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Melissa Carper 

Celebrated for her profoundly observational lyrics, her “homespun sensibility,” and a voice that curls like a croon from a gramophone, Melissa Carper plays old school country music that resonates across time and place. Carper’s repertoire weaves together the threads of old-time, bluegrass, western swing, jazz, and blues that all intertwined to form American country music, back in the days before the recording industry drew artificial lines and slapped on race-based genre labels. Veteran Nashville musician Chris Scruggs highlighted Carper’s versatile traditionalism when he dubbed her “HillBillie Holiday,” declaring, “She’s as good as it gets. She has a quality that really transcends time and fashion.” 

Melissa Carper’s childhood in North Platte, Nebraska, was filled with country music. She has fond memories of lying on the living room carpet with her head under the family stereo console, listening to her parents’ beloved Hank Williams and Loretta Lynn albums. From an early age, the Carper siblings sang gospel music together at churches and retirement homes, and when the kids were old enough for instruments, their mother organized them into a country band. Having taken up upright bass in 4th grade, 12-year-old Melissa naturally became the electric bassist. A childhood playing country music until midnight on the circuit of Nebraska’s rural Elks, Eagles, and American Legion halls may have been out of the ordinary, but she reflects that “my parents were dreamers and they believed in all of us and our musical abilities.” Her high school band director, himself a bassist, was another mentor, and with his encouragement, she attended the University of Nebraska at Lincoln on a classical music scholarship. 

Drawn more to gigging and to the jazz and blues recordings she discovered in the university’s library, Carper left school for Eureka Springs, Arkansas. Years of honing her craft as a busker in this cultural hub of the Ozarks deepened her devotion to country music, as did subsequent stints in the music meccas of New Orleans, New York, and her new hometown of Austin, Texas. Melissa Carper’s acclaimed debut solo album, Daddy’s Country Gold (2021), is something of a greatest hits album born of those formative years, and her subsequent recordings Ramblin’ Soul and Borned in Ya proved the staying power of her playful and profound songwriting. 

Deep connections with other artists are essential to Carper’s success–her musical journey includes membership in beloved bands like the Camptown Ladies, Wonder Women of Country, The Carper Family, and Sad Daddy. Musical partnerships were the driving force behind two new 2025 releases, each highlighting not just Carper’s mastery of the genre but her willingness to step into a musical adventure in the company of good friends. First out of the gate are two new singles penned with her new pal Theo Lawrence, a native of Paris (France, not Texas). Released by Warner with hints of more music to come, “All Fifty States” and “Dat Ain’t Right” showcase two great songwriters

exchanging playful banter with catchy, vibrant melodies. Then, just in time for the holidays, a Christmas album drops from Soundly/Thirty Tigers. Inspired by pal Ben Kitterman, who told her his family plays Daddy’s the whole month of December each year, Carper set to work writing. Collaborating with wordsmith Gina Gallina, a buddy since their days busking in New Orleans, A Very Carper Christmas spins out a raft of instant holiday classics recorded with a bevy of friends and, in honor of Melissa’s mother, a very tasty cheeseball. 

Melissa Carper is a musical traditionalist for the modern age. “Melissa’s songs all come from the heart. She don’t blow smoke,” says musical co-conspirator Gallina. Carper’s unassuming yet unapologetic queerness, combined with her experiences wandering and finding a new home in diverse communities, reinforced her innate ability to channel into her songs the beauty, struggles, and humor of everyday life—a key component of the best kinds of country music. This deeply humanitarian impulse also drives her efforts to build the Natural State of Being Farm, a small-home community in Arkansas (The Natural State) designed to combat homelessness and support recovery. It also comes through loud and clear in her riveting stage shows and her growing body of essential country songs. "It's a tricky thing that Carper has done,” declares roots journal No Depression. “[She’s] carefully preserving the sense of romance and immediacy of the old classics. Yet by bringing her own experiences into the canon, she is unearthing a history that includes so many more of us, finally allowed to speak out through memories forgotten due to silence and taboo."

JAIME WYATT

Pitchfork once called me “one of the most exciting and skillful storytellers” working today. It feels weird to write down about myself but I don’t take it lightly, because my life has given me stories I never imagined I’d tell.

I grew up on the West Coast, a kid in boots making up songs before I could write them down. Music carried me through early career highs, brutal lows, addiction, and nearly a year in the Los Angeles County jail. When I wrote my first record, Felony Blues, I was turning survival into song. When I found sobriety, I started to unpeel the layers of myself, my queerness, my gender identity, and my own voice which lead to Neon Cross, a record that opened the door wider than I’d ever allowed before.

My most recent work, Feel Good, is about healing and freedom. I wanted to challenge the boundaries of what country was to me, to bend it around soul, groove, and psyche, while still staying rooted in storytelling. For me, I never want to fit a mold, it’s about making space for outliers, for queer love, for joy, for resilience.

