Alanna Royale is 7 members, 6 beards, 3 horns, and 1 lady. Their homemade blend of "dirty pop/raunchy soul" is a unique formula that blends throwback soul, good ol' rock n' roll, and pop sensibilities into a captivating live performance. In just six short months, Alanna Royale has commanded Nashville's attention and there seems to be no signs of stopping. Coming off of a sold out release show in January for their debut Bless Her Heart, Royale is looking forward to performances at The Road to Bonnaroo, Music City Roots, and their second East Nashville Underground appearance. Royale has even gathered accolades from some of Nashville's biggest movers and shakers with Mike Grimes naming them the Nashville band to take over 2013. Their first single "Animal" is enjoying heavy rotation in February as they are Lightning 100's Artist of the Week and they are already working on their next release in April. Grab your friends, put on your dancing shows, and get ready to sweat it out at the next Alanna Royale show!

Dex Romweber Duo
Dex Romweber is nothing less than an icon of the American music underground. Pioneering the template for the stripped to-the-essentials guitar/drums duo format in the (should be) world famous psycho-surf-rockabilly-garage-punk combo Flat Duo Jets—so often emulated, so rarely duplicated—Dex continues his resurgence with the new album Is That You In The Blue? With sister Sara on drums, the Dex Romweber Duo is a potent combo that’ll get your leg twitching with the beat and your heart racing -and sometimes breaking- with the feral excitement of music. If it don’t, you might want to consider turning in your “I Heart Rock n Roll” badge. Seriously.
In Dex, you have someone who burrows into the guts of American roots music with a uniquely alchemical mania; he’s a man clearly bored with, or oblivious to, genre constraints. With a mix of originals and obscure nuggets from rock and roll’s dusky back closets, the DRD romps through the sweaty cinder block studios of Memphis of the 50’s, channels street corners on the wrong side of town with existential blues and instrumentals that’d find a home in a Tarantino spy flick.
For pure rock and roll at its most glorious, Dex, his vintage Silvertone guitar and Sara’s wall of sound drums kick out the jams, mf’ers, on “Jungle Drums,” the dragstrip rave-up “Gurdjieff Girl” and the soundtrack for your next knife fight at the juvey home “Climb Down.” Bust out your hip flask and hand jive to heaven to that wicked Bobby Fuller beach party groove on “Wish you Would,” or strut down the Rio strand to the buoyant Bossa Nova throw down “Brazil”—a classic that runs a sonic spark plug from Xavier Cugat to Tav Falco’s Panther Burns.
Beyond the wild ruckus the Duo conjures so well, Is That You in the Blue? is colored by Dex’s broken romantic trips to the deep tunnel of un-love. From the slinky, cinematic revenge noir of “The Death of Me,” to the unhinged, edge of the abyss vibe of “Nowhere” to the jazzy, ghostly howl at the “Midnight Sun,” he’s on a dark and sometimes vengeful ride he ain’t taking alone. And the title track has as bitter and liberating a kiss off line that’s ever been sung, the one we’ve all wished we could have come up with when she was walking out the door.
For Is That You In The Blue?, recorded at Southern Culture on the Skids Rick Miller’s studio in North Carolina, DRD filled in their already formidable sound with Tarheel luminaries from the bands The Old Ceremony and Savage Knights, as well as Rick Miller himself and fellow SCOTS Mary Huff. Since their last Bloodshot album, Ruins of Berlin (2009), the DRD recorded a 7” single of hillbilly folk-blues with Jack White as well as a live album recorded at his Third Man record store in Nashville.

David Jacobs-Strain is a virtuosic slide guitar player and a storyteller with a passionate one man show that is both humorous and deeply lyrical. A bridge between today’s indie folk troubadours and the delta guitar slingers of the 1930′s, David plays with precision and sings with emotional abandon. He’s a six-foot-two Jewish blues singer from Oregon, a Stanford drop-out in a trucker hat, and a Left Coast poet; one part Leo Kottke, one part Ken Kesey, and one part Robert Johnson. Is it Delta Blues? Gangsta Grass? Geekabilly? Secular Humanist Gospel? It’s a sound big enough to land David at the Newport Folk Festival —as a teenager— and later at MerleFest, the Strawberry Music Festival, the Montreal International Jazz Fest, and on tour with artists as diverse as Lucinda Williams, Etta James, Bob Weir, and Boz Scaggs (for three summer tours).
David’s new record “Live From The Left Coast” features harmonica legend Bob Beach. “Rainbow Junkies” could be a lost Jimmie Page tune, “Hurricane Railroad” grooves like a young David Lindley, while “Dirt And Wildflowers” is a quirky but sexy revelation (like the Moldy Peaches meet Towns Van Zandt). The cascading harmonics and retro tinted lyrics of “Halfway To The Coast” and “Pescadero Beach” evoke the damaged but wild Northwest: heartbroken but beautiful, melodic and spare.
David also appears with his amplified string band The Crunk Mountain Boys. It’s not just a funky name: John is a drummer with a tambourine instead of a hi hat, Zak plays the standup bass behind his head like Hendrix, and Blake bangs on as much of the Hammond B-3 as he can haul up the stairs. They all sing as if their souls and their supper depend on it. You could compare them to Avett Brothers with a slide guitar player and a west coast twang (though the Avett’s do have better suits!). One fan described The Crunk Mountain Boys as the “Black Fleet Foxes”, but they probably sound more like acoustic Little Feat…. with more plaid and less cocaine…

TEN BARTRAM :Local sister-songwriting duo Eleanor Angel and Rebekah Angel Rapp made headlines when they broke the Itunes top 10 on the singer/songwriter chart with their EP, In Tandem, last fall.