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Rachele Lynae “Party ‘Til The Cows Come Home”

With a voice as bold, expansive and deeply hued as the Alaskan sky that blanketed her childhood, Rachele Lynae is an impressive new artist whose talent, drive and creative range are quickly distinguishing her from other country newcomers.

Possessing a voice and personality that leap through the speakers and command attention, Rachele makes her national debut with “Party ‘Til the Cows Come Home,” a rollicking party anthem that showcases her strong, supple vocals and inimitable style. The burgeoning hit is supported with a video shot by award-winning director Trey Fanjoy that shines a spotlight on Rachele’s self-assured performance skills and natural charisma in front of the camera.
Rachele admits her style is a fusion of her favorite sounds. “Obviously I’m a country rocker,” the 24-year-old says with a broad smile. “And I have a little bit of a bluesy voice so there’s a soulful thing that peeks its head out occasionally. Stylistically a lot of my songs are fun, sassy and empowering.”

Her voice reverberates with an emotional intensity reminiscent of Martina McBride’s best work, yet she’s also drawn comparisons to Jason Aldean because of her gutsy, go-for-broke style and high octane live performances. Off stage, she has a sweet girl next door quality that endears her to fans, yet on stage she unleashes her passion for music and gives audiences a performance they can’t forget.

Rachele knew at an early age that she wanted to pursue a career in music and she wasn’t shy about stating her ambitions. “I always wanted to sing country music,” says the petite brunette, whose father is a commercial fisherman. “When I was 10, I remember sitting in my dad’s truck and saying, ‘Dad, we don’t have a lot of time. LeAnn Rimes was 13 when she released “Blue.” We don’t have time! We have to get on this!’”

By the time she was 10-years-old, Rachele had already been singing in church for five years and admits her identity as an artist has been shaped by her Alaskan upbringing. “There are a lot of really creative people in Kodiak because it’s such a different scene,” she says. “Alaska is full of all types of people. There are a lot of artists that paint or draw, and there are a lot of writers because people are inspired by the beauty. There wasn’t much of a professional music scene, but it was a good place to foster creativity. I grew up with that uninhabited space to be creative and grow my artistry.”

She began writing songs when she was 12-years-old, and by the time she was 17, she had hit the road and began gaining a reputation as a riveting live performer. “I was traveling and doing concerts up and down the west coast,” she says. “It was wonderful, a huge experience.”Rachele moved to Nashville to attend Belmont University, the prestigious school that groomed such country notables as Josh Turner, Trisha Yearwood and Brad Paisley. Like many of the artists currently reigning on the country charts, Rachele honed her skills performing at some of Nashville’s famed honky tonks, including Tootsie’s Orchid Lounge. At the end of her senior year, she recorded a five-song EP that she shared with musician/manager, Jimmy Murphy. He was so impressed with her voice and the caliber of her songwriting that he shared Rachele’s music with his daughter, Jamie O’Neal. Known for such hits as “There Is No Arizona” and “When I Think About Angels,” O’Neal is a gifted singer/songwriter who has added producer to her resume in recent years. Jamie and Rachele immediately connected and began working on the young artist’s new project.
“It’s been awesome,” Rachele says of working with O’Neal. “When I first came to her studio, I was so excited to be working with Jamie. I was a little intimidated at first, but she put me at ease the moment we met. We both like to belt it out, so musically, we connected immediately. She’s been a big influence on me as a vocalist and I couldn’t be more thrilled about the music we’re making together.”

Working with O’Neal, Rachele has crafted an impressive collection that showcases her depth and diversity as an artist. “Party ‘Til the Cows Come Home” is an all out party anthem that makes it impossible to sit still. Rachele penned the energetic romp with O’Neal, Murphy and hit Nashville tunesmith Stephanie Bentley whose credits include the Faith Hill smash “Breathe.”
Rachele, Murphy and O’Neal also teamed up to write the feisty anthem “Scar” with a lyric that is quick to tell an unworthy suitor exactly what he’s become—just a scar. “I don’t want to ever, in my music, make someone feel like they are the victim,” the strong-willed young entertainer explains. “Sometimes we are victimized, but I don’t want to ever put myself in a victim role. I want to put myself in a place of saying, ‘Okay you’ve done me wrong, but I’m fine. I’m going to move on.’ ‘Scar’ is an example of that.”

