In The Round with Audrey Spillman, Mindy Smith, Maia Sharp & Neilson Hubbard

Audrey Spillman Music Mindy Smith Americana Hailing from Long Island, New York, Mindy Smith started life a little differently from the typical child. When Mindy’s birthmother was physically unable to raise her, she was adopted as an infant by a Christian minister and his wife, whose love of music greatly influenced her life. Smith’s mother, a choir director at the church, lost a long fought battle with breast cancer while Mindy was still a teenager. She eventually followed her father to Knoxville, Tennessee after trying her hand at the conventional route of schooling. However, Mindy was never meant for the common path, and it was in Tennessee where she began listening to Americana and bluegrass music from artists such as Alison Krauss, The Cox Family, John Prine and Patty Griffin. These new found inspirations added to her early love of pop, jazz, alt-rock and classical music. It was this eclectic and diverse recipe of influences that eventually contributed to her own unique sound and songwriting. Never one to take the traditional route, Smith penned her first song a cappella and then taught herself how to play guitar. This led Mindy to first start performing her original songs at open mic nights in Knoxville. At the age of 26, and as a newly self-taught guitarist, she often opted to leave her instrument stage side to sing her sets a cappella. Always an intrepid soul, Mindy set out for Nashville in 1998 with only three hundred dollars in her pocket but a wealth of musical dreams to pursue. After arriving in Nashville, Mindy immediately started putting her name on the various waiting lists of writers’ rounds and open mic nights. When her name was finally called, she seized the opportunity to hone her craft, gained much needed performance experience and welcomed constructive input from other more seasoned singer songwriters. In 1999, Smith signed her first publishing deal and soon learned how to juggle her writing responsibilities and day job while continuing to play the nightly writers’ round circuit. Armed with a clear and honest passion for Americana, jazz, pop, rock, blues, and folk, Mindy Smith first created buzz in the the broader music world in 2003. She was invited to come up with a new arrangement of one of Dolly Parton’s most beloved songs, “Jolene” for the star studded tribute album, Just Because I Am A Woman. Smith charmed music fans with her elegantly pleading rendition of the song and went on to perform the cover with Parton on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. Soon after, Smith signed her first record deal with Vanguard Records, who released her award-winning, critically acclaimed debut album, One Moment More produced by Steve Buckingham. "Come to Jesus" was her biggest commercial hit, receiving airplay on country, adult album alternative and adult contemporary radio. The song charted at No. 32 on the Adult Top 40 chart of Billboard Magazine. In 2004, Smith appeared at the Cambridge Folk Festival in the U. K., which was broadcast nationally on BBC Radio. That same year, Smith was nominated for and won The Americana Music Association’s prestigious, Best Emerging Artist of the Year award. In 2006, Smith released "Out Loud," the first single from her second album, Long Island Shores co- produced by Smith, Lex Price, Steve Buckingham, and Roger Moutenot. The song was well received by AAA rock radio and Country Music Television. In January 2007, she performed "Please Stay" on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. Later that year, Smith released her first full length Christmas album, My Holiday that featured the elegant harmonies of Alison Krauss, on the lesser known melodic arrangement of “Away In A Manger”. Smith wrote five original songs for the critically acclaimed album, including the title track, “My Holiday”, a dreamy duet with Thad Cockrell, ”I Know the Reason" and “Santa Will Find You’ with country songstress, Chely Wright. In August 2009, Smith released her alt country, pop leaning fourth studio album, Stupid Love co-produced by Ian Fitchuk, and Justin Loucks. She appeared on The Early Show to perform the first single, "Highs and Lows". Vince Gill and Amy Grant, appeared as featured vocalists. After recording four albums for Vanguard, Mindy Smith struck out on her own for her self-titled 2012 release through her own Giant Leap label in conjunction with TVX Records. The album debuted at #2 on the iTunes Singer Songwriter Chart. Smith subsequently released her second, critically acclaimed Christmas collection, Snowed In EP in 2013 to rave reviews. In addition to releasing five, full-length studio albums, a Christmas EP, and numerous singles, Smith has also performed alongside the likes of Emmylou Harris, Alison Krauss, John Prine and Mary Chapin Carpenter. Smith’s original songs such as, “If I Didn’t Know Any Better, “All His Saints”, and “Come To Jesus”, have been recorded and released by Alison Krauss, Lee Ann Womack, Faith Hill, Gaither Vocal Band and many more. Maia Sharp Singer-Songwriter Maia Sharp returns with Mercy Rising, her boldest, most confessional offering to date. After living in the Los Angeles metro area for most of her life, Maia moved to Nashville at the beginning of 2019, partly to be in an unapologetically songwriter centric town and partly as a personal life reboot. She