This is the journey I’m on – to heal, to use any means I can to stand up for those I love, live honestly, write fearlessly, and keep singing until all the stories are out of my being. If that speaks to you, you are welcome here. 

Join acclaimed singer-songwriter Hayes Carll and a curated cast of some of his favorite musicians and singers for a holiday-themed evening of music and connection.

VIP available for purchase. Click here to purchase. (Requires a ticket to the show to attend).

Hayes Carll

The country simplicity that imbues Hayes Carll’s songs can sometimes hide the social conscience and sharp humor that also runs through them, but if you want to find those things, they are there. In fact, Carll has spent over 20 years having a conversation about what it is we’re all doing here with anyone who will listen. He makes us laugh––but then he makes us cry. We judge a song’s protagonist, only for Carll to spin us around to commiserate with them.

“I like to tug at heartstrings, find commonality with others, reflect on my own life, and sometimes I do it in a lighthearted way,” says Carll. “A lot of musical styles found their way onto this record, but my first and most formative influences came from country music. This is a country singer-songwriter record. It’s just unapologetically me.”

Carll is talking about You Get It All, his eighth album. His voice, rich but worn, has never sounded better. As a songwriter, he is in top form, turning droll confessions, messy relationships, motel room respites, and an exasperated, hitchhiking God into modern nuggets.

The New York Times likened Carll’s ability to undergird humor with a weightier narrative to Bob Dylan. When Carll talks about the sounds that are in his own head, he mentions Randy Travis. That juxtaposition defines the singularity of Carll’s career: He exists in a space of his own, informed by John Prine, Tom Waits, and Dylan but also by Travis, Kenny Rogers, and Hank Williams, Jr.

Those influences may have made him hard to pigeonhole, but he’s still been embraced. Two Americana Music Awards, a Grammy nomination for Best Country Song, and multiple Austin Music Awards line his resumé́. He’s had the most-played record on Americana radio twice. His songs appear on the screen regularly and have been recorded by Kenny Chesney, Lee Ann Womack, and Brothers Osborne, to name a few.

You Get It All was produced by Allison Moorer and guitar legend Kenny Greenberg. Carll credits his partnership with singer, songwriter, and artist Moorer, his wife, as a force that helps both clarify what he wants and challenge self-imposed limits. “She’s a world-class artist who has a way of helping me articulate my vision,” he says.

Opener “Nice Things” layers a laugh-out-loud narrative exposing humanity’s botched stewardship of Earth––and one another––over vintage country cool. In the song written with the Brothers Osborne, God comes down to check on us––and she is not impressed. “It’s social commentary, but it’s not dour,” Carll says. “I hope the song can make people sing along, laugh a bit, and maybe recognize that we can do better.”

The title track is classic Carll—a front-porch singalong with a deeper message for those who want it. Self-deprecating and sweet, the song is an ode to bringing one’s whole self to a relationship––the good and the bad. “I’m at a point in my life where that rings true to me,” says Carll. “What I want, and what I think a lot of people want, is to feel like they’re getting the real thing.”

“Help Me Remember” is a feat of storytelling that tackles an underrepresented topic in art: dementia from the perspective of the patient. “It’s a visual song. To tell this story, we had to put the listener right there,” Carll says. “I was thinking about how scary and sad it is for the person who is suffering from it, and how heartbreaking and frustrating it is for the friends and family going through it with them.”

Among Carll’s co-writers is singer-songwriter Brandy Clark, who helped him pen and perform “In the Mean Time,” a gorgeous, honky-tonk waltz which perfectly depicts the damage couples can inflict on each other when they’re at their worst. The multi-dimensionality of relationships is a thread woven throughout the entire album. “When we’re our weakest or most afraid, real damage can be done to our relationships, as well as our spirits,” says Carll. “You can love somebody, everything can be as good as you could’ve imagined, but when your traumas or fears come out, all that love can disappear in an instant.”

Rollicking through snarling 80s country guitar licks, “To Keep From Being Found” is an escape to a motel room with a TV on wheels, a bath, and line after delectable line.

Subdued album closer “If It Was Up to Me” aches through a list of wishes that seem frivolous at first but build into a portrait of pain that’s far more complicated. Written with Moorer and Sean McConnell, it’s a gorgeous example of one of Carll’s favorite artistic devices: leading listeners to underestimate a character with whom they’ll ultimately empathize. “The way humor and sadness can work together is powerful,” he says.

Honest and sometimes subversive, but never mean-spirited, Carll keeps writing sad, funny, compelling songs in which nobody’s perfect or predictable––at least not for long. And he can’t quit wishing we’ll all realize that’s the way anything worth having or being has got to go. “I hope this record helps people feel good, laugh a bit, and maybe give them something to lean on when they need it,” he says. “I hope they dance to it, too.”

