Born and raised in Sunny San Diego Ca. Brandon Ryan is a Class Act. He has positive fun melodic flow and very creative word-play. His Debut single “SD” has a laid back sound with a catchy hook that is sure to have you sing-a-long. He has an MBA in Business and is ready to show the world of Hip-Hop how to aspire to be more than just a recording artist that reflects on negative acts of behavior from poverty stricken demographics. Through his music, he will influence his listeners to embrace life and all the good things life can bring.
Matt Enik got his start in Parkersburg, West Virginia at the age of 12 with a group of friends playing Eagles and James Blunt covers at old folks’ homes. He and his band of teenagers then traveled the state for five years playing festivals on flatbed trucks, dating fair queens, and writing a lot of songs. What started as a ploy to get a girlfriend became a passion that helped Matt gain the attention of a few folks in Nashville, who convinced him to look into moving. Which leads us to the present… In 2011, at age 18, Matt packed his guitars, moved to Nashville, racked up over $100k in college debt, bought a van and trailer, and took his new band out to meet more fair queens. He will graduate from Belmont University in May. Probably.
Originally from Orlando, FL, Cory moved to Nashville, TN in late 2014 to launch Volunteer from the ground up in a new city filled with new opportunity. He was a member of the successful central Florida rock band, Hoyle. His debut single, “The World Will Begin Again”, received 4.5k+ SoundCloud streams on it’s first day of release with the music video receiving 2k+ views in the first 3 days of it’s release. He will be performing at Mercy Lounge in Nashville this coming March. Volunteer’s debut EP, recorded by Jeremiah John Dunlap (JMR, Hoyle, Matt Hires), will be released this coming February 17.
No one was more surprised than his own family to learn that singing was one of Dylan’s talents. At the Age of three, Dylan got ahold of a mic during a family karaoke night in his hometown of San Diego. He started to sing… beautifully. Not a jaw was closed and the room was stunned. Nobody saw it coming because Dylan was clinically deaf in both ears. Dylan soon fell in love with the creative process and over the years began writing songs. Slowly but surely as his hearing was being corrected, he taught himself to play the guitar. Then the piano. Then to engineer. “I like expressing myself with my music,” Dylan says, “and I learned that the more involved I was in creating it, the more artistic I could be.” Dylan was a natural and he was on his way. Motivated by an amazingly fast-growing fan base on YouTube and other social media, Dylan was ready to take his craft to the next level. He (along with his family) packed up and moved to Los Angeles seeking to firmly establish himself as a Pop-R&B vocalist. The move paid off big and allowed the budding teenager the opportunities to work with a legion of artists and producers including Babyface and Ne-Yo. Dylan also caught the attention of industry heavyweights Shawn Campbell, responsible for breaking teen- sensation Cody Simpson, and legendary music manager Johnny Wright. Wright has launched the biggest names in Pop music like Justin Timberlake, Britney Spears, Backstreet Boys, *NSYNC and Jonas Brothers (to name a few). Now under Wright’s guidance and still deaf in one ear, Dylan is currently working on his first full-length album to share with his “Hyde Pryde” devotees across the globe.
This isn’t just the tag line in a song from Hailey Steele’s self-titled EP. To her, it’s become a motto – a hopeful thought that carries her through rough days.
“I literally had to be dropped off at my write the day we wrote Diamonds, because my Bug had died. For good. I didn’t know what I was gonna do. And so we just wrote what I was feeling that day. I say what I think and I write my life.”
No stranger to the Nashville struggle, her highs and lows can be heard in her music. Steele’s lyrics touch on being a twenty-something girl who’s not sure how she’s going to pay her rent, wishing that she had things a little more figured out by now. She covers the ups and downs of love, victimizing her heart’s counterpart on “You Made It That Way” (Steele/Terry McBride/Derrick Southerland), but keeps it light and fun with a road trip to Vegas in “Getaway Car” (Steele/Nathan Chapman). Steele also has a unique woman-to-woman perspective that gives a nod to her classic country heroes with songs “Boyfriend” and “High Horse.”
Often compared to the likes of Sheryl Crow and Dolly Parton, this 5-foot-2 Leap Year baby isn’t afraid to say what everybody else is thinking. “Everybody’s wanted something they can’t have. We’ve all been there before. When we wrote “Boyfriend”, (co-written with Raelynn and Nicolle Galyon), we wanted to come across as bold and honest with a touch of grace.” High Horse (co-written with Ben Stennis and Brandon Hood), an ode to Steele’s love of the Wild West, is a song about knocking an ambiguous enemy off of their “Holier Than Thou” throne.
