Jon Snodgrass, Darius Koski and Nick Machado

JON SNODGRASS. (Armchair Martian, Drag The River, Scorpios)

Acoustic Rock

From Rock to Alt. Country and anything in between, Jon’s solo efforts and many collaborations are full of honest storytelling and feel good times. With themes like family, friends, and fun, Jon easily sings his way into our hearts. His unmistakable deep and soothing voice, paired with his sneaker scootin’ dance moves are sure to entertain!

On his recent album, ‘Tace,’ from New Noise Magazine: “Jon Snodgrass is quite possibly the hardest working man in punk rock—even if his songs have morphed closer to Americana over the past decade or so. He may have put off doing another solo record for a while, but that was just to focus on Drag The River, Scorpios a duets album with Frank Turner, and raising a family. But Tace, his latest collaboration with a slew of old friends, is quite possibly his best effort yet, and that’s saying a lot when you go through his decades of work. Spread across a dozen tracks, Snodgrass manages to excise influences as diverse as Kris Kristofferson to The Replacements.

Admittedly, it’s weird to use a term like endearing to describe an album by someone who is rooted so firmly in the punk world, but Tace is so unconditionally tethered to everything important to Snodgrass: music (both loud and soft/fast and slow), baseball, his family and friends, that it’s a perfect descriptor for this album.”

DARIUS KOSKI (Swingin’ Utters, Filthy Thieving Bastards, Re-Volts)

Folk, Celtic Rock

Summarized from Punknews.org, on his album ‘Sisu’: “Since the formation of Swingin’ Utters in 1987, Darius Koski has remained a songwriting force. On top of killing it with the Utters, his work in Filthy Thieving Bastards and the Re-Volts, while different from that of the Utters, always carried Koski’s indelible mark, and proved his talent for diverse songwriting. On his first ever solo album, Sisu, Koski has created his most ambitious and eclectic batch of songs to date, stepping outside of his punk rock wheelhouse and into something more experimental and personal.

Sisu uses an arsenal of traditional, acoustic-based instruments to create a blend that includes bluegrass, country, blues, and American and Irish folk. The tone of the resulting album, swirling with a pleasant accompaniment of banjos, accordions and all manner of string instruments, is laid back and leisurely, even as it displays a musical maturity and dexterity that impresses. There are no explosive drum beats or grinding distorted guitars to be found on Sisu; instead, Koski delves into much mellower territory. In fact, this might be the mellowest record that has ever been released on Fat Wreck Chords.

Koski is clearly in tune with the traditional musical stylings of yesteryear, particularly bluegrass and country, and one can sense the excitement with which he creates these songs. He has earned the right to make this album, and the passion is palpable.”