Amanda Anne Platt & The Honeycutters, Country Roots Album Released Today on Organic Records

Amanda Anne Platt & The Honeycutters New Album
Out June 9 on Organic Records
Country Roots Band from Asheville, North Carolina

Stream or purchase today at all outlets –> https://clg.lnk.to/Lj4Wo

“’Learning How To Love Him’ is a prime example of the new intimacy Platt shares with her audience. Her voice, rising and falling above a simple, spare guitar line, is on display in a way it never has been before.” –Elena See
LISTEN to the song premiere on NPR’s Folk Alley

“A coming-of-age song of sorts, ‘Diamond in the Rough’ is a rock-tinged, rootsy track”–Amy McCarthy
LISTEN to the Song Premiere on The Boot

ASHEVILLE, NC — Amanda Anne Platt & The Honeycutters new self-titled album is out today, June 9, on Organic Records. “We’re switching things up a little. After four albums I’ve decided to step out and start using my own name. It’s something that a lot of people have encouraged me to do over the years, and I guess that 2017 just felt right.” says Amanda. “We’re keeping The Honeycutters too because we don’t want to confuse people… really, we’ve always been Amanda Anne Platt & The Honeycutters. I think I’ve just gotten to a place where I feel comfortable enough to be in the spotlight.”

Based in Asheville, North Carolina, Amanda is a storyteller by nature with an incredible band backing her. Performing along with Amanda Anne Platt, The Honeycutters are Matt Smith on pedal steel and Stratocaster, Rick Cooper on bass, Josh Milligan on drums and harmony vocals, and Evan Martin on keys and Telecaster. Lyrically driven, the songs on Amanda Anne Platt & The Honeycutters blend the band’s old-school country roots attitude with their shared influences of rock and folk.

Amanda Anne Platt & The Honeycutters will tour extensively in US this year and are traveling to Europe for the first time this summer. Tour dates and more information at www.TheHoneycutters.com.

Critical Acclaim for Amanda Anne Platt & The Honeycutters:

“Writing with a maturity that belies her early thirties age, Amanda pens tunes about a couple with a 40-year relationship, reflections of a spouse with a terminally ill husband, break-up, strangers, leaving, the music industry, and, of course, love. Platt is as good a songwriter as anyone with an Americana label by their name and that includes Isbell and Lucinda to name just two of them… You will need to listen repeatedly as the album is lengthy and Platt’s lyrics are so damn real and relatable on so many levels.”
—Elmore, Jim Hynes

“They… deliver a feisty, witty, hard-knock life realism on their records and this eponymous release, their fifth, is like the continuation of a classic serial novel you just can’t put down… My favorite track is ‘Eden’ and I must have listened to it at least five times because it’s just bloody brilliant, cheeky and slightly heart-wrenching all at once: ‘Don’t keep a TV ’cause the news is always bad and it teaches us to want all the things we’ll never have’ and then the storyteller asks to be let ‘back inside that garden, I won’t eat anything that’s fallen from that goddamn tree.’ —That Mag, Jane Roser

“Platt can find a tune and express it exquisitely with a distinctive voice and a sympathetic band… Her wonderful lyrics seem to be an assessment of the people and circumstances that surround her to find the good bits.”
—Americana Music Show, Tony Ives

“Platt opens with the reflective ‘Birthday Song’, warmed in among other things, tasty piano the album is immediately up and running on greased wheels. Blending country with folk and country pop you have Americana music with a capital ‘A’ and it is good!” —Flying Shoes Review (UK), Maurice Hope

“Platt sings like she means it on this country-tinged folk album, and whether or not her nuanced lyrics are drawn directly from real life, they sure sound as if they are… Platt’s vocals convey joy and tenderness and her band provide amiable backup. At its best, this music is on a par with Lucinda Williams’s, which is saying a lot.” —The Morton Report, Jeff Burger

“There is, as with the two before, an easygoing warmth to the album, and a certain kind of knowing. The kind from that comes from being a keen and empathetic observer. From the upbeat ‘Diamond in the Rough’ to the poetic ‘Eden’ to the solemn ‘Long Ride,’ Platt and her band flesh out all that’s real and been missing in country music for lo these many years.”  —No Depression, Amos Perrine

“a gem of an album… The collection combines sharp and emotive songwriting with crisp production values. A successful blend of country roots and honky-tonk, but with a defining Appalachian twist. Above it all hovers Platt’s voice – laconic, sultry, pitch perfect and ultimately charming.” —Listening Through The Lens, Rob Dickens

