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All Ages
GABE LEE
Equal parts classic songwriter and modern-day storyteller, Gabe Lee has built his own bridge between country, folk and rock over the
course of three acclaimed albums. His latest release, The Hometown Kid, finds him distilling those sounds into something sharp and singular, examining his roots as a Nashville native along the way. Released October 28th via Torrez Music Group, The Hometown Kid is a record about arrivals and departures, homes and homecomings, the places we leave and the lessons we carry with us.
A mix of autobiography and richly imaginative character studies, The Hometown Kid finds room for southern piano ballads, amplified rock, intimate folk songs, and gospel rave-ups. The stories themselves are equally diverse. Laced with childhood memories and hometown references, the anthemic "Rusty" unfolds like a love letter from a restless road warrior to the city he's left countless times before. Songs like "Buffalo Road" (named after a country lane that Lee visited often during his teenage years, "just to sneak away with my friends, look at the stars, and be somewhere else") and "Wide Open" continue exploring the push and pull of one's birthplace. "Kinda Man" paints a different picture, with lyrics that detail the hard-won wisdom and half-baked follies of a salt-of-the-earth dishwasher who worked alongside Lee during his days as a bartender. A track that's equal parts country song and southern fable, "Never Rained Again" is a song about taking a rougher road that eventually leads to greener pastures, while the empathetic "Lonely" takes its inspiration from fellow songwriter Justin Townes Earle, who passed away during the lockdown of 2020.
"This album is about departing and returning to your hometown," Lee explains. "More specifically, it's about the discovery, searching, and maturing that comes not only with being gone, but with returning to the place you come from."
Raised by Taiwanese immigrants, Lee grew up surrounded not only by Nashville's rich legacy of country music, but also the classical songs and gospel hymns that his piano-playing mother performed weekly in church. "A lot of my friends' parents were musicians, too," he remembers. "Music was always around me, and it became the driving force for everything I did."
Before he could launch his career as one of Nashville's hometown heroes, though, Lee first needed to leave town. Craving new horizons, he headed to Indiana, where he finished college with degrees in literature and journalism. Living in the Midwest gave him a renewed perspective on his Nashville roots, and when he returned home, he began writing songs that drew upon the narrative skills he'd sharpened as a student. His debut album, 2019's farmland, focused on his timeless melodies and deft delivery, while 2020's Honky Tonk Hell showcased a widescreen version of Lee's countrified sound. The reception was seismic. Rolling Stone praised Honky Tonk Hell as one of the "30 Best Country and Americana Albums of 2020," and Lee found himself sharing shows with Jason Isbell, Los Lobos, and other artists who, like him, embraced the full spectrum of roots music.
Lee recorded The Hometown Kid during his busiest year as a touring musician, finding time between shows to enter Farmland Studio — where he also created his two previous albums — with a band of country pickers and heartland rockers. Together, they laced his songs with electric guitar, upright piano, pedal steel, and fiddle. Most of the songs were tracked live, with Lee — his voice in sharp shape, fine-tuned by a schedule of rapid-fire gigs — delivering the most compelling performances of his career. After several days of recording, he'd inevitably hit the road again, bidding another temporary goodbye to Nashville. No wonder The Hometown Kid is so nuanced with its depiction of the comings and goings of a wandering soul — it was created amidst a backdrop of goodbyes, arrivals, late-night drives, early-morning wake-up calls, and life-affirming shows.
Like a collection of postcards sent from various stops along the road, The Hometown Kid is a snapshot of an artist in motion. It's the soundtrack to a journey that's forever unfolding, with Gabe Lee writing not only about where he's going, but where he's been, too.
WILL OVERMAN
Will Overman is a man coming into focus.
The Virginia-raised singer-songwriter spent the last four years watching his first solo album slide away in the rearview mirror. The life he had when he wrote and recorded The Winemaker’s Daughter is gone. His sophomore effort, Stranger, finds Overman with eyes fixed firmly on the dotted line unspooling ahead of him.
