Nashville Blues Society

RAY WYLE HUBBARD:
With a keen eye of observation and a wise man’s knowledge, Ray Wylie Hubbard composes and performs a dozen songs that couldn’t spring from anywhere else but out of his fertile rock and roll bluesy poet-in-the-blistering-heat southern noggin. ”I like to look at both enlightenment and endarkenment,” he declares. “I feel comfortable observing each.” A. Enlightenment B. Endarkenment demonstrates the kind of talent that every great songwriter yearns for. Throughout the album, his focus remains on the song- constructing and performing stories set to music that resonate in a way that is completely his own.

Hubbard recruits an ensemble of accomplished musicians to make the album’s larger than life outlaw tunes echo from track to track. Among the musicians featured on the album are Kevin Russell (The Gourds), Gurf Morlix (Lucinda Williams, Robert Earl Keen), Bukka Allen (Ian Moore, Jack Ingram), Billy Cassis (Bob Schneider,Double Trouble, Soulhat), Ray Bonneville (B.B. King, JJ Cale, Muddy Waters), Seth James (Percy Sledge, Delbert McClinton), David Abeyta (Reckless Kelly) and The Trishas as well as his own son, Lucas Hubbard.

MIKE FARRIS:
In music there are those special artists that seem to transcend genre and defy categorization. From time to time one hears a voice that can stop you dead in your tracks and shake your very foundation to the core. Mike Farris is that artist and he has that voice.

In the early 2000’s after having spent nearly a decade being the front man and main writer for the Screamin’ Cheetah Wheelies, Mike Farris began looking for a new musical direction that blended his love of rock, blues, traditional gospel and soul music. His first solo record, Goodnight Sun, released independently in 2002 had one foot rooted in his musical past but one leaning toward his true “voice.” In June of 2007 he released the critically acclaimed Salvation in Lights which married old time roots gospel sounds with his own unique arrangements that were mainly inspired by New Orleans, Stax and the blues. The music was both spiritual and personal for Mike as it dealt with individual struggle but it also had a commonality that music fans from all walks of life could enjoy. In 2008 he won the Americana Music Association's “New & Emerging Artist of the Year” award and started to make a name for himself (again) as a dynamic performer.