“Amanda Anne is one of the best songwriters I have ever heard – and I have been listening carefully to music for about 55 years. She writes with her heart and her brain and her observations on life, love and other matters of importance are sparkling …
Her songs get into your blood and become a part of you.”
—letter from David Whittaker who commissioned the song “Rare Thing” for his wife Holly

“Amanda is so good it’s ridiculous. I don’t even know what words to use. Her singing, songwriting and presence is unmatched in Americana, Country, Pop… Simply breathtaking.” — Saul Davis: producer (Percy Sledge), manager (Gene Clark, Carla Olson, Phil Seymour).

Amanda Anne Platt & The Honeycutters Track Listing

1. Birthday Song 4:15
2. Long Ride 3:47
3. What We’ve Got 4:46
4. Diamond In The Rough 4:37
5. Eden 5:33
6. The Guitar Case 4:18
7. Learning How To Love Him 4:17
8. Brand New Start 3:14
9. Late Summer’s Child 3:57
10. The Good Guys (Dick Tracy) 4:38
11. Rare Thing 4:43
12. The Things We Call Home 2:39
13. The Road 2:40

Produced by Amanda Anne Platt and Tim Surrett

Mixing and Mastering by Recording Engineer Scott Barnett at Crossroads Studios in Arden, NC

Stream or purchase Amanda Anne Platt & The Honeycutters here →  https://clg.lnk.to/Lj4Wo

More information at www.TheHoneycutters.com, www.facebook.com/Honeycutters, and www.twitter.com/thehoneycutters.

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Mike Cullison, the Roadhouse Rambler, Releases “The Barstool Monologues” on Nov 13th

The Barstool Monologues

MIKE CULLISON & The Regulars

“A Honky-Tonk Canterbury Tales”

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“Fans of classic country music will feel right at home with Mike Cullison.”

–John Davy, No Depression

“A captivating blues rocker … soulful roadhouse songwriting.” –Simon Hallett, Totnes FM (UK)

“This is what country music has been missing … [Mike] is bringing it back.” –Renaldo 6, SongCritic.com

“I think music is the highway through life and I’m just rockin’ and rollin’ down the road.” —Mike Cullison

www.theroadhouserambler.com

Singer-songwriter Mike Cullison (aka “The Roadhouse Rambler”) is used to hearing his work defined in painterly terms; music journalists commonly pull out such metaphors when trying to describe songs. But with his new album, The Barstool Monologues (due out November 13th through JoeDog Records), it’s almost as if he’s working in the 3D style of sculptor J. Seward Johnson Jr., who turns famous Impressionist paintings into life-sized tableaux, incorporating not only the original images, but his own fanciful imaginings of what went on beyond the canvas.

Cullison takes a similar approach with The Barstool Monologues, weaving lives of bar patrons into songs, then threading them together with spoken-word narrative to create a vivid musical tableau. There’s the heartbroken lover, the fracturing couple, the other woman, the lonely imbiber … each introduced by a bartender named Hollis, who sees and hears it all. Various singers (including Jon Byrd, Davis Raines, and six others) inhabit their personas, spinning musical novellas into what Cullison likes to describe as “a honky-tonk Canterbury Tales.”

“It’s as if you walked into a place and you took a snapshot and everybody’s looking in the camera,” says the Nashville resident. “What I wanted to do was place everybody in that picture into one of the songs, either as its subject or the person singing it to somebody else.”

Mike Cullison. Photo by Greg Roth.

Cullison, an Oklahoma native who’s honed his songwriting skills with such royalty as Don Goodman (“Ol’ Red”; “Ring on Her Finger, Time on Her Hands”), Johnny Neel (the Allman Brothers) and Mike Stergis (Crosby, Stills & Nash), describes his style as “roadhouse blues and country roots-rock.” But his influences are as vast as the early rock ‘n’ roll his mom adored and the classic country his dad preferred, and he draws deeply from that well, along with other Americana styles — from Bakersfield to hybrid zyde-Cajun blues — to create a rich aural tapestry as colorful as Johnson’s art.

He considers himself a lyric writer first, however. “The story and how it is told are very important to me,” Cullison says. “Some songs come at you very quickly, but most take time. There’s still a lot of polishing to do even after the lightning bolts strike.”