“The album is the most fully realized version of me,” the musician says. That’s evident in the tracks. “Virginia is For Lovers,” an earworm of a single released last year, is peak Overman — nuanced, specific, and catchy as all hell. “Held Up by a Woman,” the most recent single, builds on an acoustic foundation toward a powerful, cathartic, electric release. Meanwhile, the intensely autobiographical “The Bottom” finds Overman wrestling with relatable questions of doubt, life choices, relationships, and mistakes — all without providing easy answers.
Recent converts will find much to explore in Overman’s densely layered tunes. And longtime fans will be happy to hear that Overman’s signature traits — deft storytelling embedded in hooky tunes, anchored by precise lyricism and powerful delivery — are all present and accounted for on Stranger.
But don’t expect Overman to stay in one place, musically or otherwise.
Restless by nature, a traveler with a poet’s eye for mountains but a working man’s taste for road food, Overman’s always on the move. He comes by it naturally.
That’s because Overman spent his formative years as a child of two worlds. Summer surf sessions in Virginia Beach gave way to fall backpacking expeditions in the Blue Ridge Mountains. Rinse, wash, repeat. Sunscreen and fly rods, flip flops and hiking boots. Two different landscapes. Two different soundtracks. Rock and pop where water meets earth, bluegrass and folk where trees meet the sky. Somewhere in between, maybe on the interstate between Virginia’s edges and its heart, that’s where the country music is.
Ask Overman about his influences, and he’s just as likely to say The Killers as the Avett Brothers. So it’s inevitable all those worlds would sonically collide inside Overman’s head. A live performance will probably include a harmonica. But you’ll also get a good old-fashioned rock show. Or is it alt-country? Alternative?
Impossible to say, and that’s just the way Overman likes it. That’s because the versatile singer-songwriter has some road behind him now. Has lived enough life to know it doesn’t matter what you call a thing as long as it does the job. And that’s what Overman’s songs do. Aided by unforgettable vocal delivery, Overman fires each track directly at the heart by way of the ears.
Overman is as hard to pin down as his music, a trait illustrated in the album bookend “Landlocked Heart.”
“He lived out of a bag, will read my epitaph,” the song begins. “Ten years on the road, not much to show but a show. Late nights in a van, I don’t know where I am. Loading in and loading out, I never get to see the town.”
It’s an accurate description of a life Overman’s passionate about — playing live music for a real audience. Between brief stays in Nashville, the musician ceaselessly roams the country, solo and with his band. He’s also toured with acts like Boy Named Banjo, Austin Plaine, Justin Wells, and Jonathan Peyton. Notable headlining gigs include the State Fair of Virginia and Artisphere Music and Arts Festival, while a powerful set at Ocean Fest won new fans.
It’s not easy, but it’s real, and it’s true — things the maturing artist values more than anything else these days.
So yeah, Overman’s coming into focus. But he’s moving too fast to stay there long. And anyway, what’s the point of sitting around?
MASON LIVELY
Austin, TX based Country/Americana artist Mason Lively has a sound that’s simple yet complex, easy-feeling but gritty and weathered, inspiring yet heartbreaking. It’s no stretch to say that there’s a song for every emotion in Mason Lively’s catalog.
Born in Victoria, Texas, but raised just outside of town in the rural community of Inez, Mason grew up in a country music atmosphere. Though he enjoyed and was exposed to many types of music, he would obsessively listen to artists far beyond his years, like Willie Nelson, The Eagles, and Merle Haggard to name a few. Growing up, while also being influenced by Pop, Folk, Soul, Blues, and Classic Rock, Mason started to take interest and study the songwriting of artists from his home state’s music scene. Mason claims that song-writing "snuck up on him" around then.
Years later, with the release of his 2018 debut album “Stronger Ties”, Lively and his band hit the road, touring all over Texas and the regional south, while opening up for Country music’s biggest stars. Lively then released his sophomore self-titled album on March 19th, 2021, Co-produced by Wade Bowen. Songs from that album, including “Love Ain’t Done A Damn Thing”, have accumulated millions of listens and streams. Mason released his 3rd record, “Burn The Ground”, on July 12, 2024. The title track, “Burn The Ground” was also featured in season 2 of the hit show “Landman” on Paramount+.