Performing at Stevefest this year!

If Phil Lee was as good at knife-throwing as he is at songwriting he would be on the David Letterman show three times a week. He may very well be that good at it – he practices enough - but listening to any one of his excellent CDs, including this new one, has great rewards and fewer risks - at least for the audience. Phil has never feared, personally or lyrically, to scamper out on a limb with a gleam in his eye and a hacksaw in his hand. Sometimes a club owner or promoter will “suggest” that certain of his songs might ruffle a local feather or two but danged if he won’t have those very birds squarely in his corner before the night is done. Charm, guts and great material can get you a long way. Like Wile E. Coyote, he has a knack for recovering from the most explosive circumstances but unlike that hapless canine he usually ends up on top and grinning. This has been of immense help in his previous incarnations as a truck driver, roadie, huckster and bon vivant. Phil Lee likes to say that “at a hundred, my age, weight and IQ have all averaged out.” Maybe so but if that’s true he’s sure getting maximum output in all three areas. He writes constantly, eats a sensible diet and, peripatetic as hell, he won’t hesitate to haul out of his Nashville habitations in his pickup for a gig in Wisconsin on a Friday, cannonball from there to Missouri on Saturday and hit Indiana on Sunday - after church of course.

Phil Lee writes intelligent songs full of wit, humor and grace that blend sizzling Dylan-esque rock and roll, country and western, mid-sixties British Invasion and medicine show sounds that end up being utterly unique and sung in a voice that can shoot straight through to your heart. His new album is called So Long, It’s Been Good To Know You and he calls it his “first posthumous release. “ There’s nothing wrong with putting out a record posthumously except that it raises certain logistical problems when it comes to touring. And there’s also the teeny tiniest little glitch in the truth in advertising area, since Phil Lee is most definitely still very much among the quick. Maybe he’s just thinking five or six decades ahead – and it’s even money even then. His guitar player/producer/accomplice/crony Richard Bennett dubbed him “the Don Rickles of Rock” and true, Phil will sometimes fan his quills porcupine-style as a situational barometer. But he doesn’t do it much these days; no need. When you make records as good as Phil Lee does, winning friends and influencing people is a cinch.

Mike Younger is the product of a journey along the road less travelled. His music and persona are unique and noteworthy for the breadth of styles and genres they touch upon as well as the content behind them.

Having been exposed to and inspired by some of the milestone artists that defined the rock and roll era of the fifties, sixties and seventies he was determined to dig deeper into the history and roots of these musical forms.

At the age of seventeen Younger took to the road, travelling by thumb, rail, shoestring, bus etc...Though his origins lead back to eastern Canada, his musical journey has passed through many towns and cities....his stages have been piers, sidewalks, doorways, town squares, coffeeshops, bars, saloons, joints, nightclubs and theatres. He has never performed on American Idol and probably never will.

Arriving in New York at 20 Mike thought he'd seen a thing or two about the world and learned that everything in life is relative. After being nearly swallowed up by the street life of the big city, he narrowly escaped to the warm sunny skies and soothing melodies of New Orleans on a midnight greyhound bus ride.

It was there, while wandering the streets of the Quarter and soaking up all the rich and ominous history that floats in the air like the perfume of a magnolia blossom on a sultry summer night that Mike began to find his own voice in the musical forms surrounding him.

He soon attracted the attention of publishing interests in Nashville and his recordings ended up reaching Rodney Crowell, who produced Younger's first effort, "Somethin In The Air", on Beyond Music 1999. Two songs from that project were very well received on AAA radio and Mike travelled the country performing to support the release. He was a featured performer at the Sundance Film Festival in 1999 and 2000.

It was in 2001 that Mike made a record that some refer to as "The Lost Record". Not much is known about the project but sources confirm that Levon Helm played the drums, Spooner Oldham played keys and David Hood played bass. During the course of the project, recorded in Memphis, an unfortunate sequence of events led to the collapse of Beyond Music and a cessation of the recording. The project became lost to the legal limbo that ensued.

