JOSH DILLARD | joshdillardmusic.com | Josh Dillard writes and performs songs whose construction reaches back in the annals of classic pop and early rock while imbued with a modern sentiment. From the depths of existential quandary to the vistas of young love, his songs are drenched in a dusty humanity. Road worn and honest, his gait is as true as his verse.
COVENHOVEN | covenhoven.com | Van Horne is a songwriter. He knows his way around verses. Covenhoven is not just about streams of banjos and mountains of heavenly percussion. It’s about the things you say when you’re way out there, with others, but by yourself. They are simple, woody meditations on his “Love Sincere”. In “Young at Heart” Van Horne sings, “And I’ve always been an old soul/Empty has always been full/Lost is my own kind of found/And silence my favorite sound”. If there was an analogy in this for Van Horne, it would have been about the accumulation of skill sets. The sum total of the previous challenges into one more. A tribute to that path, to everything he’s become and more than that: a celebration of a place his grandfather built by himself. It is a tribute. An articulation of reverence. To his family. His siblings. The secret memories that are only theirs. This is that sound. That place. Covenhoven. -Jonathan Bitz, DENVER SYNTAX
JOE SAMPSON | fellowcreaturerecordings.com | For a certain type of music fan, most any song can be interpreted as a soundtrack directly commenting on your life -- at that exact moment. The lyrics are speaking directly to you and your situation with a spooky amount of accuracy and wisdom. The song is about you, even if it isn't, even if the songwriter was thinking of something completely different at the time, or thinking of nothing specific at all, least of all you and your problems. The music of Joe Sampson -- with it's emotional depth and lyrical ambiguity -- especially lends itself to this sort of reflection, particularly the title track to his solo debut, Kill Our Friends, a song seemingly about rejection and social disappointment, yet, as the songwriter reveals, was about nothing in particular. - Josiah Hesse, WESTWORD