Join acclaimed singer-songwriter Hayes Carll and a curated cast of some of his favorite musicians and singers for a holiday-themed evening of music and connection.

VIP available for purchase. Click here to purchase. (Requires a ticket to the show to attend).

Hayes Carll

The country simplicity that imbues Hayes Carll’s songs can sometimes hide the social conscience and sharp humor that also runs through them, but if you want to find those things, they are there. In fact, Carll has spent over 20 years having a conversation about what it is we’re all doing here with anyone who will listen. He makes us laugh––but then he makes us cry. We judge a song’s protagonist, only for Carll to spin us around to commiserate with them.

“I like to tug at heartstrings, find commonality with others, reflect on my own life, and sometimes I do it in a lighthearted way,” says Carll. “A lot of musical styles found their way onto this record, but my first and most formative influences came from country music. This is a country singer-songwriter record. It’s just unapologetically me.”

Carll is talking about You Get It All, his eighth album. His voice, rich but worn, has never sounded better. As a songwriter, he is in top form, turning droll confessions, messy relationships, motel room respites, and an exasperated, hitchhiking God into modern nuggets.

The New York Times likened Carll’s ability to undergird humor with a weightier narrative to Bob Dylan. When Carll talks about the sounds that are in his own head, he mentions Randy Travis. That juxtaposition defines the singularity of Carll’s career: He exists in a space of his own, informed by John Prine, Tom Waits, and Dylan but also by Travis, Kenny Rogers, and Hank Williams, Jr.

Those influences may have made him hard to pigeonhole, but he’s still been embraced. Two Americana Music Awards, a Grammy nomination for Best Country Song, and multiple Austin Music Awards line his resumé́. He’s had the most-played record on Americana radio twice. His songs appear on the screen regularly and have been recorded by Kenny Chesney, Lee Ann Womack, and Brothers Osborne, to name a few.

You Get It All was produced by Allison Moorer and guitar legend Kenny Greenberg. Carll credits his partnership with singer, songwriter, and artist Moorer, his wife, as a force that helps both clarify what he wants and challenge self-imposed limits. “She’s a world-class artist who has a way of helping me articulate my vision,” he says.

Opener “Nice Things” layers a laugh-out-loud narrative exposing humanity’s botched stewardship of Earth––and one another––over vintage country cool. In the song written with the Brothers Osborne, God comes down to check on us––and she is not impressed. “It’s social commentary, but it’s not dour,” Carll says. “I hope the song can make people sing along, laugh a bit, and maybe recognize that we can do better.”

The title track is classic Carll—a front-porch singalong with a deeper message for those who want it. Self-deprecating and sweet, the song is an ode to bringing one’s whole self to a relationship––the good and the bad. “I’m at a point in my life where that rings true to me,” says Carll. “What I want, and what I think a lot of people want, is to feel like they’re getting the real thing.”

“Help Me Remember” is a feat of storytelling that tackles an underrepresented topic in art: dementia from the perspective of the patient. “It’s a visual song. To tell this story, we had to put the listener right there,” Carll says. “I was thinking about how scary and sad it is for the person who is suffering from it, and how heartbreaking and frustrating it is for the friends and family going through it with them.”

Among Carll’s co-writers is singer-songwriter Brandy Clark, who helped him pen and perform “In the Mean Time,” a gorgeous, honky-tonk waltz which perfectly depicts the damage couples can inflict on each other when they’re at their worst. The multi-dimensionality of relationships is a thread woven throughout the entire album. “When we’re our weakest or most afraid, real damage can be done to our relationships, as well as our spirits,” says Carll. “You can love somebody, everything can be as good as you could’ve imagined, but when your traumas or fears come out, all that love can disappear in an instant.”

Rollicking through snarling 80s country guitar licks, “To Keep From Being Found” is an escape to a motel room with a TV on wheels, a bath, and line after delectable line.

Subdued album closer “If It Was Up to Me” aches through a list of wishes that seem frivolous at first but build into a portrait of pain that’s far more complicated. Written with Moorer and Sean McConnell, it’s a gorgeous example of one of Carll’s favorite artistic devices: leading listeners to underestimate a character with whom they’ll ultimately empathize. “The way humor and sadness can work together is powerful,” he says.

Honest and sometimes subversive, but never mean-spirited, Carll keeps writing sad, funny, compelling songs in which nobody’s perfect or predictable––at least not for long. And he can’t quit wishing we’ll all realize that’s the way anything worth having or being has got to go. “I hope this record helps people feel good, laugh a bit, and maybe give them something to lean on when they need it,” he says. “I hope they dance to it, too.”