Not to be deterred, Mike continued touring, sharing the stage with the likes of Robbie Fulks, BR549, Asleep At The Wheel, Nanci Griffith... He has played the New Orleans Jazz Festival, The Beacon Theatre in New York and The Ryman in Nashville.

In 2005 he put out his second release, "Every Stone You Throw" on Bare Bone Productions. The record was widely embraced among non-commercial radio stations, particularly the songs "Together" and "Everyday War", which were both unusually timely.

Justin Townes Earle says Amanda Shires, "has the spirit of Spade Cooley. With a voice that whispers Dolly and lyrics that scream Faulkner, this girl shines like a diamond but she's pure Pearl." High praise also comes from Jason Isbell and Chris Isaak for the Lubbock-born gem, who started as a side woman with Tommy Allsup and the legendary Texas Playboys when she was only 16. Now on her new album, West Cross Timbers, Shires' clever songs sparkle with a tinge of Western swing influence. And with her cheery voice and fiddle, you might underestimate the grit under her opening line, "I hope I haunt you good" -- until the revenge/murder tale 2 songs later, based on a true family story.

Shires isn't permanently leaving the band she co-founded, The Thrift Store Cowboys, known for their raucous shows of Texas indie-rock, but she did relocate to Nashville, where she and Earle played in a dive bar for tips and free drinks. "I've played as a side person for Billy Joe Shaver, Buzz Cason, Will Kimbrough, and lots of other folks. I enjoyed that life but now it's time to write and play my own music," says Shires. "For me that took moving away from where I was comfortable. It took waiting tables, being scared, getting lost -- it took turning gigs down and staying home versus fiddling' on the road. And it took going at it with all my intention and all my heart."

She co-produced West Cross Timbers in her new home of Nashville with frequent collaborator Rod Picott. The two made the record roomy and sparse, leaving only the essentials. Especially on the murder ballad "I Kept Watch Like Doves," where the birdsong outside the studio is recorded as is. "Since they are Nashville birds, I imagine they normally charge a lot for a session, but I think they really believed in this song," Laughs Shires.

It's a depression-era sounding song, with campfire-whistling and of course the birds, who act as eerie narrators on the lyric, "I put chloroform in his scotch/I held up the belt he thought he'd lost/and I said look at me."

There is too, the perfect two-stepping dancehall song with "Angels and Acrobats." While "Keep Them Dogs From Barking" is pure sass about a girl running from the law - Shires' voice sounding quite Parton-ish on the line, "Somewhere near River Road I flagged a Hudson down." The album appropriately closes with a tip of the hat to the her Texas Playboy mentorship -- her fiddle waltzing through "Whispering."

Mike Jurgensen has lived in the Tampa Bay area since 1968, when he moved from his native Chapel Hill, NC. Mike began playing the guitar when he was 7 years old, but it was not until 1992 that he began performing in public seriously. It was then that he discovered the Iron Horse coffee house in Tarpon Springs, where he began playing open mics. Over the next few years he branched out to do open mics and feature sets at other Tampa Bay area coffee houses and restaurants, as well as regularly emceeing the Iron Horse open mics. He has played at acoustic venues and folk festivals around the state of Florida, and has opened for such notable performers as Cheryl Wheeler, Richard Shindell, and Rod MacDonald. Mike has also been the featured artist on various live music radio shows on WMNF 88.5FM in Tampa.

Although Mike had written several songs prior to 1992, that was the year in which he began writing seriously. Mike was a finalist in the 1994, 1996, and 2002 South Florida Folk Festival national song-writing competitions, and he won the 1998, 2004, and 2006 Will McLean Festival "Best Florida Song" competitions. He also placed several other songs in the top 10 of the Will McLean song competitions between 1998 and 2002 , and he placed 3rd in the 2003 competition, and he now judges the annual competition. In addition, two of Mike's songs are featured in the Edward R. Murrow Award-winning radio documentary "Apalachicola Doin' Time", produced by WUFT in Gainesville, and his song "The Golden Fleece of Tarpon Springs" was featured on a Florida Humanities Council project entitled "Settlers by the Sea". Mike's debut solo CD "The Road Away From Home" was released in early 2002. Mike also has a sampler CD, containing 10 of his Florida-themed songs.

