Clay Hollis presents country music, in its purest form; simple and powerful. Born in the Rio Grande Valley and raised in San Antonio, his mother is from Laredo and with his father being from Dallas, Hollis’ Texas roots run deep. Cultural and musical tradition define Clay’s tried and true brand, paying homage to country music legends like Strait and Jones, with a touch of contemporary grit.

A music fan as long as he can recall, Clay’s passion for performance developed at a very young age. Friendships with other neo-traditionalists have helped his career begin to blossom. Mario Flores, Gabe Garcia, Bart Butler, Jon Wolfe and Jon Pardi have all lent a helpful hand to the young singer. With the aid of talented accomplices, he released his self-titled, debut EP this summer, which features the debut single, “Look Who’s Hurting Now,” an anthemic ballad, powerful beyond his years.

Hollis’ family and close-knit group of friends strongly support his musical ambition as well as his desire to serve his community. When not on stage, or in a college classroom (studying for a degree in music business,) Hollis volunteers his time to nonprofit organizations, such as 4-H and Trinity Oaks. With time and karma on his side, classic Texas good looks and a rich, powerful voice, the future is very bright for the young troubadour.

Clay Hollis’ music can be found wherever music is served, with his debut EP already picking up steam on Spotify. Find Clay on all the major social media and musical outlets, all linked through his website: (clayhollis.com), on Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat (@clayholliscountry) and Twitter (@clayhollismusic).

Three bandmates. Fourteen songs that blur the lines between hard-edged country, rock & roll, and all the gritty sounds in between. 3, the newest album from Cody Canada the Departed, is proof that there's strength in numbers.

The band's first record as a lean power trio, 3 shines a light on the core ingredients of Canada's sound. There's plenty of amplified crunch, Red Dirt twang, roadhouse-worthy guitar riffs, story-based songwriting, and the familiar rasp of Canada's voice — an instrument that's been sharpened by years of raw, redemptive shows. Working with producer Mike McClure, the band tracked their new material during breaks in an otherwise busy touring schedule, approaching the recording sessions the same way they'd approach a live show.

"The idea was to get into the studio and simplify things, remaining as true to a three-piece as possible," says Canada, who pulls triple-duty as the lineup's frontman, songwriter, and lead guitarist. "If you really want to leave your mark, it's all about the songs, not how many people you can cram into the studio."

Growing up during a time when mainstream radio could still show love to throwbacks, Kyle Park was soaking up the tunes of Roger Miller, Merle Haggard, George Jones and the list goes on. It was his Dad that introduced him to classic country, the lyrically driven storytelling of Opry legends that would eventually help mold him into the artist that he is today.

After the loss of his dad in 1998, Kyle found healing in country music. He picked up a guitar at the age of 14 and never looked back, with his first paid gig coming one year later. At the time, he couldn’t see far enough down the road to realize that he was beginning a career as a singer/songwriter.

“I was really only focusing on playing country music. That’s all I wanted to do at the time, and all the time. I made my first record simply because I wanted to record the songs I had written. I hadn’t grasped that this was ever going to take me where it has, on an indescribable musical journey.”

By the time he had released his debut album (‘Big Time’) in 2005 at the age of 20, Kyle was performing hour-long shows with more than fifty-percent of his own music. Coming a long way from performing for his family in the backyard, this young man from Leander (north of Austin) was quickly becoming one of the hottest names in the Texas country music scene.

Thirteen years into his professional career, Kyle and his band have played in more than five countries, playing shows from Alaska to Germany, and frequenting more than a dozen states on a regular basis.

He's impressively had seven #1 singles on the Texas Regional Radio Report (TRRR) and eleven singles on the Texas Music Chart’s Top 10. His limited edition 'Fall EP' (now part of the “Make or Break Me full-length album) peaked at No. 1 on the Billboard Heatseekers South Central list. Kyle’s reaped consistent national press coverage from CMT, TCN (The Country Network), Taste of Country, Country Weekly, All Music, Guitar World and more. He was direct support for numerous notable and legendary artists including George Strait, Clint Black, Mark Chestnutt, Gary Allan and more.

So, where do you go from here? Back where you came from!

Kyle’s latest project, his sixth studio album Don’t Forget Where You Come From leans exactly in the direction you would expect.

Inspired by the style of music he grew up listening to, this new album is a return to Kyle’s signature neo-traditional country sound brimming with honkytonk-fueled fiddle, pedal steel and searing guitar riffs punctuated by his most honest and contemplative lyrics to date.

Don’t Forget Where You Come From is Kyle’s reaffirmation record, focusing back on the storytelling side of country music.