reflects, “In the last 2 years, just about everything that could have changed has changed and it feels now like those long walks outside of all of my comfort zones were heading toward this album.” Maia has always managed to play all sides of the songwriting field. She has had her songs recorded by Bonnie Raitt, The Chicks, Trisha Yearwood, Keb’ Mo’, Cher, Edwin McCain, Terri Clark, David Wilcox, Art Garfunkel, Lizz Wright, Paul Carrack, Lisa Loeb and more. She produced Edwin McCain's album Mercy Bound (429 Records) and two songs for Art Garfunkel's retrospective double album The Singer (Sony) . And through it all, Maia has continued to record her own albums. She has eight solo releases (on Ark 21, Concord, KOCH, eOne, Blix Street and Crooked Crown respectively) , a collaborative project with Art Garfunkel and Buddy Mondlock Everything Waits to be Noticed (EMI Manhattan) and a duo project called Roscoe & Etta with writing/production partner Anna Schulze. Each release has led to extensive touring throughout the US and UK and appearances on Mountain Stage, Acoustic Cafe, World Cafe, NPR's "All Things Considered," CBS Early Morning and the Today Show to name a few. Maia is also an adjunct professor at NYU for the Summer Songwriter Workshop and she has been writing for Songwriting with Soldiers since 2017 where active duty service members, veterans and/or their family members are paired with professional songwriters to share their experience and turn it into a song. Her new album, Mercy Rising, is out now to critical acclaim and features co-writes and guest appearances by Mindy Smith, Gabe Dixon, Noah Guthrie and P. J. Pacifico. Neilson Hubbard Americana These are the words that open Digging Up The Scars, Neilson Hubbard’s new album. Hubbard has been making beautiful music for decades, as a member of Strays Don’t Sleep (with Matthew Ryan) , The Orphan Brigade (with co producer Ben Glover) , as a solo artist, and as one of Nashville’s most renowned producers. But with Scars, Hubbard has reached an apex of his art, epic and intimate, symphonic and simple, the record is a pleading question to a lover and the universe at the same time, asking “What do I believe in? What do you believe in? What do we believe in?” It’s a rare artist that can ask such synchronous questions of simplicity and grandeur in an album based on soft acoustic guitar and pedal steel under a sweeping orchestration of strings and still keep the songs direct and personal. Nobody is making records like this anymore. Scars contains songs that touch on fierce love and loyalty to beliefs and time. As a songwriter, Hubbard has always been concise and descriptive, illuminating specific details wrapped around epic choruses that ask the big questions, direct pleas to both the Divine and mortals: “Where you been,” “will you wait for me?” But with Digging Up The Scars, Hubbard has taken on a symphonic fabric that underlies and elevates the drive of each song. The second track, “Where You Been” begins simply with acoustic guitar and lap steel and builds to an incredible sweep of orchestra with the violins and cellos driving into parts that chop at the urgency of the chorus’ pleading question. This is a record that takes on a layer of new meaning in this specific time in our history. Also new to Hubbard’s sound is the addition of Juan Solorzano’s lap steel, which is undoubtedly the supporting actor to Hubbard’s soft understated vocals. Adding a ghostly atmosphere underneath the constant rhythm of skin on strings, the lap steel lifts each song to the stars, hanging over the listener as a comforting voice of unity and communion, asking each of us to question our place in the universe. Hubbard’s art, whether as a solo songwriter or as a producer has always done that: reached to join parts to a greater whole. Authenticity is an overused word, but Hubbard embodies this in all of his art. In 2019, Hubbard produced the Grammy nominated Rifles and Rosary Beads by Mary Gauthier. He has always been a deft director of sound. Hubbard’s production specializes in staying true to the song and he chooses a small ensemble of players that are as spontaneous and loyal to beauty and space as he is. Recently moving into photography and film, Hubbard directed the documentary and produced the soundtrack of The Orphan Brigade: Soundtrack to a Ghost Story which won a number of awards and birthed the band The Orphan Brigade (Hubbard, Joshua Britt and Ben Glover) . With Joshua Britt, through their company Neighborhoods Apart, he directs and produces music videos and has worked with John Prine, Jason Isbell, Lucinda Williams and The Blind Boys of Alabama as well as a host of artists without household names. And as a songwriter, his work has been featured in Grey’s Anatomy, One Tree Hill and Private Practice as well as several films. And his photography captures the stark and gorgeous reality of each subject, unadorned and genuine. One of Hubbard’s greatest gifts in his songs and his vocal delivery is the simple humility which he employs like a whisper. In an era of flaunt and flourish, Hubbard stays simple and true. The song, “The End of the Road,” is an instant classic, a Tom Waits promise “They’ll tear it out when we’re gone “Does any of this really matter,” he asks in “Our DNA” a song to his young son. Digging Up The Scars is a passing down of all that Neilson Hubbard believes in -fierce allegiance to honor.