From 1994 until 2002, Mike performed as a member of the well-known Florida acoustic group, Myriad. Together with Myriad, Mike played concerts at coffee houses, radio shows, benefit concerts, and festivals around the state. Myriad performed at the Florida Folk Festival, the Will McLean and Gamble Rogers Festivals, the South Florida Folk Festival, and the Suwannee Spring Fest, to name a few. Myriad produced 4 recordings- a studio tape produced before he joined the group, a live tape recorded at the Iron Horse in 1995, and two subsequent studio recordings, "Song Circle" and "New Strings", both of which were released in 1997. Several of Mike's songs are featured on the Myriad recordings. Since Myriad disbanded in 2002, Mike has been performing solo and with friends at numerous festivals and acoustic venues around the state. For several years, he performed in a duo with his son, Ian, and most recently he has been performing with Pete Hennings and Pete Price in the trio "2PM".

Besides his music interests, Mike has also been quite active in community theater. He has appeared in lead roles in Richey Suncoast Theatre productions of "Mister Roberts" and "Little Foxes" (for which he received a Lary Award nomination), and in the Francis Wilson Theatre productions of "Anna's Brooklyn Promise" and "My Three Angels". He has also had supporting roles in the Eight O'Clock Theater production of "Streetcar Named Desire" (for which he also received a Lary Award nomination in the role of Mitch), Richey productions of "Becket" and "Billy Budd", and in Tampa Players productions of "The Grapes of Wrath" and "Assassins". In 2004, Mike was honored to play the part of George Tesman in the Avenue Players production of Henrik Ibsen's "Hedda Gabler" at the Leepa-Rattner Museum of Art in Tarpon Springs. The script for this production was a translation done 50 years ago by Mike's late father, Kai Jurgensen. Most recently, Mike was cast in the role of Christopher Christopherson in Eugene O'Neill's "Anna Christie", also at the Leepa-Rattner Museum, for which he received his 3rd Lary Award nomination.

Genre:

Acoustic Contemporary Folk ~ roots-based, next generation, original folkgrass

Band Members:

Kelly Mulhollan - Vocals, acoustic guitar, banjo, mandolin, harmonica, tenor ukulele, songwriter Donna Stjerna - Vocals, fiddle, cello, mandolin, washboard, mbira, songwriter

Festivals:

Kerrville Folk Festival, Philadelphia Folk Festival, Walnut Valley Festival (Winfield), Summerfolk, many others

Awards:

Member of the Hall of Fame at the Northwest Arkansas Music Awards; several Ozark Music Awards for "Best Folk Group of the Ozarks" and "Best Guitarist" (Kelly). December 20th has been officially proclaimed Still on the Hill Day by their community in Fayetteville, Arkansas.

About the Band:

Since 2001, the Ozarkian duo of Kelly Mulhollan and Donna Stjerna have toured steadily and produced six CDs. Both Kelly and Donna are accomplished songwriters and play a plethora of acoustic instruments including acoustic guitar, banjo, fiddle, mandolin, and harmonica. The group's repertoire is primarily their own original, roots-based compositions (a genre hybrid they term "folkgrass") interspersed with new arrangements of traditional songs. The twosome has also created several very popular children's shows and educational workshops which they perform under the name Toucan Jam.

About the Artists:

Kelly Mulhollan was born in Fayetteville, Arkansas, and his passion for stringed instruments began at the age of 9 with a gift of a ukulele. Within two years he had added the guitar and banjo to his credits. The '70's and '80's found Kelly in countless bands playing rock & roll, bluegrass, jazz, progressive rock, and folk music while studying contemporary classical music, and still always composing and performing his original work as well. He was a founding member of the original Still on the Hill quartet in 1994. He has been voted "Best Guitarist" several times by the Northwest Arkansas Music Awards and also contributes mandolin, banjo, harmonica, lead vocals and songwriting to the group. Kelly has also recorded and produced all of the Still on the Hill CDs as well as performing on and producing many other artists' CDs.