Steele grew up in a one-stoplight town in South Dakota. Although nobody in her immediate family was musical (her parents are both special education teachers), her love of music began early on. If the TV was on in the house, she was standing three feet away from it singing along with the videos on CMT. Her parents started taking her to concerts when she was young, and she grew up loving everything from Patsy Cline to Patty Loveless to The Eagles to Def Leppard.
When she was just 10 years old, Steele opened for Loretta Lynn at a casino in South Dakota, where she befriended a Native American Chief named Dennis Alley. Soon after, Chief Alley began introducing her to all of his musical friends, including BB King, Aaron Neville, Waylon Jennings, and Willie Nelson. By the time she was 15, Willie was inviting Hailey to sing onstage with him during his finale. “My experience with Willie will always be so special, but when I look back on it now that I’m older, it seems like it was almost spiritual. He’s a huge part of my story.” Steele’s friendship with Willie and The Chief led her to many unique opportunities, such as performing at Farm Aid and singing a duet with Willie at the historic Corn Palace in Mitchell, SD.
At age 19, Hailey moved to Nashville and began writing songs. One of her writing relationships led her to become part of the duo The LiNE, produced by Grammy-nominated songwriter Stephony Smith. The pair spent two seasons on a NASCAR tour, received the rare “four chair turn” on Season 2 of The Voice (Team Xtina), and even had the honor of performing on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. As soon as The Voice ended, Hailey decided to split from The LiNE and started to write for her solo project. “Being in a duo was a great experience for me. We made a lot of friends and wrote a lot of songs, but at the end of the day I wanted to get back to what my message was, and why I came to Nashville.”
Not long after, Hailey had found herself surrounded by a community of talented artists, writers, producers, and believers. One of those believers was producer Paul “Relli” Barber. “Relli and I had been talking about making a record for four or five years. Either the timing was never right, or we were too busy, or the money wasn’t there. But he was always extra invested in the music. Over the course of our friendship, I’d sent him almost every song I’d written.”
One of those songs, “Getaway Car,” (co-written with Nathan Chapman) was almost forgotten. “Getaway Car was on hold for another artist who was in pre-production at the time, so I kind of counted it out for myself. Within the hour that I found out they weren’t going to cut it, Relli randomly sent my own demo of Getaway Car to me and said, “Hey, What about this song?” We both took it as a sign, and now that song is the first single.”
Another cut from the EP, “You Made It That Way,” was co-written by Derrick Southerland and Terry McBride. “We had a write scheduled for February 28th, which is usually when I celebrate my birthday on off years. Normally I would take the day off, but I heard somebody say that it was good luck to work on your birthday. When I walked in, the boys were playing the opening riff of what turned out to be one of my favorite songs I’ve ever written.”
McBride, a celebrated songwriter and founder of McBride and the Ride says of Hailey, “I’ve worked with a lot of upcoming artists over the last twenty years. Some you remember and some you forget. But some you just know they have what it takes to make it, and Hailey Steele falls into that category. She has the determination and talent to separate her from the rest of the pack, and a voice that leaves an impression on those who get the chance to hear her.”
When it came to the recording process, Relli and Hailey had the opportunity to make the EP in a way that was very unique to Nashville. “We sat in a studio by ourselves for almost six weeks and came up with parts, and played most of it ourselves, ” Relli said. “A lot of the arrangements were already there, and some of the parts were derived from Hailey’s live band show.” Once Relli and Hailey had exhausted all of their musical resources (Steele on acoustics, piano, and background vocals, Relli on acoustics, electrics, piano and drum programming), they called in some of their favorite musicians, including Doug Lancio (Patty Griffin), Adam Ollendorff (Kacey Musgraves), Shaun Balin, Jon Rogerson, and Matt Butler (Sheryl Crow).
Steele says that this EP will give listeners the perfect idea of who she is, because if you know her songs, you know her. “I couldn’t be any happier with how this EP turned out. Every single note on this thing speaks for who I am as an artist. Now I’m ready to get out there and share it with the world.”
Along with the release of her debut EP, Steele will be on tour this fall with singer/songwriter Stephen Kellogg. In 2013, she became the youngest member to be inducted into the South Dakota Country Hall of Fame.
Carlton is an alternative-pop trio based in Los Angeles, California. They are characterized by well crafted pop songs with an energetic live show. They released their first self-produced EP “Stretching” in October of 2013 and have stayed busy touring up and down the west coast since then. In June and October of 2014, Carlton released their singles “Drift” and “Trigger Happy” to critical acclaim, earning them features on notable music blogs such as Good Music All Day, The Burning Ear, Kings of A&R, Kick Kick Snare, Free Bike Valet, The Undiscovered, Absolute Mag and more. Carlton is currently working on a new release after touring across the country with Shwayze.
