Powell at the Cypress House in Breaux Bridge, Louisiana, and set for release on October 25, 2011.

Telegraph Canyon

#1 Album of The Year “The Tide and The Current”
- Dallas Morning News, Dallas Observer, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Reel Roots (Netherlands)

Sprawling Fort Worth, TX septet write alarming small songs, ornamented with accordion and violin — quiet little alt-country numbers that work their way toward irresistible choruses.
- Rolling Stone

Telegraph Canyon…an epic take on Americana that sits as comfortably with Broken Social Scene as it does with Old 97’s, both of whom it’s opened for.
- A.V. Austin (The Onion)

The Tide and The Current stands as one of the decade’s without-a-doubt best.
- Dallas Observer

Telegraph Canyon’s new album is a triumph of musical alchemy.
- QUICK / Dallas Morning News

Masterful. A thrilling, tightly focused tour de force that spans a range of genres.
- Fort Worth Star-Telegram

Ethereal in the way of Fleet Foxes and Band of Horses, The Current steeps its beauty in poignancy and heartbreak. “A Light In The Field” is a soaring piece of space rock with its blistering guitars and Doves-ish vocals.
- Radio Free Silver Lake

If the Arcade Fire were a little more country and a little less Quebecois, the band would sound like fellow apocalyptic ensemble Telegraph Canyon.
- Seattle Weekly

Blue Mother Tupelo

Rising up from the dusty Delta lowlands and muddy bayou banks of Indianola, Mississippi through the bluffs of Memphis and the mountains of east Tennessee, comes the unique Southern Soul & American Roots sound of Blue Mother Tupelo.

Almost a year after marrying in 1994, Ricky and Micol Davis began their musical life together as Blue Mother Tupelo (BMT) at an open mic night in Knoxville, Tennessee. In 1997, BMT released their debut album My Side Of The Road (now a digital download-only album). The next year, Ricky and Micol moved from Knoxville to Music City – Nashville - where open mics, jam sessions and songwriter rounds found the duo ready for BMT’s (2001 release) Delta Low ~ Mountain High, getting rave reviews from several national publications. 2005′s Miramax film Daltry Calhoun features Blue Mother Tupelo’s dreamy rendition of the Paul Anka classic, “Put Your Head On My Shoulder”. BMT toured throughout the Southeastern US and the album Love Live ~ 5 Songs From The Road (released in ’08) showcases some favorite live performances recorded between ’01 and ’06, highlighting BMT’s penchant for spontaneous musical sincerity. Blue Mother Tupelo’s most-recent album, Heaven & Earth (released in ’09), made waves across Americana & Roots Rock Radio stations worldwide. Heaven & Earth debuted at #2, behind Kris Kristofferson, on the EuroAmericana Charts for November of 2009. The album was in the Top 40 on Americana radio in the USA for weeks and reached #6 on Roots Music Report’s “Roots Rock Chart”. ”Without You”, from Blue Mother Tupelo’s Delta Low ~ Mountain High, is included in the 1970s-style cult film Sugar Boxx (released in ’09) directed by cult film maker Cody Jarrett. In 2011, BMT recorded a Christmas Holiday EP (digital download-only) entitled, Wintertime Love.

Blue Mother Tupelo’s music is honest & earthy, soul-stirring & foot-stompin’, southern soul & hill country blues – celebratory songs of life with pure American Roots.

STEPHEN GORDON

Since he first began setting words to music ten years ago, Nashville artist Stephen Gordon has cultivated a sound that is as compelling as it is unimposing. Drawing on the work of Ryan Adams, Frank Sinatra, and Josh Ritter, his meticulous songwriting measures out subtle balances of poignancy and small talk, ideas and images, inventiveness and tradition. Gordon’s 2010 EP entitled, “VA”, glides effortlessly between these paired opposites, and the effect is a meaning that lingers gorgeously. Looking back to his 2009 full-length release of “I Have Seen Your Shining Spirit”, and ahead to 2011′s promised, “So Young Now”, Gordon’s catalogue continues grow in volume and in substance. What draws music lovers to Stephen Gordon’s music is perhaps not just his keen ability to reach a listener, but to reach within, as traces of our deepest humanity are to be found in every verse. All of this is delivered with his rich, able voice…moving, ernest, even breathtaking.

View more of his videos here: http://www.youtube.com/user/StephenGordonSounds?feature=watch

2012 Festival Music