Donna Stjerna grew up in New York and California and began playing the fiddle at the age of 12 after being taken to see the "lady fiddler" in the Eddie Arnold show. As a teenager, she played and toured the country with her father, a professional country musician, playing fiddle at night and helping him to paint signs during the day. Before helping to form the original Still on the Hill quartet in 1994, Donna worked steadily playing and singing in a number of nationally touring country bands. She is a highly prolific songwriter with over 400 songs to her credit and has been the band's principal songwriter since they became a duo in 2001. In addition to playing the fiddle, Donna contributes lead vocals, mandolin, cello, and a variety of traditional roots-based instruments to the sound that is Still on the Hill. She is the mother of a teenage son Taylor.

Featuring former members of the celebrated group Steve Blackwell and Friends, Southwest Florida’s very own Still Friends performs original acoustic music with a unique and memorable delivery. Combining strong songwriting with elements of folk, rock, bluegrass, jazz, and soul music, Still Friends is a favorite of audiences throughout Florida. If you love good music, be sure to catch a Still Friends show near you soon!

"Deep inside we know that an important part of our job is to help God bless other people by blessing them ourselves. It's just a matter of reaching out with the deepest part of ourselves." - Steve Blackwell

In Temperance & The Devil, Brian Molnar & The Naked Hearts tap sonic traditions of the Americana genre that have been around almost as long as temperance has been a movement to dry up the nation and the devil has been a hooved fiend looking to steal men's souls. While the sound of this album alone is enough to make it a record in the best tradition of alternative country and folk music, to stop there would be to miss the hidden layers of Molnar's craft, just as stopping with this understanding of the title would shortchange his intent. The tarot reader knows the deeper meaning attached to the Temperance and Devil cards (the fourteenth and fifteenth Trump cards of the tarot deck): Temperance is a balancing of the forces of life and the Devil a representation of the life-energy inside of us-evil only through our own misunderstanding and misuse of it. Booze and hell-fire aren't the tarot reader's concern, nor are they Molnar's.

Like the angel on the Temperance card, Molnar and this album have one foot on the solid ground of today's alt-country sound and the other in the timeless stream of the unconscious where few but the great songwriters like Townes Van Zandt, Bob Dylan, and Kris Kristofferson have dared tread. By dipping into that stream and lyrically exploring the balancing act of life, Molnar plants himself firmly in the chains of influence those great songwriter's have wrought.

Following up on the AMA charting and critical success of 2007's Feelin' Out of Time, Temperance and The Devil includes cameo appearances from two-time Rock and Roll Hall of Famer Bernie Worrel and Top-Ten AMA artists Yarn, balancing the future with the past and continuing the evolutionary chain of Americana music.

Who is ALLEN THOMPSON?

New CD 26 Years due Aug. 3“I write from my heart about real people and events,” says singer-songwriter Allen Thompson. “Unfortunately, reality isn’t often pretty, so you won’t find a lot of sunshine and sugar in my songs.”

Thompson’s new album 26 Years offers something more: inviting melodies, lyrics charged by his resonant baritone and bracingly honest turns of phrase, and earthy acoustic arrangements evocative — but never derivative — of musical inspirations like The Band, Lucinda Williams, the Replacements and Jimmie Rodgers.

The Virginia-raised, Nashville-based Thompson is intensely focused on honing his craft as a writer. “I’m trying to carve my own niche, not settle into someone else’s,” he declares. “I’m not good-looking enough to risk having my career based on anything else.” He’s also passionately devoted to understanding what came before him so he can build on that artistic foundation. A self-avowed “huge dork when it comes to American music,” he’s drawn to music and writers who understand their past and respect it with “references to old folk tales and books and such. So much music nowadays is divorced from that context. It’s such a shame. I’d like to make the effort to bring that back and update it for our generation.”