Cullison’s career has taken time, too. In fact, the release party for his first album, 2004’s BAC (Big American Car), was also his retirement party after 32 years with the Bell Telephone Co. Midway through his Bell Tel years, he moved to Atlanta, “because it was five hours closer to Nashville.” His ultimate goal was always Music City, “because that’s where the writers were.”

He finally made it in 1995. Throughout his day-job years, he always wrote and performed; in Atlanta, he was in a band called Lone Walter. These days, Cullison appears solo or with a variety of friends and collaborators in the states and Europe, where he first released the EP Roadhouse Rambler in 2011, which hit #1 on the Airplay Direct radio charts. (His second CD, Blue Collar Tired, came out in 2007.)

Like most musicians, Cullison spends his share of time in bars. And like most country-influenced players, he’s sung his share of “tears in beer” tunes. But one night, while performing at the late Nashville bar the Sutler (lost, sadly, to developers), a thought struck: “Instead of having somebody sitting on the customer’s side of the bar crying in their beer, what if we turned it around?”

That was the genesis of the Mark Robinson-produced The Barstool Monologues.

“Songwriting is storytelling, so it kind of fit for me,” says Cullison, who also has plenty of “behind the song” stories. One of his favorites involves the opening tune, “Wish I Didn’t Like Whiskey” — a perfect choice to open an album set in a bar.

“I had bought a drink for a friend of mine,” Cullison relates, “and as I handed her the glass, she said, ‘I wish I didn’t like whiskey so much.’ I excused myself for a minute while I wrote that on a coaster. Turned out to be a very good song.”

They’ve all turned out to be very good songs — vignettes, actually, sung and performed by some of Nashville’s finest. If Cullison has his way, The Barstool Monologues might even turn into a musical of some sort, with actors and stage sets. Life-sized, like a Johnson tableau. Only even more real, because we can recognize the characters in Cullison’s stories. They’re our friends, our exes … or maybe even ourselves.

 www.theroadhouserambler.com

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The Honeycutters Release New Album “When Bitter Met Sweet” CD Release Show at The Grey Eagle on May 5th

The Honeycutters Release NEW Album “When Bitter Met Sweet”

The Grey Eagle

Saturday, May 5th

Moses Atwood Opens

Doors 7pm, Show starts at 8pm

$8 adv/ $10 at door

185 Clingman Ave. 28801

828-232-5800

www.thegreyeagle.com

www.thehoneycutters.com

In a world that is becoming increasingly digitalized and impersonal, the Honeycutters are building a reputation based on live performance and songs that tend to stick with you. Fitting into Americana realm, Mountain Xpress’s Alli Marshall calls The Honeycutters’ sound, “Old school country in the truest sense… free of twang and ten-gallon hats but full of real emotion, family history, quick wit and strong liquor.”

In an interview with the Folk to Folk Blog, Amanda says that part of the Honeycutters appeal is that their sound harkens back to simpler, more honest times. “In times like these, people want something real,” she said. “They’re just really craving something that’s just going to connect them to that basic human pool of emotion.”

The Honeycutters are excited to introduce their second full length studio release, When Bitter Met Sweet on June 5th, 2012. They are hosting their Asheville CD release show at the Grey Eagle on Saturday, May 5th. Copies of the album will be available at the show. Moses Atwood opens the show, which starts at 8pm sharp. The Honeycutters will also be making an appearance on WNCW’s Studio B during the 11 o’clock AM hour on Thursday, May 3rd… tune in at http://wncw.org.

Like their first release, Irene, When Bitter Met Sweet features singer/songwriter Amanda Anne Platt, who has been hailed as “one of the best songwriters coming out of WNC these days” by WNCW programming director Martin Anderson. Peter James accompanies her on lead and rhythm guitar as well as harmony vocals. They are backed up by Tal Taylor’s signature mandolin playing, Ian Harrod on bass, and Jon Ashley on drums creating an original brand of Americana that has proved equally appealing to both the musician and the music lover, the country and the city, and the old and the young.

Platt’s songs are shaped by a raw honesty that comes straight from the heart and emits a sort of melancholy happiness. The album features 11 tracks that touch upon childhood and loss of innocence, finding a sense of belonging and one’s voice, truth, love and patience, traveling and embarking on new life-journeys (and the fears that go along with these), and the understanding that comes about when life’s circumstances come full circle.

The title track, “When Bitter Met Sweet” is a song about the end of love looking back at the beginning.  Platt says, “I think it’s important not to lose sight of what was good about something even if it is ending.” “For Eleanora,” was inspired after reading a biography of Billie Holiday and reflects on a similar thought of polarities that, “It seems like so often the partners of extreme talent and specialness are self-destruction and doubt.”

