Independent's Day Radio

Sometimes, the genesis of a music scene can be traced back to one person who believes in a band, style or idea so thoroughly that their sheer force of will generates enough buzz to make it a reality. Los Angeles' patron saint of twang Kim Grant is just that sort of person. After cutting her music industry teeth at the famed Green Dolphin Street club in her hometown of Chicago, Grant relocated to LA and set about championing the style nearest and dearest to her heart - a genre known to adherents as Alt-Country, Americana or No Depression. In 2009 she formed a PR company called KG Music Press to help spread the word about L.A.'s underground country community in a manner honest enough to honor the genre's unpretentious forebears. But Grant's highest profile vehicle for promoting the extensive number of top-notch roots music artists in Southern California is an ongoing Sunday evening concert series at The Echo affectionately named The Grand Ole Echo. The 7th season of this weekly event runs through September 30th

Brooklyn, New York-based singer and songwriter Grace Weber is living the dream of many a young girl from countless small towns who dream of making a big noise in the big city. She has come a long way since she joined Inner City Youth Gospel Choir in her hometown of Milwaukee, Wisconsin at the tender age of ten. Weber has earned her way with a work ethic commonly found in people with Midwestern roots. With talent and tenacity Weber has racked up an impressive list of credits and a growing legion of fans. She has made appearances on NPR's Mountain Stage and The Oprah Winfrey Show, and even managed to get a song on Starbuck's playlist, which can be found in rotation in the coffee behemoth's 10,000-plus locations in the U.S. Weber's debut album, Hope and Heart, is filled with bouncy, soulful songs with some vocal shades reminiscent of smoky throwback female singers like Adele and Joss Stone.

Two guitars, bass and drums is standard issue rock band territory, so it's often other, more intangible factors that make or break a new act. Usually, it's some indescribable voodoo combination of luck and hard work that gets a band noticed. Luck, as they say, favors the prepared, and that's where the hard work comes in. For the Los Angeles based band, The Burn Riffs, hedging their bets and courting that sometimes-elusive luck starts with a strong work ethic and innovative ideas - ideas like making a music video shot entirely on fans' cell phone video cameras. So far, the approach seems to be working. The Burn Riffs recently performed an exclusive set at Yahoo! Music's world HQ, joining the short list of bands that includes bands like Mumford & Sons to perform in that venue.

Once upon a time, musicians and songwriters shied away from having their music associated with a product or service in a TV commercial. Remember the revolutionary uproar about Nike using a Beatles song to sell running shoes in 1987? Some major artists still hold fast like a bulwark for what they perceive to be artistic integrity. It's easy for Bruce Springsteen to turn down Ford or Chevrolet - he doesn't need the money. But things have changed, especially for new artists. With the decline of things like artist development at record labels and plummeting record sales in the rising tide of digital downloading, artists have had to innovate and find new revenue streams. Singer/songwriter Jess Penner exemplifies this new approach with style, rectitude and heart. Her solo music is a pleasing mash up of folk and quirky electronic pop and from the studio in her home, her catchy songs have found their way into more television programs, advertisements and movies than we have space to list. But Penner isn't just a shill

Cody Hudock, like so many young musicians, started a band to attract the attention of girls. After slogging it out playing keyboards in the LA-based indie band, Marvelous Toy, he ended up finding one to marry - his wife, Joanna, who now sings with him in his semi-eponymous band, Cody the Band. His music is filled with pop hooks, inventive chord changes and a fresh approach to musical self-awareness.

Folk-pop chanteuse Andrea Hamilton was well on her way to a successful music career when she was stricken with a mysterious ailment while returning from a tour in Vietnam. Doctors and specialists couldn't seem to determine just what it was, but they did tell her that she'd never sing again. Not content to give up on her dream, Hamilton put her trust in her faith and her conviction that she would continue to do what she felt she was destined to do - which was to share her passion for writing incisive, hopeful and heartfelt songs - and that she'd be the one singing them. This hell-and-back-again story is replete with hope, and Hamilton used it as inspiration for her latest album, Slow Miracle.

When jazz-influenced singer Alyssa Graham set out to record her new record, Lock, Stock & Soul, she opted to do something few artists attempt in the age of recording albums on laptops. Rather than build the album track by track by overdubbing, she and her producer assembled a group of talented musicians and put them in a room. Together. At the same time. This live-in-the-studio vibe permeates the record and gives it an authenticity typically found on albums by artists she lists as influences. There are shades of James Taylor, and her idols Neil Young, Nick Drake and Bob Dylan, and collaborations with MeShell Ndegeocello, David Garza and Jesse Harris - the latter of which is best known for penning key tracks on Norah Jones' multi-platinum debut - all of which saves the record from being a mere throwback to Graham's singer/songwriter forebears.