He decided to record an acoustic album in part because he wants to play more acoustic shows. “It’s been difficult trying to get gigs sending Southern rock records [2006’s Highway and 2008’s Allen Thompson] out to club owners, then showing up with just me and a guitar,” he admits. “Plus, I was always in love with albums like Willie Nelson’s Red Headed Stranger, Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska, Van Morrison’s Astral Weeks and Steve Earle’s Train a Comin’. They’re acoustic records, but they’ve got hardcore rock ‘n’ roll attitude.”

That description applies to 26 Years too. “Forgive Me” and “All These Years” kick with the loose, jugband joy of noodle dancers at a Grateful Dead or Flying Burrito Brothers concert, while Thompson’s poetic lyrics flow with the ease of good conversation, particularly on the empathetic “26:1.” Nominally about Gram Parsons, whose Southern family history of alcoholism, mental illness, heartbreak and suicide eerily echoes Thompson’s own, “26:1” is also a bittersweet tribute to the music that helped Thompson survive a rocky childhood spent bouncing between his parents and maternal grandparents.

“There’s 26 years in an hour of darkness and you’re lost in a hotel room You can’t recall the night ever taking so long to break through You spent your life praying for someone to tell you the truth ’Cause you were raised by lies, dissatisfied, so lonely and blue”

“I’m quite proud of all of the tunes on 26 Years and all of the great people I assembled to work on them,” Thompson says. “Some of the songs are about my relationship with my mother. Some are about my relationship with my fiancé. Some are about my relationship with the South. Some are about my relationship with myself.”

“I’ve run so far from nowhere, I can’t go back to say nothing to you/ And truth is what you find inside yourself when your dreams don’t come through,” he sings on “Virginia.” Like “Forgive You,” another dramatic high point, it’s sung over a quietly relentless mandolin and a Dobro whose keening tone underscores Thompson’s barely contained wail, its lyrics piercing with the force of hard memory: “I could not leave home/ Home left me.”

Thompson eyes his past like a gauge to keep him honest. Resolutely focused on the future, despite having survived a childhood straight out of a gothic Flannery O’Connor novel, he’s no victim; rather, he’s a scarred but savvy observer of life and the human beast. Like the truest of artists, he translates his pain into insight that informs his art. He maintains balanced perspective on his experiences by viewing them as characters or events within a more expansive canvas, a la revered novelists and painters such as Vladimir Nabakov, James Joyce, Jean-Michel Basquiat and Vincent Van Gogh. “William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury is about this certain type of family that’s sort of dying out in the South,” he comments. “That’s sort of the picture that I wanted to paint, because at the end of the day I wouldn’t be trying to release a record that was done just for my own personal therapy. I want to release a record that other people can relate to as well.”

Currently booking tour dates through the summer and fall, he also has an album release and a wedding looming on the near horizon. 2009 is going to be a very busy year. “Getting married and going on tour and promoting a record — that couldn’t be better for me,” he enthuses. “I’m so excited, I can’t wait for it to get here.

“This is the only job I know how to do. I’m happiest when I do it, and everyone around me is happy when this is what I’m doing. It’s been a pretty strange experience getting here, and not the one I envisioned for myself. But I guess it never is for anybody.”

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To learn more about Allen Thompson, visit www.allen-thompson.com and www.myspace.com/allenthompsonmusic. All press inquiries should be directed to Annissa Mason at annissa@brookescompany.com.

The Scorpion in the Story (2009)

Tori Sparks calls Nashville home, but spends most of her time on the road in the U.S. and Europe. Called “a knockout” by the Village Voice, her dynamic live show is equal parts eye-popping soul-singing, and zany stand-up-style humor. Tori’s third album, The Scorpion in the Story, was co-produced with indie rock veteran David Henry (R.E.M., Ben Folds, Josh Rouse, Widespread Panic, Cowboy Junkies) , and features players such as Steve Bowman (Counting Crows), Will Kimbrough (Rodney Crowell), Viktor Krauss (Lyle Lovett, Mindy Smith, Allison Krauss), Fats Kaplin (Mark Knopfler, Kevin Welch), and Barry Walsh (Gretchen Peters).