Whether she’s singing about healing, moving on or just having fun on a Saturday night, Rachele Lynae is an accomplished songwriter who knows how to bring emotional punch to any topic. Though she loves performing up tempo songs, she doesn’t shy away from exploring life’s more difficult moments. “I write what I know,” she says, “so my songs are going to reflect something that I’m going through or I have gone through or that one of my closest friends has gone through. It’s close enough so that I can feel it.”

Rachele also has a gift for taking people on the journey with her during her live performances. “On stage you get to go up there and live the songs,” she says. “It transcends you to a whole other place, and you get to take your audience with you. It’s almost like each song is its own little world, and you are inviting everyone to the party. It’s so cool to be able to go completely into that moment in a song. I love it!”

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Sonia Leigh “Bar” Dr. Mango Green Remix

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Loretta Lynn certainly didn’t know she was seeing a future opening act when she spotted a five-year-old girl in the crowd at an Alabama concert. As the story goes, during a quiet moment the enraptured child exclaimed, “now that’s country, dad!” The crowd stirred and the coal miner’s daughter herself spotted little Sonia Leigh, then bowed and waved, laughing, before moving on to the next song.
But nearly 30 years later, that little girl opened for Lynn, winning over audiences with her gritty vocal delivery and bold, disarmingly honest songwriting. Between her childhood concerts and her rising career today as a Southern troubadour were many hard days, battle scars and dues paid. Sonia Leigh has earned every bit of soulful, lived-in authenticity her songs and performances portray. At the same time, an amazing chain of events—and a long list of friends and supporters—has put her on the cusp of even bigger success.

“I’m nothing without all the people who have been there for me,” Leigh notes. “I’ve got keys to just about everybody’s apartment in Atlanta because I’ve slept on everybody’s couch. But I’ve kept at it, because I really do truly feel that this was the calling on my life. I always knew this was what I wanted to do.”

That sense of destiny has always been important for Leigh. She left home at age 17 to pursue her dream. “When I left home I had fifty bucks, a garbage bag full of clothes and my guitar,” she recalls. “And that’s it.”

Determined to make it on her own, the teenager took three jobs—despite not owning a car. And determined to make it musically, she joined a band, which fortunately practiced right across the street from where she worked. Nothing has been handed to Sonia Leigh. Shortly after that memorable Loretta Lynn concert, her parents divorced, and she spent her childhood being passed back and forth between her father and mother. Later Leigh moved frequently with her dad as he took various jobs across the south and Midwest. Leaving home was just another uphill battle in a young life full of them.

“My life wasn’t the easiest, but it made me who I am today and a stronger person,” Leigh observes. “If I hadn’t left home and endured the things I did once I left home, I wouldn’t have written the songs I’ve written.”

Oh yes, about those songs. The songs on 1978 December, Leigh’s Southern Ground debut, range from the boozy barroom sing-along of “Bar”—a throwback redolent of the less well-behaved Nashville of yesteryear—to the soulful Muscle Shoals shuffle of “I Just Might,” the acoustic groove of “Virginia” (featuring Amy Ray of the Indigo Girls) and the keenly observed country-rockin’ “My Name Is Money.” Categorization is futile. Is it country, blues, soul or rock? The answer is yes. Is it southern? Add an exclamation point to the prior answer.

In this Leigh has a lot in common with one of her mentors, Zac Brown, who recently signed her to his Southern Ground Artists label. While he’s now a country chart-topper, at one point many thought Brown was going in too many directions to be successful. But Leigh believed. And she was taking notes every step of the way.

“I was watching what Zac was doing and I loved his music,” she says. “So if he was playing and he wanted me to play, I was there. And even if I wasn’t playing, I would go. Usually he would get me up on stage anyway. That’s just him.”

Leigh has been a part of Brown’s musical family for seven years now, having met the singer/songwriter in Atlanta musical circles. Brown’s right-hand man John Hopkins served as producer for Leigh’s independent outing Run or Surrender. Like everything else she’s done 1978 December is the sound of Leigh expressing her soul. It’s not calculated, focus-grouped or target-marketed. In fact, Leigh wouldn’t have the slightest clue how to do that. “It’s hard for me to just sit down and write and try to write a hit,” she says. “That’s just not me as a writer. I write about what’s happening and what I see.”