Craig Elkins' story is a familiar one in the new music universe. Elkins was a founding member of the band Huffamoose, which played the main stage at Woodstock in 1994, got signed to Interscope Records, cracked Billboard's charts, played on Late Night with Conan O'Brien and garnered some effusive praise from rock impresario and film director Cameron Crowe. But despite the impressive resume, Huffamoose folded. Elkins kept hacking away at songs without his band and found some success getting his music into film and television shows. Now, Elkins is back with a new record called "I Love You" - and it features quirky vocals with a hint of an Elvis Costello vibrato, swaggering groves and roadhouse piano that share space with intimate ballads and enough tongue-in-cheek lyrics to offset some earnestly twangy pedal steel. It's a satisfying musical experience, and although we're not sure he left, we're happy Elkins is back.

HoneyHoney is 4th generation country music. Maybe even 5th or more. Their musical thread goes back to early American rural styles and moves forward through time picking up the best elements of every twist and turn of America's other, twangier indigenous music style until it arrives fully formed in our modern hybridized and decentralized musical universe. At its heart, HoneyHoney is a duo comprised of soulful chanteuse Suzanne Santo and singer/guitarist Ben Jaffe - and their new record, Billy Jack, is the band's 2nd full-length album since their formation in 2008. Sonically, HoneyHoney takes a page from Allison Krauss' pristine bluegrass and scrawls all over it with Santo's smoky alto and Jaffe's gritty guitars and sparse vocal harmonies. The overall effect is what you might imagine Edith Piaf would have sounded like had she been born in an Alabama holler, complete with a moonshine still and ample inspiration for lyrics about the down and out.

Singer/songwriter Ray Argyle and his band, Sunken Ships, have a sort of musical identity crisis. They bill themselves as playing "a darker shade of folk," but it's their disparate influences that wrest for prominence in their sound. Sunken Ships flirts with organic Americana elements - the standard-issue acoustic guitars are here, but there is something else churning just under the surface. The band draws inspiration from folky Brit bands, dark pop and mopey folk and it all has a sheen of sweet musical frosting on top to keep their songs from getting too macabre. All in all, it just works.

Scott Bennett's musical resume reads like no other in the business. There are few aspects of the music industry that he hasn't dabbled in... successfully. He has fronted acclaimed rock bands like A Fine Mess and The Falling Wallendas in his hometown of Chicago. He honed his skills as a first rate multi-instrumentalist on buzzy albums like Liz Phair's "Whitechocolatespaceegg" and The Flaming Lips' "The Soft Bulletin." He has scored for films and TV commercials, where his clients include household names like McDonald's, Disney, Budweiser, Miller, Subway, 7-Up, Gatorade, Kraft and Ford. His songs have been featured in TV shows like "Charmed," "Beverly Hills 90210," "The Bold and the Beautiful," and "The Young and the Restless" - and got himself nominated for an Emmy Award along the way. He even managed to find his way onto Broadway, playing guitar and keyboards for the Pulitzer and Tony award winning Broadway show, "Rent". But it was his work with Beach Boys' mastermind Brian Wilson on the legendary "Smile" albu

Joe Jencks is one of God's own prototypes. He's an award winning, internationally touring, full-time performer and songwriter. He has played venues ranging from intimate house concerts all the way up to New York's Lincoln Center and Carnegie Hall. He has shared stages with Pete Seeger, Utah Phillips, John McCutcheon and countless others. Jencks has seven acclaimed albums under his belt, and another with his new trio, Brother Sun - and he spends hundreds of days a year on the road bringing his earnest and indelible spirit and music to fans old and new. And if that isn't enough, he is also an educator and has devoted his life to social justice and labor causes. If you'd like to know how to build a career in music, listen up. Joe Jencks is the real deal.

Geronimo Getty's scratchy indie-folk plays like the love child of Billy Bragg and John Lee Hooker. Gritty slide guitar wrestles with a perfectly off-kilter fiddle. Loping bass lines snake through the mix between stabs from cracking snare snaps and ramshackle hi-hat flurries. And holding the whole thing together as it careens forward is the band's creative conscience, singer and guitarist Aaron Kyle.