“I believe that this record carries more meaning and much better stories than anything else I’ve released. It’s a storytelling album, what I believe country music is and has always been: lyrics first.”

Recorded in Austin at Ray Benson’s Bismeaux Studio, Don’t Forget Where You Come From was produced by Park and boasts nine original tracks written or co-written by Park, along with one cover tune.

Kyle has worked hard to develop himself as a writer and a producer, making regular trips to Nashville for writing sessions and producing music for other artists as well as his own.

Even though this newest release is Kyle’s way of bringing things full-circle, we can’t expect any signs of things slowing down.

“I’m a “lifer.” I was fortunate enough to find my passion very early in life.”

With six records under his belt, it’s safe to say that there is plenty more to come down the road.

LITTLE JOE Y LA FAMILIA. During a more than fifty-year performing and recording history, Little Joe y La Familia has become one of the top Tejano bands. Over the decades, the group has developed a unique style, imbuing its sound with norteño, country, blues, and rock-and-roll music. Established in 1959 by José María de León Hernández, the band was initially known as Little Joe and the Latinaires.

Little Joe, whose musical innovations and leadership has ensured the band’s success, was born in Temple, Texas, on October 17, 1940, to Salvador Hernández and Amelia de León Hernández. The seventh of thirteen children, Little Joe had an early affinity for music. Barely into his teens, he began to play guitar and sing with his cousin’s band, David Coronado and the Latinaires. In the late 1950s, the Latinaires caught the attention of Torero Records, which brought out their first single, the rock-inspired instrumental “Safari, Part I & II.” In approximately 1959, when Coronado left the group, Little Joe became the band’s leader and renamed it Little Joe and the Latinaires.

In the 1960s Little Joe signed recording contracts with several Tejano labels, first with Corona in San Antonio and later with Valmon in Austin and Zarape in Dallas. Little Joe also started his own label, Buena Suerte, which he used to release the band’s Spanish-language recordings, and he used Good Luck Records for English-language recordings. He also established Leona Records and entered into a distribution contract with Freddy Records of Corpus Christi.

In the mid-1960s the Latinaires began their rise to popularity with their first album, Por un Amor. Soon afterwards, the band’s Amor bonito also became a hit album. Having achieved a measure of success, the Latinaires recruited Tony “Ham” Guerrero, a talented and musically-trained trumpeter, to join the band. With Guerrero’s addition, the Latinaires began to evolve, ultimately becoming one of the “best-selling” Tejano orquestas.

By 1970 the “latinismo” Little Joe had discovered while traveling and performing in the San Francisco Bay area drew him closer to his cultural roots. Moreover, Little Joe became committed to the farm workers movement led by César Chávez and the Chicano movement that had emerged across the American Southwest. Soon, Little Joe changed the band’s name to Little Joe y La Familia, reflecting his dedication to the cultural and political contributions and struggles of his community.

During the 1970s Little Joe y La Familia became the leading band of La Onda Chicana (“Chicano Wave”) period of Tejano music. La Onda Chicana was ushered in with the Chicano movement, a time during which the Tejano orquesta musical tradition reached its pinnacle by combining “once and for all the ranchero and jaitón as well as the Latin and American, into a seamless, bimusical sound.” The high admiration in which the band was held drew top musicians to its ranks. Among them were Joe Gallardo, Luis Gazca, Joe “Mad Dog” Velásquez, Joe Medina, and Gilbert Sedeño.

In 1972, strengthened by the addition of these musicians and a growing musical sophistication, Little Joe y La Familia recorded the album Para La Gente (For the people), which became a huge success in the Tejano community. Para La Gente, which was filled with lush arrangements, also embodied the Chicano self-identity espoused by the Chicano movement. “Las Nubes,” “Qué Culpa Tengo,” “La Traicionera,” and “El Disco,” some of the most popular songs on the album, were a synthesis of the best of the ranchero and jaitón traditions, outpacing what other Tejano bands had previously accomplished. “Las Nubes” in particular remains a beloved and well-regarded artistic effort in code-switching between English and Spanish (Spanglish) in La Onda Chicana tradition.

The Smithsonian Institute and the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts have hosted the band during National Hispanic Heritage Week. In 1997 Little Joe received the Governors Award from the Texas branch of NARAS (National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences) for his contributions to the legacy of Texas music. He received the Smithsonian’s Lifetime Legend Award in 2001. Little Joe y La Familia was recognized with a 1991 Grammy for Best Mexican-American Album for Diez y Seis de Septiembre and a 2008 Tejano Album of the Year Grammy for Before the Next Teardrop Falls. The band also received other Grammy nominations in 1988, 1993, 1999, and 2003. Their Recuerdos (2010) won a Best Tejano Album Grammy in 2011.