That’s something Leigh has been doing from childhood. Blessed with a musical family she picked up her dad’s guitar almost as soon as she could hold it without help.

“When I was 10 I really started being serious and asking him to show me chords, so I’d come home every day and practice after school and use his guitar,” she recalls. “Finally he saw I was getting good and he was actually tired of me using his guitar… because I’d be playing and he’d be wanting to play. So that’s when I got my own guitar. Then I started writing—I was writing songs as soon as I could make chords—lyrics and everything.”

At age 14, a song she’d written for a friend led to a chance encounter with a major-label producer—which, at age 17, turned into a management deal. And though that was now half a lifetime ago for the indefatigable performer, Leigh has taken encouragement from each connection and from each hard-fought rung up the ladder.

For her, it all comes together on “Ain’t Dead Yet,” 1978 December’s lead track, which delves into the influence her musical peer, blues artist Sean Costello, had and continues to have on her, even after his unexpected passing. The entire Atlanta musical community mourned the loss of such a promising young artist, but few more than Leigh, who still visits his grave regularly to hold one-sided conversations. “When he died I pretty much made a vow that I was gonna keep this going for both of us,” she says. “That’s basically that. I’m not dead yet, so let’s go out there and do it.”
Band Interests
Singing, Writing, Touring, Playing, Hula Hoop Contests, Singalongs and Fun.
Artists We Also Like
Beth Hart, Michelle Malone, Zac Brown Band, The Wheeler Boys, Nic Cowan, Janis Joplin, Sean Costello, Johnny Cash, Band of Heathens, Meiko, Sally Jaye, Jay Nash, The Kooks, The Whigs, The Bravery, Marshall Tucker Band
Basic Info
Joined Facebook 08/18/2009
Genre Country/Southern Rock/Americana
Members Sonia Leigh – Guitar and Vocal
Hometown Atlanta, Georgia
Record Label Southern Ground Records
Influences Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, Bruce Springsteen, Janis Joplin, Jackson Browne, Sean Costello, Melissa Etheridge, The Indigo Girls
Current Location Atlanta, Georgia
Contact Info
Website http://www.sonialeigh.com
http://www.twitter.com/sonialeigh
http://www.myspace.com/sonialeigh

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Jason Sturgeon “Time Bomb”

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Tim Culpepper “Ghost”

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Imagine tuning into your local radio station to discover what sounds like a handful of your favorite country legends singing together on one single song. You’ve never heard this song before, and yet, you can’t help but feel as though you could almost sing along. Then, just as this new sound begins to feel like a comfortable, old pair of jeans or boots, the DJ interrupts with “Ladies and Gentlemen… that was the new single by Nashville recording artist, Tim Culpepper!”

It’s at this very moment you realize that you’ve just discovered honest-to-goodness real Country Music again! And that feeling, of hearing multiple country legends together on one song, is simply the answer to the question George Jones posed in his 1986 hit, “Who’s Gonna Fill Their Shoes?”

With hints of Randy Travis, Keith Whitley, Gene Watson, and George Jones, it only takes one listen to know who influenced Culpepper’s smokey, honkytonk, brand of vocals. What you need to know is… he’s no accident. In fact, you might say it’s in his blood…

Tim’s journey began as kind of a love story, with the marriage of his Mother Judy, to his father, country entertainer/musician, Forrest Culpepper, or “Curly”, as he had come to be known by those who frequented the honkytonk scene in and around Montgomery, Alabama. The birth of Tim, soon after, would complete an already accomplished family of singers and musicians that, at the time, included such close friends as Hank Williams, Sr. (who had passed, before Tim’s birth), and Marty Robbins.

While most children began life experiencing a mostly subdued environment, young Culpepper was backstage with the likes of Hank, Jr., Marty and Johnny Cash, or in the audience with his Mother, while his father was performing. On one occasion, while sharing stories of her son’s early childhood, Judy fondly recalled one particular night during a Hank Jr. performance, when songwriter and manager, Merle Kilgore, was charged with babysitting Tim while she got up to 2 step, “It wasn’t the ‘Brady Bunch!’” she laughs. “But we sure were a family!”