The sound that the three-piece band Countless Thousands makes can only be described as aggressive-uptempo-hard geek-rock. But words don't adequately describe what these guys do with their instruments. They're punk, but refined; loud, but tight; aggressive, but articulate - and they're anything but boring. And maybe this should be expected from a band fronted but a man who has assumed the name "Danger Van Gorder." Throw in a jazz legend and a drum geek with a penchant for Civil War reenactments and you have Countless Thousands.

In some circles, the names Merle, Buck and Gram don't require surnames. They're patron saints of a style of music that continues to inspire countless imitators - and although imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery, Brokedown in Bakersfield is no cheap knock off. Assembled from the cream of the crop of Bay Area musicians, the 6-piece band's set list reads like the whiskey stained jukebox selection of a Nashville honky tonk circa 1972 - and they approach these classic songs with nothing less than reverence. All the key elements are here: two steps, Scully shirts, weepy pedal steel guitar, tear jerking harmonies and snappy Telecaster chicken picking. The band is fronted by the husband and wife duo of Motherhips' frontman Tim Bluhm and Gramblers chanteuse Nicki Bluhm - and the bearded Blum's laconic baritone blends perfectly with his wife's breathy and respectful channeling of Loretta Lynn. Backing them up are Telecaster twanger Scott Law and Lebo, Steve Adams and Dave Brogan from the funky San Francisco

Riffs, snappy songs, raw vocals and post-punk attitude are what the Los Angeles-based band Manhattan Murder Mystery brings to their powerful music. Somewhere between the bottle that singer and guitarist Matt Teardrop turns to for inspiration and the pathos of a hardscrabble life of heartbreak lies the emotional center of the band. They joined us straight from a video shoot for their song, Owen Hart, off their self-titled sophomore record.

Tony Piscotti is an intricate guitarist and inventive songwriter. Not intricate-bad, as in ponderous or pretentious, but intricate-good, because his catchy and facile compositions draw you in. Not one to just strum a G-chord under his lilting melodies, Piscotti isn't afraid to explore alternate tunings on his acoustic guitar in order to establish a song as truly original. But Piscotti is also a seeker, from his beginnings in a successful college rock band, to his astute and beautiful 2003 solo release, Soapbox Parade, and then pushing his own playing by picking up the electric guitar in earnest and providing harmonic texture and a bit of twang in the Chicago-based band, Northern Magnolia.

Andy Creighton gets around, and by that we mean that he plays in a number of buzzy LA bands - among them Apex Manor, Big Search and The Parsons Red Heads. Somehow, he still has time to front his own project called The World Record. Stylistically, The World Record resides somewhere in the neighborhood of the king of the garage rockers, The Kinks. But they aren't derivative of any band in particular. Instead they incorporate elements of pop, rock and indie styles into their confident and infectiously catchy songs.

In the world of crafty pop songwriters, there is a rift between devotees of The Beatles' watershed, Sgt. Pepper's, and those who think that the more innovative album was The Beach Boys' Pet Sounds. Scruffy songsmiths have spent countless hours in bars debating the relative merits of both albums over clove cigarettes and cheap beer. Los Angeles-based singer and songwriter Brandon Schott is evidence that the influence of both albums can peacefully coexist. Schott's fourth album of pop gems, 13 Satellites, arrives in October 2011 - and it is full of clever musical twists and layered harmony vocals. The album was fully produced at his home studio, exemplifying just how much artists can do DIY-style.

Try and imagine a simpler time - a time before on-demand entertainment and endless digital distractions. One might call it a golden age, and legendary singer and actress Monica Lewis was there for all of it. A true Hollywood beauty with bona fide talent, Lewis was known as "America's Singing Sweetheart," and her resume includes turns with more stars than even Carl Sagan might've imagined. She worked with Benny Goodman, Frank Sinatra, Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney. She shared stages with Bob Hope and Jimmy Stewart. She appeared on the very first Ed Sullivan Show. She ran with the likes of Dean Martin, Clint Eastwood, Paul Newman and Ted Kennedy. She dated Ronald Reagan and Kirk Douglas. Yeah, that Ronald Reagan. She lived a life of glamour from New York to Beverly Hills and enchanted people in every town in between. Lewis will join us to shine a light of her own and share stories of a life in the entertainment business that may also be found in her new memoir, "Hollywood Through My Eyes."