Thirty years. It’s an eternity in rock ‘n’ roll, and a marathon for the bands who fly its tattered flag. Revisit the class of 1988, and the casualties are piled high: a thousand bands that blew up and burnt out. In this chew-and-spit industry, the Spin Doctors are the last men standing, still making music like their lives depend on it, still riding the bus, still shaking the room. They’ve never been a band for backslaps and self-congratulation. Even now, plans are afoot for a seventh studio album and another swashbuckling world tour, adding to their tally of almost two thousand shows. But faced with that milestone, even a band of their velocity takes a breath for reflection. “I’d never have guessed,” admits drummer Aaron Comess, “this would have turned into thirty years of making great music together.”

Like all the best rock ‘n’ roll mythology, the final page of the Spin Doctors’ biography remains forever unwritten. But if the band’s story is to begin anywhere, it should be at New York’s New School university in the fall of ’88, when a fateful door-knock sparked the first meeting of Comess and guitarist Eric Schenkman. Trading as the Trucking Company, Schenkman, local legend John Popper and a charisma-bomb vocalist named Chris Barron had been making a glorious noise in the clubs downtown. But when Popper committed himself to Blues Traveler, the remnants sought new blood. Having assured Schenkman that he’d “check them out,” Comess formed a ferocious rhythm section with Bronx-raised bassist Mark White. “When I first met them,” recalls White, “I thought, ‘These are some funky-assed white boys.’ I’m the black guy in the band, and they had to teach me to play the blues.”

The nascent Spin Doctors lineup hit the Lower Manhattan blues circuit like a wrecking ball. Flexing their musicianship and announcing their elastic approach to live performance with jams that stretched to the outer reaches, the lineup’s glorious ability to supercharge a tune was in evidence on 1991’s debut live release, Up For Grabs, where some tracks stormed beyond ten minutes. They didn’t know it yet, but the Spin Doctors – alongside peers like Blues Traveler, Phish and Widespread Panic – would drag the jam-band ethos into the ’90s era, their DNA later dripping into the scene’s post-millennial resurgence. “We had a big fanbase,” notes Comess, “who loved that we stretched out and jammed out and played different shows every night.”

Just as important was the band’s habit of bending the house rules at the downtown blues clubs by slipping in their own songs alongside the rocket-fuelled standards. And it was that same flair for original songcraft that carried them into a deal with Epic Records, setting up the Pocket Full Of Kryptonite album that defined the early-’90s rock scene. “There was a feeling of magic in the band,” reflects Barron, “and a belief in the air. That first record felt really innocent. Y’know, we were surrounded by millions of dollars’ worth of equipment, and when we recorded “Two Princes,” Eric rented a $50,000 Les Paul.”

Led by relentless touring, the album sold steadily – but within a year, Epic had declared it “dead” and pushed the band to return to the studio. “But we decided to go back on the road,” says Comess, “as we felt the buzz building and believed in the record. Sure enough, within a few months, Jim McGuinn up in Vermont started playing “Little Miss Can’t Be Wrong” and it went to #1. He wrote to the head of Epic, telling him they’d be crazy not to push this band. That was the fuel that lit the fire.”

Barron still recalls the circus when Pocket Full Of Kryptonite exploded in 1992 (“When we were selling 50,000 records a week, I’d walk into a mall to buy underwear and 300 kids would surround me”). Pass a record store and you’d hear the tills ring, as that all-conquering debut album marched towards 10 million sales. Pass a news-stand and you’d see the lineup staring back from the cover of Rolling Stone. Flick on MTV and you were serenaded by planet-straddling follow-up hit “Two Princes,” whose irresistible groove and scream-it-back chorus took it to #4 on the Top 100 singles chart and more US radio spins than any other rock ‘n’ roll song in 1993. “When you’re freaking popular,” says White, “and people are throwing themselves at you, if you don’t like that, you’re on the wrong planet.”

The numbers were staggering. But it was the Spin Doctors’ capacity to reinvent themselves throughout the unfolding decade that confirmed their status as a great American band. In 1994, they struck back with Turn It Upside Down: a bitter-sweet album that has some superb songs, from “Cleopatra’s Cat” to “You Let Your Heart Go Too Fast. “

Every long-serving rock band must endure a period of stormy weather, and the Spin Doctors have scars to go along with the award statuettes. Schenkman left before 1996’s You’ve Got To Believe In Something, while the departure of White during 1999’s Here Comes The Bride was a hammer-blow to a band that ran on chemistry. For a heartbeat in the post-millennium, this most bulletproof of bands appeared to be on the ropes, as morose nu-metal gripped the rock mainstream, and Barron was laid low by vocal cord paralysis. “You just don’t know,” he considers, “when life is gonna strike you with something that stops you executing your plan.”

