Kyshona
Kyshona has always lent her voice and music to those that feel they have been silenced or forgotten. She began her career as a music therapist, writing her first songs with her patients -- the students and inmates under her care. She soon found the need to write independently and find her own voice, and endeavor which led her to the fertile ground of the Nashville creative community and songwriting culture.
Since then, she has learned how to balance her music career with her passion to heal and foster community through her non-profit organization Your Song.
Her song Listen became an anthem for many in 2020. Of her album, one fan reviewer wrote: “Amidst these hard, divisive times this set of songs is a salve for the grief many of us are feeling about resulting loss of family, friends, and community.” Within the grooves of its 10 tracks, Kyshona blends roots, rock, R&B, and folk with lyrical prowess to uplift the marginalized and bring awareness to the masses. It's for every silent scream, every heavy load, fearful thought, and a simmering sense of anger that the repressed, the lost, and the forgotten try to hide from the world.
Audiences will find a common thread of empowerment, overcoming adversity, and finding hope in her work. The show doesn’t end when the last song is sung. After her powerful performances, concertgoers often ask, "What can I do?"
Her response? "Listen."
Learn more at http://www.kyshona.com
Buddy Mondlock
Buddy Mondlock writes songs. He does it so well that some great songwriters have recorded his songs on their own albums. Guy Clark, Nanci Griffith, and Janis Ian, to name just a few. You might’ve heard his song “The Kid” (recorded by David Wilcox, Peter, Paul and Mary and Cry, Cry, Cry) and maybe even sung it yourself around a campfire. He draws you into his world - where a single snowflake follows the trajectory of a relationship, where you get you pocket picked by a Roman cat, where you might swim over the edge of the world if you’re not careful and where dreams that don’t come true still count.
When Buddy’s not on the road you can find him in Nashville but he grew up in Park Forest, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago. He didn’t have a troubled childhood. His parents were nice to him. They paid for guitar lessons when he was ten and they never said, “when are you going to get a real job?” He sang Crosby, Stills and Nash songs with his sisters and answered his little brother’s questions from the top bunk. A few years away at college puzzling over Homer and Plato and then he was back. Living in the big city this time and playing open mics at Chicago’s crucible for songwriters in those days, the famed Earl of Old town. He once opened for the amazing Steve Goodman there on New Year’s Eve. Buddy was 21. Says he could have walked out of there that night and gotten hit by a bus and he wouldn’t have felt like life cheated him at all.
When Buddy made his first trip to Texas from his native Chicago, Guy Clark heard him singing one of his songs under a tree at the Kerrville Folk Festival and liked it. So Guy went back to Nashville, opened the door and said, “listen to this kid, he’s good!” A publishing deal and a U-Haul headed south soon followed.
People were starting to pay attention. In 1987 he was a New Folk Award Winner at Kerrville and he released his first album called “On the Line”. Over the next few years David Wilcox recorded “The Kid” on his first record for A&M. Buddy did some writing with this other new kid in town named Garth Brooks. Janis Ian heard him singing at the Bluebird Cafe and asked him if he’d like to write with her. Their song “Amsterdam” got recorded by Joan Baez. Nanci Griffith asked Buddy to sing on a show she was taping for Irish television. She ended up liking that song so much that she recorded “Comin’ Down In the Rain” on her Grammy Award winning collection “Other Voices, Other Rooms.” Garth became a star and “Every Now and Then” ended up on his album “The Chase.”
Buddy was touring all over the U.S. by this time playing coffeehouses and the occasional festival (he’d become a regular on the main stage at Kerrville). And there were trips to Europe too. Buddy’s second album, produced by Steve Addabbo in 1994, got picked up by Son Records, a small label in Ireland started by the band U2, and he was well received on the island of poets. He’s toured there consistently ever since. 1996 was a good year. Peter, Paul and Mary recorded “The Kid” and then asked the kid himself to sing with them on their “Great Performances” TV special. He won a Kerrville Music Award for Song of the Year that autumn for “The Kid” too.
Since then he’s released a string of critically acclaimed solo recordings on his own label and on EMI. And in 2003 Buddy toured North America and Europe with Art Garfunkel and Maia Sharp in support of their album “Everything Waits To Be Noticed” which they wrote and recorded together as a trio. His latest solo album, “The Memory Wall,” was nominated for an Independent Music Award.
Currently Buddy and Maia Sharp are collaborating on a new musical called, “The Girl In the Red Dress.” It includes several songs from their project with Art Garfunkel and a slew of new material from Buddy and Maia. Set in a world where “The Leader” has banished all color as subversive, the story focuses on a young woman who must learn to believe in herself and comes to find that she can actually make a difference.
In addition to writing and touring Buddy also teaches songwriting. Along with one day workshops across the US and Europe he has also been a staff instructor at the Swannanoa Gathering at Warren Wilson College, the Kerrville Folk Festival Song School, the Sisters Folk Festival Song Camp, and Cedarsong Retreats.
Learn more at https://www.buddymondlock.com
The Pharaoh Sisters
The Pharaoh Sisters (Clayton McKenzie, Jared Meyer, Thomas Pendergrast, and Austin Pfeiffer) hail from Winston-Salem, NC. Blending the cowboy sensibilities of their Western-roots (Pfeiffer from Oregon, Meyer from Montana) with the Appalachian traditions of their new home, they use dark imagery and moody stringed instruments inspired by the foothills of the Blue Ridge.
The Pharaoh Sisters released their debut album, "Civil Dawn" in 2020. Art & Theology describes the album saying, "the biblical narrative is deeply embedded in the album, with many sideways references to specific scriptures. Topography is used symbolically throughout—fissures, canyons, mountains—and helps establish the central metaphor of Jesus as a pioneer, opening up a new frontier for us, leading us through the wilderness into the land of promise."
The album led to the Pharaoh Sisters being named to the Gospel Coalition's 2020 "Quality Christian Music: 15 Artists to Watch." Describing their debut album Brett McCracken writes, "Civil Dawn, is a promising debut for a duo whose music is at home performed in a dive bar as much as on stage at the PCA General Assembly."
Learn more at http://www.thepharaohsisters.com
