WILKESBORO, N.C. (Press Release) – The Austin Stage was packed for MerleFest 2016’s 24th Annual Chris Austin Songwriting Contest. Writers of the following 12 songs were selected from 744 entries and competed on the Austin Stage at MerleFest on Friday, April 29.
 
MerleFest congratulates the 2016 winners:
 
Bluegrass
1st Place - Aaron Bibelhauser (Louisville, Ky.) – “Blue Collar Dreams”
2nd Place - Courtney Rorrer (Madison, N.C.) and Asa Gravley (Beckley, West Va.) – “Midnight Tears”
3rd Place - Cindy Giejda (Farmingdale, N.J.) – “Jail Break”
 
Gospel/Inspirational
1st Place - Marcy Each (Cedar Rapids, Iowa) – “On the Cross Built for Me”
2nd Place - Austin Stanley (Nashville, Tenn.) – “The Face of God”
3rd Place - Corey Smith and Allen Smith (Fayetteville, N.C.) – “The Road”

“Absolutely one-of-a-kind… a powerhouse of emotion, grit and wit… the savior of country music?” – The Bluegrass Situation

(Press Release) You walk into a western saloon. Doors creak, the bartender glares at you, and windows are covered in dust kicked up by the wind. But the band in the corner is utterly spectacular, the best you’ve heard. In that David Lynch meets Quentin Tarantino setting, there’s only one band that could possibly live up and it is led by a western Canadian man named Petunia. Petunia & The Vipers are a crack band that take rockabilly, western swing, surf, honky tonk, gypsy jazz, and film noir music, and wrap it up with a beat-poetry and punk-attitude twist. Their new album Dead Bird on the Highway is their most eclectic to date. In support of the new album, out May 20th, the band has announced a west coast tour hitting Washington, Oregon and California. See dates after the jump.

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (Friday, April 29, 2016 PR) – The culmination of two years of songwriting and 300 songs in his catalog, Eric Dodd has cherry-picked “Outskirts” as the feature track out on iTunes today.  From Lake Oconee, GA, Dodd’s worked with his former high school bandmate Jesse Triplett, who now plays lead guitar for Collective Soul, on his forthcoming debut EP due out in June.  “Outskirts,” written my Dodd, Thomas Archer and Bruce Wallace, is destined to become a great addition to everyone’s summer playlist.  “Outskirts” is available for purchase here. 

 “We wrote ‘Outskirts’ about escaping the daily grind in the city and getting out to the peace and quiet - away from the noise and all distractions.  We are just good people that work hard and like to have a good time.  Sure, we like to let out it all hang out from time to time and blow off some steam, but who doesn't?  We just happen to like to do it in the country where we can get loud.  In this instance, the idea came from all of us just kind of wanting to get back home.  I think we had all been in Nashville for like two months straight without leaving and just said let's write one about just ditching everything we have going and get way out deep in the country with all of our buddies and where no one else can find us,” says the singer/songwriter. 
 
Website || http://ericdoddmusic.com/
Facebook || facebook.com/EricDoddMusic
Twitter || twitter.com/EricDoddMusic
Instagram || instagram.com/EricDoddMusic

(Press Release)SHEL has premiered their new song "Is The Doctor In Today", the lead track from their upcoming album Just Crazy Enough. The track is currently streaming on Clash, who praises the Nashville group's "wide-ranging originality" and acclaims the track as a "bold, brash, and inventive offering."
 
Listen: SHEL - "Is The Doctor In Today"
https://soundcloud.com/morainemusic/is-the-doctor-in-today/s-V1pkX
 
The Group's recent video for their haunting cover of Metallica's "Enter Sandman" has been turning heads online since it's debut on Nerdist, who wrote that SHEL has "created the platonic ideal of one of the metal group’s classic numbers ...The audio-visual subtlety of this track makes for an extremely unique cover that hits a totally different chord of terror than the original." The video has since been featured on outlets such as The Atlantic, Guitar World, Inquisitr, Loudwire, Team Rock, and many more. SHEL previously released a video for their song "Rooftop", which premiered with Baeble Music.

Nashville singer-songwriter Jerry Castle is set to release his new album Not So Soft Landing June 24th. The 10-song set was recorded in East Nashville and Topanga, CA and was produced by the Grammy Award-winning producer Chad Brown (Ryan Adams, Hayes Carll) and mixed by 3-time Grammy-winning engineer and producer Warren Riker (Wyclef Jean, Down, Common).  Magnet Magazine has premiered the Stacie Huckeba directed video for the first single “Ride,” which can be seen HERE.
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While his previous albums presented an Americana troubadour writing songs about hard living, heartbreak and desperately trying to turn things around, the songs found on Not So Soft Landing are a marked departure from his previous rootsy sound.  A much more ethereal, atmospheric, and at times psychedelic effort, Jerry credits much of his recent inspiration to time spent in sensory deprivation float tanks.  Castle says, “I started floating simply as a means of trying to improve my meditation technique, not to change my songwriting.  When you float, it’s easier to go into the theta state, which is the meditative state.”  He adds, “It’s like floating in outer space and there really is nothing like it.  The more I floated, the more it made me feel like I was more connected to the cosmos.  It definitely has opened me up as a songwriter and gave me a whole set of senses to observe and then use in my creative process.”