"This is a breakup album with myself…" says Sara Watkins of her third solo record, Young in All the Wrong Ways. Writing and recording these ten intensely soul-baring songs was a means for her to process and mark the last couple years, which have been transformative. "I looked around and realized that in many ways I wasn't who or where I wanted to be. It's been a process of letting go and leaving behind patterns and relationships and in some cases how I've considered myself. What these songs are documenting is the turmoil you feel when you know something has to change and you're grappling with what that means. It means you're losing something and moving forward into the unknown."

That sense of possibility infuses the songs on Young in All the Wrong Ways with a fierce and flinty resolve, which makes this her most powerful and revealing album to date. In some ways it's a vivid distillation of the omnivorous folk-pop-bluegrass-indie-everything-else Watkins made with Nickel Creek, yet she makes audacious jumps that push against expectations in unexpected ways. These songs contain some of the heaviest moments of her career, with eruptions of thrumming B3 organ and jagged electric guitar. But it's also quiet, vulnerable, tenderhearted. In other words, bold in all the right ways.

Watkins knew just the right people to bring these tough-minded songs to life. She corralled longtime friend and fellow fiddler Gabe Witcher to produce, then put together a band that includes two of Witcher's fellow Punch Brothers: guitarist Chris Eldridge and bass player Paul Kowert. Providing harmonies on the title track are Sarah Jarosz and Aoife O'Donovan, Watkins' bandmates in I'm With Her, and Jim James of My Morning Jacket provides a vocal foil on "One Last Time." "I've known these guys for a long time, so there's a personal trust as well as a musical trust," Watkins says.

Young in All the Wrong Ways reveals an artist who has managed to transform her own turmoil into music that is beautiful and deeply moving: "God bless the tenderhearted," she sings, "who let life overflow."

http://www.sarawatkins.com/

Mikaela Davis

Mikaela Davis is the kind of songwriter who routinely defies expectations. The 23 year-old artist is a composer of striking maturity. Her arrangements deftly combine elements of psychedelic rock, folk and chamber pop, and her vocals display a wisdom and a ruefulness that belie her years. Davis' instrument of choice is the harp, which she has played since she was eight years old, right about the time she could actually get her hands around the instrument.

The young Davis – who has garnered opening slots with such artists as Punch Brothers, Jukebox the Ghost and My Brightest Diamond, among other artists – is now splitting her time between her Brooklyn home and a Nashville recording studio, where she is completing her second full-length recording.

“I think a harp can do anything,” Davis declares. And so, as her recordings and live shows already indicate, can Davis.

http://mikaeladavis.com/