Hailing from a little suburb of Cleveland, Ohio, Kate Voegele first picked up a guitar at age 15. Influenced by the rock and roll history of the city and her father’s songwriting, she began to pen her own songs from the minute she learned to play her first three chords. Voegele embraced this newfound passion, recording her first EP during her freshman year of high school, and soon after landed gigs alongside artists like Counting Crows and John Mayer. Those shows quickly led to attention from labels in New York and LA, and Kate spent the majority of her high school years diving headfirst into a career in music. After high school, Voegele decided to attend Ohio’s Miami University, where she quickly found new inspiration, and simultaneously found herself uploading song after song to her MySpace page. Kate managed to get the attention of the social network’s founder, Tom Anderson, and just a few weeks later, she became MySpace Records’ first signed artist. In spring of 2007 Voegele finished recording her first full-length record with Marshall Altman in LA and decided to swap her text books in for a tour bus and a year full of shows throughout the US. Over the next couple of years Voegele toured the country playing hundreds of shows. While traveling through LA, Kate auditioned on a whim and would eventually land the role of Mia Catalano on the CW show, “One Tree Hill.” What was supposed to be a two-episode run became a four-season recurrence, and Kate found herself performing eleven of her original songs to millions of viewers over the course of the show. Record sales jumped dramatically after Voegele’s first appearance on the show, and she was subsequently upstreamed to Interscope Records in January of 2008. At this point Kate toured internationally with artists like Natasha Bedingfield and Jordin Sparks. She split her time between the road and the television set, and released a second full-length, “A Fine Mess,” in spring of 2009. After her first two records sold over 500,000 units, Voegele signed with ATO Records in 2011, releasing “Gravity Happens.” She spent the next two years continuing to tour the US and Europe, writing new songs from airplane window seats and ultimately embarking on a new chapter in her life. In fall of 2013, Voegele moved her home base from LA to Nashville, getting back to her songwriter roots. Being in Music City has given Kate the opportunity to work with writers like Nathan Chapman and Liz Rose, and open up opportunities to work with the country’s best creative talents. With over a dozen new songs in tow, Voegele is released an EP in late fall ’14, which will be followed by her fourth full-length album slated for next spring.
In 2005 Marina Evans moved to New York City, where she taught herself guitar and began writing songs that combined her background as a jazz vocalist with traditional folk and a rock edge. Within a year, she was performing as a solo acoustic act around New York and her home state of Massachusetts. Since that time Marina has recorded three original EPs and a full length album, and has taken her music from Rockport, MA all across the United States: from Portland to Nashville, New Orleans to Los Angeles, and everywhere in between. Marina has also made her way over to Europe, performing in London and touring across Italy every spring since 2011. In 2012 Marina released two original EPs, Dogtown and The Tuscan Sessions. Dogtown, released first, was written and recorded with Marina’s band in Gloucester, MA; The Tuscan Sessions was written and recorded while touring abroad in Italy. “The EPs are really two sides of the same coin,” Marina says. “While complementary, they reflect this sort of bi-continental, rambling life I’ve been leading with my music.” Dogtown rocks – described as “raucous” and “anthemic” in The Noise Magazine – and “swellingly beautiful” Tuscan takes a distinctly European perspective on folk americana. In the spring of 2013, Marina launched a Kickstarter campaign to fund the recording of her debut full-length album, Unbound. Through overwhelming support from across the globe, she reached her funding goal and recorded the album abroad in Florence, Italy with producer Bernardo Baglioni. With clever lyricism and unusual melodies, Unbound deftly combines various styles, genres, and instrumentation – from sweet ballads to folk anthems to straight up rock and roll – and paints a picture of a versatile and passionate artist.
Marshall, Red and Rocco may sound like fictional characters, but in reality, they are the masterminds behind Nashville-based classic rock influenced pop band Telegraph. After four years as Northern Virginia pop/rock quartet, Sing Me Insomnia, brothers Marshall (vocals) and Red Cunningham (guitar/vocals), along with best friend Wes “Rocco” Beale (bass/vocals) found themselves relocating to Nashville and relaunching as Telegraph.
With epic guitar solos, falsetto vocals, and catchy melodies, Telegraph crafts something unique yet familiar, and overall, undeniably fun. Drawing from 70/80s rock icons, Van Halen, Def Leppard, and Guns ‘n Roses, to current pop stars such as One Direction, Katy Perry, and Kelly Clarkson, Telegraph blends classic rock power and craftsmanship with modern pop production and energy. Their infectious songs earned them one of four prime spots in Belmont’s Rock Showcase, creating anticipation for their debut EP that was released in June 2014. Their music video for title track “Rewind” earned buzz online with its perfect mix of nostalgia and pop culture, and their second single “Rhinestone Chapel” was a strong follow-up with the track premiere on Idolator and the music video premiere on HitFix. Be on the lookout for what Telegraph has coming; these guys are bound to surprise you.
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