The song “90 Miles (The Tennessee Song)” is featured on Blue Ridge Outdoors Trailmix for 2012 Merlefest Artists. It was written after her first trip to International Folk Alliance in 2010, an event that can be quite overwhelming at first. An admitted introvert, Amanda was faced with the challenges of how to be heard amongst all of the activity of events such as these. And make herself heard is exactly what she went on to do; becoming a finalist at 2011 Merlefest’s Chris Austin songwriting contest for her song song “Little Bird” (unrecorded). She was asked to return as a guest judge for the contest, along with Jim Lauderdale, for the 2012 Merlefest (Where The Honeycutters will also be performing a few sets this year). The same song won first place in the Great Lakes Song Contest in February 2012.

“All I Got, ” is a song Amanda calls, “a love song I wrote a long, long time ago, before I had actually ever been in love” and was selected for WNCW’s 2010 Crowd Around the Mic Vol. 14.

“Fancy Car” features Platt’s father on harmonica. He also sits in on “Not Over Yet”  which she says that when she sings it she imagines a child leaving home for the first time, wanting freedom but scared of what it might cost.

When Bitter Met Sweet was co-produced by Amanda and Peter with the assistance of Aaron Price, and was recorded at Echo Mountain Studios in Asheville, NC after securing funding through a successful Kickstarter campaign. Along with the full band, many special guests make appearances on the album including Matt Smith (pedal steel and dobro), Nicky Sanders (fiddle), Mark Platt (harmonica), Je Widenhouse (coronet), and on drums Mike Rhodes and Richard Foulk and for various songs. The album was engineered (and partially mixed) by Jon Ashley with the assistance of Julian Dreyer, mixed by John Keane and mastered by Dave Harris at Studio B Mastering in Charlotte, NC.

Their first full length studio release Irene, released in May 2009, has landed them in Ian Hughes’ NoDepression Podcast’s Top 20 of 2009, Fret Knot Radio Hour’s “Nine you need to know from ’09”, and #32 in WNCW’s listener voted Top 100 of 2009.

Since putting out Irene the Honeycutters have shared the stage with such Americana favorites as Tony Rice, The Greencards, Jill Andrews, The Steep Canyon Rangers, Donna the Buffalo, and The Seldom Scene.  They have been voted Western North Carolina’s favorite local Americana act (2011 Mountain Xpress reader’s poll) and delighted audiences from upstate New York to Seattle, Washington. They are currently touring around the release of When Bitter Met Sweet.

Stay tuned to thehoneycutters.com for more news about the album and their tour.

What the Press is saying about The Honeycutters:

“I can see a day when her name is mentioned alongside Lucinda Williams, Mary Gauthier and Gillian Welch.  She’s just that good.” —The Real Southern

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“They’ve got a sound as classic as grits… I thought of those country songs that play on those diner jukeboxes you see in movies.” –Charlotte’s Creative Loafing

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“Amanda Platt’s striking, timeless vocals form the cornerstone of her often heart-wrenching songs, while producer Pete James’ understated guitar and gentle harmonies round out the duo’s saccharine-sweet mix.” –Dane Smith, Mountain Xpress

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“Amanda’s lyrics are both sardonic and sweet, which adds a contemporary element to their country twanged Americana sound [which] is more influenced by the harmonic tendencies of country singers like Johnny Cash and June Carter” —Folk to Folk Blog.

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“I recommend the Honeycutters not only because they’re some of the best my hometown of Asheville, NC, has to offer. Their music embodies a very catchy, accessible, optimistic sort of spirit so frequently lacking in folk circles (where brooding, hyper-analytical music reigns supreme). What’s more, like Carolina Story, they’re a great band replete with tasty harmonies.” –Kim Ruehl, Folk Music About.com

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“If anyone can make this old metalhead want to whip out the cowboy boots and hat, order a couple of Budweisers and spin my woman around the dance floor, the Honeycutters can.” –Brent Fleury, Bold Life Magazine

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“Amanda’s voice sings like Carolina farmlands after a rainstorm” –Harvey Robinson, Monkeywhale productions

www.thehoneycutters.com

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Have you Herd? Donna The Buffalo plays Colorado this April

Have you Herd? Donna The Buffalo plays Colorado

Thursday – Saturday: The Sandbar Vail (4-14), The Bluebird Theatre (4-15) and The Fox (4-16)

