Wes Collins

I could say I got a late start at songwriting, but it’s more accurate to say I pined after it for years but was terrified to write bad songs. But in 2004 my brilliant wife Anita pinned me down over coffee with something more than a suggestion: “hey, I’m about to be 40, and you’re almost 44. I want to write short stories, and you clearly want to write songs. Let’s promise each other to make a serious effort at writing.” I said “sure, let’s see what we get,” hoping Anita wouldn’t call my bluff. But not a month later she read me a page of brilliant prose. Her brilliant prose. Uh oh. I was way more afraid to lose Anita’s respect than I was to confirm that I couldn’t write so I convinced my judgy internal editor to take an hour off (“my marriage is at stake, man!”). And in that hour I got a good start on a decent song.

This opened up a dimension of respect and trust I’d never dared to hope for. Anita and I were always the first (“is this a thing?”) and last (“can you proofread this one more time?”) to see each other’s stories and songs, and we urged each other on without (much) jealousy.

Anita submitted her short stories to contests and literary magazines, and I started hitting open mics and song circles. Anita won some prestigious awards and was published in the North Carolina Literary Review and elsewhere. In the meantime local Chapel Hill hero Danny Gotham suggested I send a couple of my songs to the Kerrville Folk Festival’s Grassy Hill Songwriting Competition. Hey, it was only thirty bucks, so sure (my world tends to turn on the word “sure,” so you’d think I’d learn to say it more often).

The Kerrville Folk Festival exposed me to blinding talent and introduced me to some of my best friends (the Venn diagram of those two categories is almost a circle). It pulled me toward songwriting and away from any other vocation, so with Anita’s encouragement I retired from library work and declared myself a professional performing songwriter in April 2022. I aimed myself at the road, determined to figure it out as it went along, and Anita made serious inroads on an ambitious writing project.

If you know Anita or me, you are dreading this next part. Anita was diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer in July 2022, and we resolved to live Anita’s best life for as long as we had left. And that time proved to be cruelly short.

So, half of 2022 and all of 2023 is a cigarette burn with glowing edges I can’t touch. We lost Anita right before Christmas.

In the early months of 2024, I focused on the house (money stuff, plumbing emergencies, any wobbling pot lid that needed attention). This looked a lot like sitting at the kitchen table on hold and writing case numbers down in a notebook, because that’s what it was. But it was something useful I could do.

To my numb surprise, songs started creeping into the margins, and they eventually got loud enough to demand a notebook of their own. These songs got me closer to the truth than I could manage in a journal, but they also felt like real songs. So I shared them with some trusted artist friends, who encouraged me to play them in public (the last stage of my songwriting process). I worried these new songs would be too bleak, but I’m told black goes with everything. So I gathered a batch of songs dating from 2021 up to the present, and I think they make a very good record.

Learn more at https://wescollins.com/

Gayheart Freeman Band

Willard Gayheart was born in 1932, in eastern Kentucky in the tiny mountain community of Cordia, not far out of Hazard. His was a rugged and modest upbringing in Depression-era Appalachia. At age 12, Willard was given the job of starting the fires each morning in each of the four potbelly stoves at his school. He had his teacher, Ms. Sloan, save the money he earned and slowly accumulated $3.00, enough to buy a used Montgomery Ward parlor-sized guitar. He spent the summer practicing and got to where he could accompany himself singing, and would perform as a duo with his friend, Elmer Ray Combs, for school functions.

Willard went on to Berea College in Kentucky, but left to join the Air Force during the Korean War, where he served as a cryptographer until his discharge in 1955. He returned to Berea after his time in the service and enrolled in an English composition class with a professor named Ms. Faulkner who encouraged Willard to “write about what you know, in your own voice.” This lesson greatly contributed to his eventual path as an artist and songwriter.

In 1962, Willard and his wife Pat moved with their first child to Galax, Virginia, and it was there that he found his musical home. Willard and his friend, three-finger-style-banjo player Jimmy Zeh, joined James Lindsey and the Mountain Ramblers, who, after shifting some members over the years, would become one of Galax’s longest running bands. In 1970, Willard formed The Highlanders, which recorded 3 albums for Bobby Patterson’s Heritage Records.

Willard retired in the mid-1990s, and turned his focus to his budding career as a pencil artist. These days, he can be found picking with his son-in-law, Scott Freeman, and beloved granddaughter, Dori Freeman, most Friday nights at his frame shop. Already a brilliant songwriter and performer in her early twenties, Dori’s first two solo releases, her self-titled debut and the follow-up Letters Never Read, have taken the Americana world by storm. “Just a natural talent. I’m so proud of her,” Willard beams. With Dori’s encouragement, Willard has produced his first CD, at the age of 84. Willard joins Dori, Scott, and Dori’s husband, Nick Falk, for his debut performance at the 2019 Richmond Folk Festival.

Learn more at https://glidemagazine.com/226547/willard-gayheart-keeps-the-musical-mountain-spirit-of-appalachia-alive-interview/

Hiroya Tsukamoto

“The fingerpicking is delicate, fluid, and beautifully detailed” -Acoustic Guitar Magazine

Hiroya is a one-of-a-kind composer, guitarist and singer-songwriter from Kyoto, Japan. He began playing the five-string banjo when he was thirteen, and took up the guitar shortly after. In 2000, Hiroya received a scholarship to Berklee College of Music and came to the United States. He formed his own group in Boston “INTEROCEANICO (inter-oceanic)” which consists of unique musicians from different continents including Latin Grammy Colombian singer Marta Gomez. The group released three acclaimed records (“The Other Side of the World”, “Confluencia” and “Where the River Shines”). Hiroya has released five solo albums.

Hiroya has been leading concerts internationally including several appearances at Blue Note(NYC), United Nations and Japanese National Television(NHK). Hiroya is a two time 2nd place winner of International Fingerstyle Guitar Championship in 2018 and 2022.

“…chops, passion and warmth. Zealously recommended!” -Jazz Review.com

“HiroyaTsukamoto takes us to an impressionistic journey ” -Boston Herald

Learn more at https://hiroyatsukamoto.com/