The Scorpion in the Story is a tale in thirteen chapters, a tour diary in the form of a concept album. Each song was written about one of the many colorful individuals Tori met while touring across the U.S. last year. The album includes a French version of the song “Merry Go-Round,” (“Le Manege”), and will released on Glass Mountain Records on June 16th, 2009. The music video for “Merry Go-Round” features a 100-year-old carousel as well as the Music City Rollerderby Girls.

Tori’s relentless touring has taken her from New York to Los Angeles to Miami, from Toronto to London to Paris, and through every small town in between. She books most of her own shows, and does all of her own laundry. In 2008 and 2009, Tori has showcased at Folk Alliance, Bele Chere, American MusicFest, many other conferences and festivals, and played nearly 200 shows to boot. She recently performed on Woodsongs Old-Time Radio Hour alongside Rolling Stones pianist Chuck Leavell.

Tori is the author of two courses for roaming music business education organization ProMusicU, and is the creator of The Feed Your Soul Guitar Project, a tour and folk art auction benefiting Oxfam America. Besides her big black boots, and balls-to-the-wall guitar playing, she is known for being a part of and organizing benefit concerts on behalf of the National Federation of the Blind, F.A.C.E., the March of Dimes, and the One Campaign. Tori’s song “Leaving Side of Love” from is included in a 120-song series dedicated to the Campaign to Save Paste Magazine.

Under This Yellow Sun (2007)

Tori’s sophomore album, Under This Yellow Sun, was released in 2007, and was the first release under the auspices of Tori’s own record label (Glass Mountain Records) and publishing company (Hand Over Foot Publishing). It has been praised by Relix, Harp, Maverick, Performing Songwriter, Skope, The Nashville Scene, XM Radio, and countless others. After breaking the Top 100 on the RIYL Weighted College Charts, the album was licensed by MTV, Lifetime, and the Oxygen Network for use in their upcoming 2009 television seasons. A subsequent feature by XM Radio Unsigned prompted Universal Music France to contact Sparks, has toured in France and other parts of Europe. Universal included Sparks’ single “Cold War” on their double-disc compilation Country Vol. 2, which has sold 35,000+ copies. "Cold War" is also featured on the Paste Magazine New Music Sampler released in June 2008.

Rivers + Roads (2005) and Tidewaters EP (2003)

Contrary to popular belief, Sparks did not emerge Venus-like from Lake Michigan on a gigantic seashell. Tori was born in Chicago, and grew up in Sarasota, FL. She recorded her first EP, Tidewaters, in 2003, while attending Florida State University. . The four-song project attracted the attention of a small independent label based in Nashville. The label snapped her up, promptly recorded her debut album and music video Rivers + Roads in 2005, moved her to Music City… and even more promptly went belly-up. Where some would crumble, Tori emerged from the wreckage and dove into eight solid months of exhaustive touring, radio, and video promotion. Her work paid off, as radio and video airplay in the U.S., Belgium, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Ireland, France, and England resulted.

The music video "Rivers + Roads" was screened at the Flint Film Festival 2006, and was selected "Best Pop Video" by the Indie Gathering 2006. Tori was selected as a Unisong International Songwriting Contest Finalist for her politically-charged alterna-blues tune "The Poster Child” in 2005, and again in 2007 for “Cold War.”

Tom Mason is a true renaissance man. Life is a department store and Tom Mason is running up and down the aisles filling his pockets. A fine guitarist, a sizzling slide player and multi-instrumentalist, a seasoned actor, and a passionate songwriter, Mason is above all an entertainer, eager to share his lust for life every time he straps on a guitar or hits the stage.. Since arriving in Nashville in 1993, Mason has not only established himself as a favorite in nightclubs and studios, he’s also become a sought after actor in theater and film. With his new CD Alchemy, Tom Mason draws on all his talents to create a work filled with magic.