Whitewater Ramble and The Believers open the evenings

Photo by Jim Gavenus

Sandbar Vail ~ Thursday, April 14th
970-476-4314
2161 North Frontge Road
Vail, Co 81657

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Bluebird Theater ~ Friday, April 15th
(303) 377-1666
3317 E. Colfax Ave
Denver, CO 80206

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Fox Theatre ~ Saturday, April 16th
(303) 447-0095
1135 13th Street
Boulder, CO 80302

Photo by Richard Allen

Donna the Buffalo’s feel-good, groove-oriented, danceable and often socially conscious music all began over twenty years ago with roots in old time fiddle music that evolved into a soulful electric Americana mix infused with elements of cajun/ zydeco, rock, folk, reggae, and country. Donna the Buffalo is known for touring the country remaining fiercely independent as one of the industry’s most diverse roots-music bands and has “earned a reputation as one of the most respected, eclectic and hardest-working acts today,” praises Encore.

The dynamic songwriting tandem of vocalists Jeb Puryear and Tara Nevins have penned over 150 songs in their collaboration with DTB and have many more in the making. Although never writing a set list for live show, the Erie Times notes, “they stick to a pattern…usually alternating between Puryear’s rhythmic, Dylan-influenced, guitar-centered songs and Nevins’ breezy, melodic, accordion-driven gems like the folksy Tides of Time and infectious Locket and Key.” As of late, Nevins and Puryear have also been known to perform as a duo on air and at live shows, which is always enjoyable to the fans to hear their favorite DtB songs in stripped down arrangments. The band’s 2008 release Silverlined, on Sugar Hill Records, rose to #8 on the Americana Music Chart and they are heading in studio this spring to work on their 10th album with the current band lineup of Puryear on guitar, Nevins on fiddle, guitar, accordion, and scrubboard, keyboardist Dave McCracken, bassist Kyle Spark, and drummer Vic Stafford.

Nevins & Larry Cambell. Photo by John D Kurc.

Co-DtB bandleader and American roots traditionalist, Tara Nevins, releases an exploration of her own heritage, musical and otherwise, in Wood and Stone, her first solo album since Mule to Ride in 1999 on Sugar Hill Records. Wood and Stone showcases her ever-evolving repertoire as she journeys both back to her own “roots” and head-long into new territory. Set for a May 3, 2011 release date, the album was produced by Larry Campbell with guests including Levon Helm, Jim Lauderdale, Allison Moorer, Teresa Williams and more.

Donna the Buffalo’s fervent fan base, self-named The Herd, follows the band with zeal and has created a unique and supportive community online and at DTB shows across the nation. Puryear declares, “The main thing I like to say about The Herd is that you don’t have to do anything to be a member. You just have to like a song.” In an interview with The Roanoke Times, Nevins conveys, “It’s a great feeling to promote such a feeling of community, like you’re really part of something that’s happening, like a movement or a positive force…All those people that come and follow you and you recognize them and you become friends with them — you’re all moving along for the same purpose. It is powerful. It’s very powerful, actually.” When asked in an interview with the Weekender in PA what new people should look forward to experiencing at a show, Nevins replied “a really friendly, comfortable crowd, and a real community-oriented, positive experience.”

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The Believers

THE BELIEVERS have a serious love for old school country music. They can’t help it if they were raised on punk rock & metal. Founding members Craig Aspen & Cyd Frazzini formed THE BELIEVERS ten years ago in Seattle amid the Alt. Country- No Depression boom of that time and have been recording and performing ever since. Three albums and a decade later they’ve stayed true to their Country/ Rock /Soul sound that has earned them praise from contemporaries like Buddy Miller, Jim Lauderdale and the BBC Radio’s Bob Harris who declared them simply, “Brilliant.”

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Self-described as “High-Octane Rocky Mountain DanceGrass”, WhiteWater Ramble uses a simple recipe to craft it’s sound – bluegrass instrumentation, add drums, and a boundary-less approach to grassing-up everything from disco house grooves to roots Americana. The Colorado-bred quintet combines the elements of Mandolin, Fiddle, Acoustic Guitar, Upright Bass, Drums and Vocals to explore the musical boundaries of multiple genres to fuel their own mixture of original music and innovative cover song interpretations. Whether playing an intimate encore, acoustic and unplugged in the crowd, or surfing on top of the upright bass, WhiteWater Ramble delivers a powerful and memorable live performance.

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