If the singer’s fight back to vocal fitness was miraculous, then fewer still would have foretold the spectacle – in September 2001 – of the classic Spin Doctors lineup reuniting at the Wetlands club in Manhattan where they had cut their teeth. “Getting back together,” remembers Barron, “was intense.”

The chemistry proved too strong to put back in the box, and scattershot live shows ultimately spilled into 2005’s Nice Talking To Me. “We went off to LA for that record,” remembers Barron, “working in Sound City, where Nirvana made Nevermind and Fleetwood Mac made Rumours. There were some cool ghosts in that studio. I really enjoyed working with Matt Wallace. That guy is a fucking genius. He made us play everything acoustic beforehand. Aaron had no drums – Matt made him sit on the couch and pat his knees to the beat. He wouldn’t even let us rehearse in electric until it worked. Which sorta reconfirmed my feeling that if a song doesn’t work with just a voice and piano or guitar – then it’s not a real tune.”

The band’s next move was as real as it gets. Faced with 2013’s acclaimed sixth studio, If The River Was Whiskey, some rock journalists spoke of a change of direction. Long-term fans knew better: these gritty blues originals tipped a hat to the band’s first steps on the New York circuit, managing to revisit their roots while reinvigorating their sound. “We cut that record in two days,” recalls Schenkman. “It was very similar to how we initially made records, when we’d go out and play in the bars of New York, then we’d record music because we were playing so good.”

“For a rock band to make a blues record is a really ballsy move,” points out Barron, “but that was the best-received album we’ve ever done, critically. Everybody played their asses off. We all got in one room and we were just stood looking each other in the eyeballs – and just throwing down. There were old songs that we hadn’t played in years, but we wrote the title track and “Some Other Man Instead” just on-the-fly in rehearsal. And the way those two new songs came together so quickly made me feel really good about our future creatively.”

Long-term strategy has never been the Spin Doctors’ style. While cultural commentators have long since given up plotting the trajectory of this most unpredictable band, it’s a revelation to learn that the lineup themselves have no road map. “For the next album,” considers Barron, “I kinda want to stay spontaneous. I’d personally like to make a quarter-turn and do a rock record. But I have a feeling it’s gonna get funky. Y’know, there’s that great quote from Keith Richards when he went to meet Mick Jagger at AIR Studios to make Steel Wheels. And he told his wife – ‘I’ll either be back tomorrow or in a month’. I think that’s how it’s gonna go for us, too.”

Thirty years. A thousand twists. But whatever happens down the road, rest assured that the Spin Doctors will always be the last men standing, still making music like their lives depend on it, still riding the bus, still shaking the room. “It’s been a great ride,” considers Comess. Then he adds: “So far…”

La carrera de Sauceda comenzó como una estrella de la infancia en San Antonio, grabando su primer vinilo 45 cuando era un niño a la edad de 5 años con el pionero del conjunto Joey Canelo López. Durante una vida dedicada a la música; primero con su familia, luego con grupos exitosos y ahora como solista, los fanáticos de todo el mundo disfrutaron de la composición, las grabaciones y las interpretaciones de Sauceda. Como líder de Grupo Vida y como el creador del sonido de Eddie Gonzales, su presencia en el escenario ha influido en décadas de artistas emergentes en todo el mundo. Sunny recibió 7 guiños de GRAMMY, 3 victorias de GRAMMY, 22 Premios de Música Tejana, Premio Pura Vida, Hall de la Fama de las Raíces de Tejano 2017 entre varios honores. Sunny Sauceda es el acordeonista más enérgico del planeta, con una voz sensual y un espectáculo dinámico que es intergeneracional.

-------------------------------------------------------------------

Sauceda’s career started as a childhood star in San Antonio, recording his first vinyl 45 as a young boy at the age of 5 with conjunto pioneer Joey Canelo Lopez. During a lifetime spent with music; first with his family then with successful groups and now as a solo artist, Sauceda’s songwriting, recordings and performances have been enjoyed by fans around the world. As the front man for Grupo Vida, and as the creator of the Eddie Gonzales sound his stage presence has influenced decades of up and coming performers across the globe. Sunny is the recipient of 7 GRAMMY nods, 3 GRAMMY wins, 22 Tejano Music Awards, Pura Vida Award recipient, 2017 Tejano Roots Hall of Famer amongst several honors.

Sunny Sauceda is the considered the most energetic accordionist on the planet, with a sultry voice and a dynamic show that is cross-generational.