Spencer Cullum
It was in his garden shed in Nashville, Tennessee, that Spencer Cullum found an escape from the noise of the world, from the spew of hatred and vitriol that has come to soundtrack the present day.
Here, in the musician’s makeshift recording studio, the discord was muted. The rush of life was stalled, even if just for a moment. It would be here that his Coin Collection 3 would come to life.
“There was a lot about reading news back home and reading news here that made me very frustrated,” says the British-born, Nashville-based singer, songwriter, and pedal steel savant. Holding the constant cycle of bad news up to the light, Cullum tried to create a narrative beyond the violence and greed.
For instance, the artist penned the album’s “Easy Street” after seeing an image of an ICE agent smoking a cigar in celebration of a day’s work detaining and deporting people. The slinking number, a kaleidoscope of languid blues and sleepy folk, envisions the officer ultimately regretful, undone by the harm he caused in the name of “freedom.” Cullum found a sense of justice when he flipped the script.
Not all of Coin Collection 3 is glaringly political in this way. However, most of it is topical, the album’s nine tracks acting as a kind of remedy for reality. “I'm trying to be very conscious of not being too political,” Cullum shares, “but there's a big concern of how we are treating people and Earth.”
As a way to make sense of everything from the climate crisis to late-stage capitalism, the musician turned to the folklore of his native England. He found comfort – even answers – in the occult-tinged tales of ancient relics and midnight rites rather than in the extreme Christian views that tend to warp his adopted home in the American South.
Annie Williams
Over the last 10 years, Annie Williams has been working as a designer/industrial seamstress and writing songs in her spare time. Two years ago she was steered into the performance art world when writer/ director Emily Kai Bock casted her at a bar to play the lead role of Mandy Beal in her short narrative film, A Funeral for Lightning. The film went on to premiere at TIFF, was selected by TIFF as one of Canada's Top Ten Films, was nominated for a Canadian Screen Award, won Honorable Mention Best U.S. Short and Best Tennessee Short at the Nashville Film Festival, as well as winning the Oscar qualifying Grand Jury Award for Best Short Film at the LA Film Festival.
Rich Ruth
Recorded under a loft bed in the guest bedroom of his Nashville home, Michael Ruth aka Rich Ruth’s I Survived, It’s Over starts in a humble space. And while many contemporary music projects are produced in such an environment, I Survived, It’s Over sets itself apart in its transformative properties as well as its transparency. What we have here is honest sound exploration, session musician-level instrumentation, and a true love for nature run through the fingers of a dude who can channel some acute and undeniable magic.