Matt the Electrician

• Indie Folk
• Singer/Songwriter

Matt the Electrician is Matthew Sever, a quirky, sincere folk/pop singer songwriter based in Austin, TX. He has self-released 11 studio albums, and 2 live CDs since 1998.

His most recent release, The Ocean Knocked Me Down came out on February 2nd, 2024.

For the new project, Matt returned to his “home studio” of sorts, The Aerie, in Austin, TX, (owned and operated by Mark Addison) where Matt had recorded 4 of his previous records, including 2009’s “Animal Boy”. And like that project, Matt and Mark played nearly all the instruments on the new record. There are some special guest musicians as well, including MtE regulars, Seela, Jon Greene, and Stephanie Macias. Plus, first timers Carrie Rodriguez, Luke Jacobs and Oliver Steck.

To call this a pandemic record might be slightly misguided, even though most of the songs were in fact written during 2020 and 2021. But the vibe of the record is upbeat, and weird, and fun, and sometimes sad, but hopeful, and occasionally poignant, and silly, and hopeful, but ridiculous, and also hopeful. You might think that’s a lot of vibes, but there are 16 songs on the record, because we’ve all been through a lot, and so Matt figured that, this time, everyone deserved a few more songs and a few more vibes than usual.

Natalia Zukerman

• Folk
• Singer/Songwriter

Musician, painter and educator Natalia Zukerman grew up in New York City, studied art at Oberlin, started her mural business Off The Wall in San Francisco, began her songwriting career in Boston, and now resides, writes, plays, teaches and paints in Brooklyn, NY.

Having released seven independent albums on Weasel Records and her own label Talisman Records, Zukerman has toured internationally as a solo performer since 2005. She has also accompanied and opened for some of acoustic music’s greats such as Janis Ian, Willy Porter, Susan Werner, Erin McKeown, Shawn Colvin, Ani DiFranco, Richard Thompson, Tom Paxton and many others. Alongside her touring career, Zukerman continues to paint private and public murals as well as illustrate children’s books, design and paint sets for plays in New York City and paint private portrait commissions. Natalia teaches private songwriting lessons and has taught at Sisters Song School, Red Rocks Womens Music Festival, Winnipeg Folk Festival, Interlochen Summer Music Program and other festivals and locations throughout the US and in Canada. In February, 2017, Natalia became a Cultural Diplomat for the US Department of State, playing concerts and conducting workshops with her group The Northern Lights throughout Africa.

Kris Delmhorst

• Folk
• Singer/Songwriter

You don’t have to believe in anything mystical to feel the molecules around you shift just a little when you listen to Kris Delmhorst. Her songs transform like breath turning to mist on a cold, clear night; the inner made visible. Her voice holds memories, like smoke lingering in a sweater from last summer’s campfire. Twining through every layer of consciousness, her music weaves together the magical and the mundane with the strange logic of dreams.

Called “bold and brilliant” by the Boston Globe and “transcendent” by the LA Times, Delmhorst is a veteran of the indie Americana world, with vivid songwriting, soulful delivery, and adventurous arrangements that stretch the limits of genre. She’s been compared to artists as various as Anaïs Mitchell, Lucinda Williams, and Juana Molina – though she cites Rickie Lee Jones, in all her fearless joy and complexity, as an artistic north star.

With Long Day in the Milky Way, her eighth album, Delmhorst takes a surefooted stride forward. Lush with layered vocals and immersive instrumentation, it finds the gifted lyricist at the height of her craft and working with a strong sense of purpose. World-weary but hopeful, the songwriter responds to a time of global anxiety with a missive straight from the chest. Delmhorst invites the listener to look both out and in, to take in the full kaleidoscope of life’s contradictions – persistence, frustration, heartbreak, love – and to locate the grace within the struggle, the beauty in the dark.

Erin McKeown

• Folk
• Singer/Songwriter

Erin McKeown is a musician, writer, and producer known internationally for her prolific disregard of stylistic boundaries. Her brash and clever electric guitar playing is something to see. Her singing voice is truly unique —clear, cool, and collected. Over the last 20 years, she has performed around the world, released 10 full length albums, and written for film, television, and theater, all the while refining her distinctive and challenging mix of American musical forms.

McKeown’s first musical, Miss You Like Hell, written with Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Quiara Alegría Hudes, opened Off-Broadway at The Public Theater in 2018. It was nominated for 5 Drama Desk Awards, including Best Lyrics, Best Music and Best Orchestrations, and The Wall Street Journal named it Best Musical of 2018.

Leading her own band, she has performed at Bonnaroo, Glastonbury, and the Newport Folk Festivals. A familiar presence on NPR and the BBC, McKeown’s songs have also appeared in numerous commercials and television shows.

While a student at Brown University, Erin was a resident artist at Providence, RI’s revolutionary community arts organization AS220. A 2011-2012 fellow at Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center For Internet & Society, she is also the recipient of a 2016 writing fellowship from The Studios of Key West and a 2018 residency at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts.

McKeown is a 2020-21 Professor of the Practice at Brown University.