As a solo artist, Mason has released three CD’s “Where Shadows Fall”, the instrumental “A Slide Guitar Christmas”, and the brand new "Alchemy". He has also released numerous collaborative CD’s, including two by the Big Happy on Western Beat Records and one with Swampgrass, and has been featured on such compilations as “For Kate’s Sake: An Americana Christmas”, “The Other Side: Music of East Nashville”, and “Yuletide from the Other Side. In addition to being a solo artist and bandleader, Tom Mason has played lead guitar for a multitude of artists. Recently he’s been touring the US and Europe with Phil Lee, and frequently plays with Last Train Home, Supe Granda (of The Ozark Mountain Daredevils), and his wife, Australian Pru Clearwater..

In June of 2009 Tom Mason performed in greater Los Angeles in a critically acclaimed production of the Broadway musical “Ring of Fire: The Music of Johnny Cash”, a show with which he toured the country in 2007/2008. Earlier in the year he played Clarence (brother of the king) and Derby in Nashville Shakespeare Festival’s "Richard III" in a production in which the Yorks and the Lancasters are competing performers on a Vaudeville stage. As a frequent member of Nashville’s Actor’s Bridge Ensemble, Tom has had roles in Mary Zimmerman’s "Arabian Nights" and "Metamorphoses", "American Duet", "How I Learned to Drive", and as the Stage Manager in "Our Town". In 2007 he was a guest artist at the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center during their Cabaret Conference.

Tom Mason’s most recent film role was as Shams in Pouria Montazeri’s Shams and Rumi: The Fragrance of Axis Mundi, a visually stunning film about the Persian poet Rumi’s mystical transformation. Other roles have included kidnappers, drug dealers, the devil, and Dolly Parton’s Dobro player in a lifetime television movie.

Tom Mason (b.1898 Theodore Mashowitz) was the youngest of seven children of Rudolf and Minnie Mashowitz, who immigrated from Prussia in 1892. Rudolf Mashowitz was the inventor of the home entertainment center,c.1895, which, due to the rarity of electronic devices at the time, failed to catch on for another seventy years.

Recognizing her youngest son’s talent, Minnie Mashowitz re-christened Theodore “Tiny Tommy Mason” and would routinely usher the seven year old onto the stage of a Vaudeville show while another act was performing, where the ever-charming carrot top would execute his masterful impression of a fish. Within months, posters of the mother and son were pasted on stage doors, and a star was born.

With the advent of the talking motion picture (1928) and the inevitable decline of Vaudeville, (and the proliferation of fish impersonators) , Tom dropped the “Tiny” from his moniker and began to prepare for the birth of rock and roll, spending the next three decades searching for the perfect pomade. By the time Elvis, Chuck Berry, and Little Richard burst onto the scene, Tom was already a legend in the Poconos, where his upbeat interpretation of “Why Not Minot?” was a hit among returning honeymooners.

In the nineteen sixties, when psychedelia and the summer of love was sweeping the nation, Tom joined in on the fun and headed to Nashville, landing there in 1993.

The right Reverend Thomas Ezekial Mason, (b. 1935 Cat’s Paw, TN), followed in the footsteps of his father, spreading the gospel in the Church of Holy Matters and Pastry Suggestions. However, the budding preacher faltered in his libidinous teens, collecting the offerings at prayer meetings and spending them at dens of perdition. Cast off from the church and falling into a life of sin, he chanced to stumble into a roadhouse where the jukebox was playing Hank Williams’ “I Saw the Light”, and at that point returned to the church with a new ferver and began his long battle to have Hank canonized.

Tom Mason (b.1972, Fort Wayne, Indiana) is best known for the discovery of “Alt- Country”. “I can’t remember what year it was, but I walked into a bar somewhere and saw this band who used to play punk rock singing a Hank Williams song, wearing cowboy hats, and talking in a really bad southern drawl”. Mason had previously discovered Christian Rock (he was listening to the radio one day when he heard Stryper singing about Jesus), and is widely credited with the discovery of neo-facist talk radio (though some would dispute that, as he was never able to listen long enough to verify what he was hearing.) Among other innovations Mason has made in the music business are Standing-on-the-bar-with-a-microphone® and Offending-the-nice-couple from-Indianapolis®.