By age 9, anxious to take part in the “family business”, Tim approached his Father, holding an over-sized Epiphone guitar, asking for his first lesson. Having earlier traded the stage, for more stable work, as an over-the-road trucker, his Father agreed to teach his son with ONE condition- Tim had to promise that when ready, he would take his gift to Nashville. Curly did not want his son to waste his talent in the bars of Montgomery. In his opinion, the serious musician needs to be where things were happening…

After high school, where Tim spent early evenings playing football, and late nights performing at any local venue his Mother could talk into allowing the under-aged singer to enter, Tim kept his word and made his way to Nashville.

He would eventually be discovered by Nashville based Honkytone Records, managed by songwriter/producer, Elbert West, while performing in the famed honkytonks of lower Broadway.

Under the guidance of West, Tim would spend the following two years, honing his craft, while writing his first album, “Pourin’ Whiskey On Pain”. The title cut, having been the self-penned song that sparked West’s interest, would now represent the body of work that would launch his career as an Artist.

With the recent release of his first single and video, “Ghost”, Tim continues the process of bringing full circle, a journey that began as a simple honkytonk love story under the neon lights of Montgomery, Alabama.

So yes, you might say that country music is in his blood…But upon closer inspection, you might also agree that Tim Culpepper, as one of a rare breed of singer/songwriter Artists, is the lifeblood of Country Music…

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Dustin Lynch “Cowboys and Angels”

A Tennessee native — he grew up about an hour south of Nashville — Dustin Lynch is no stranger to the ways of Music City. Discovering Nashville’s songwriting haven the Bluebird Café is what got him started, while performers like Garth Brooks and Alan Jackson inspired his style. With an authoritative voice and a stoic demeanor, he’s making a strong first impression with “Cowboys and Angels,” his debut single from Broken Bow records. Viewers recently voted it up to No. 7 on CMT Pure’s 12-Pack Countdown, while radio listeners have run it up to No. 37 on the country songs chart.

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Colton James “Date With Dixie”

“I do it for the love of my family, for the love of my friends, for the love of my country, but mostly for the love of God. Without God, I wouldn’t be here.”

If this doesn’t sum up the roots of a down-to-earth country boy like Colton James, nothing will.

Colton’s country roots run deep, and were developed at a young age. What started as a truck ride to the fishing hole became a lifestyle. In the front seat of his father’s truck, Colton was treated to legends like George Jones, Keith Whitley, George Strait, and Merle Haggard. Both of his grandmothers played piano and organ, and his singing pipes come from his mother. “She has a beautiful voice and always sang with happiness, heart, and sincerity in church,” Colton recalls.

Over the years, Colton has perfected his songwriting and guitar playing skills resulting in opening for Toby Keith, Mark Chestnut, Chris Cagle, Joe Nichols, the Dixie Chicks, Lonestar, Keith Anderson, and Trick Pony. His most memorable performance was when he opened for Jason Aldean at Little Creek Amphibious Base, because it was here that 16,000 fans heard him play “Brave Men,” a powerful tribute to American troops. Colton’s moving lyrics earned him a standing ovation that night. “These men and women do something incredible for us. They deserve being recognized for the sacrifice they make and this is my small way of letting them know how much we appreciate them.”

Colton’s passion to help his country and community doesn’t stop with the military. He also shows his support for families, and victims battling cancer. Colton was given a flyer for a benefit put on by Kelly McCann, the manager of Towne Bank, for a local resident named Diane Stokle who was battling breast cancer. After hearing her story Colton put himself in her family’s shoes and imagined what he would do if it was his wife, mother, grandmother, or children battling the disease. Being the family man and husband he is, Colton, “felt compelled to do something about it.” Colton sat down with renowned songwriter and founder of NSAI (Nashville Songwriters Association International) and within an hour wrote “What Keeps Her Strong.” Colton says, “It was a gift from God that I awakened that night with the idea of ‘What Keeps Her Strong.’” Colton had the opportunity to sing the song to Diane before she passed away in May 2009. He remembers her smiling and not letting her battle keep her from living life to the fullest. Colton has been blessed with the opportunity to sing “What Keeps Her Strong” during The Race for the Cure, and for the Susan G. Komen Foundation.

Colton is currently working with producer Steve Sturm (best known for working with Travis Tritt for 12 years) on his new album that will feature “Brave Men” and “What Keeps Her Strong.” His motto of “101 Proof Country,” is reflected in his country roots, strong sense of family, and his infectious ability to make everyone around him have a good time.

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