Season 12 Lineup

Real Life Real Music is excited to announce the Season 12 lineup that will begin the series’ sixth year. “I’m so proud we made it to the five year mark of bringing Real Life to the live audiences and radio listeners,” states founder and host Kyle Hutton.

Season 12 is packed with talented artists with a rich Texas country heritage. Stars like Pat Green, The Trishas, Collin Raye and Cory Morrow will surely make this a season to remember!

Real Life Real Music is recorded live at Dosey Doe in The Woodlands, Texas and edited for rebroadcast on the Real Life syndicated network of 13 radio stations. All air times and station information can be found at realliferealmusic.com/radio. Season 12 of Real Life will provide listeners more opportunities to go “behind the lives and songs of their favorite artists.”

Season 12 artists include:

Kathryn Hallberg, February 5, 2013
Kathryn began creating her own unique blend of acoustic, folk and pop music when she wrote her first song, “No Surprise,” at age 11. She made her performance debut at an open mic shortly thereafter and has been performing steadily ever since. In addition to headlining shows, Kathryn has been the opening act for many notable local and national artists, including Susan Gibson, Carolyn Wonderland, Michael Martin Murphey, Lorrie Morgan and Grammy nominee Marcia Ball. In early 2009, Kathryn released her debut CD, a 4-song collection entitled “No Surprise.” Reviewing the CD, the Houston Chronicle said “she pours herself into her uncluttered, pretty songs with humanity and a warm natural voice.” The Houston Press has described her as “already a mature songwriter, guitarist and singer of undeniable skill and exquisite appeal.”  Kathryn was recently invited to perform her song “Nocturnal” on the television show “Great Day Houston.”

 

Pat Green, February 19, 2013
It’s impossible to know your limits without testing them. It’s a truth that Pat Green has employed in his career, one that has propelled him to repeatedly refashion his sound, his approach and his own perception of who he is. He’s simultaneously a Grammy-nominated hit maker with an outsider reputation, a Texas inspiration and a mainstream country artist who can rock arena and stadium stages with the likes of Keith Urban and Kenny Chesney.

After building a reputation as an ace songwriter of his own material, Green is fighting limitations with Songs We Wish We’d Written II, a sequel to a 2001 album he recorded with longtime friend—and fellow Texan—Cory Morrow. Stocked with music penned by the likes of Lyle Lovett, Tom Petty, Shelby Lynne and Jon Randall, the disc—Green’s first for the acclaimed Sugar Hill label—mixes country, rock and blues in a manner that defies categorization. Petty’s “Even The Losers” and Collective Soul’s “The World I Know” will be familiar to just about anyone who gives the album a listen. Others, such as Aaron Lee Tasjan’s quirky “Streets Of Galilee” and Todd Snider’s burning “I Am Too,” are introductions from the underground to a large majority of music fans.

 

Sol Driven Train, March 12, 2013
Sol Driven Train’s music weaves through genres like images in a Tom Robbins paragraph. The band’s sonic schizophrenia absorbs songwriting influences like John Prine and Paul Simon, afrocaribbean rhythmic explorations, and funky New Orleans-style brass into earnest songs of life, love, loss, and long johns. The versatile 5-piece band, based in Charleston, SC, features rotating lead vocalists, and multi-instrumental talent spread across horns, strings, and percussion. Combining rich varieties of American pop and folk music into their own port-town sound, Sol Driven Train has carved out a unique musical identity within the burgeoning roots music scene.

 

The Rankin Twins, March 26, 2013
Three out of 1,000. That’s how rare April and Amy Rankin entered the world as identical twins. Growing up in the small Gulf coast town of Portland, Texas, the young, curly-haired duo proved at an early age that they were indeed a very unique pair. From performing their favorite country tunes at family gatherings to line dancing at country dance halls with their parents in Portland, the Rankin Twins had a natural gift for capturing everyone’s attention.

Fast-forward to today. April and Amy are still the charming, charismatic sisters everyone in Portland fell in love with. Only now, they are one of the hottest up-and-coming country artists in Texas with some impressive experience under their belt buckles. What used to be Christmas Eve performances in front of the family are now sold-out shows at Gruene Hall as an opener for Roger Creager. The trips to Portland dance halls have now transformed into headlining some of the most famous music venues in Austin. Their first single off their EP of the same name, “Headaches and Heartbreaks,” reached number 41 on the Texas Charts. Now, the Rankin Twins are more like one out of a million.

 

The Trishas, April 9, 2013
When Jamie Wilson, Liz Foster, Kelley Mickwee and Savannah Welch first shared a stage in January 2009, their intention was simply to perform a couple of songs as part of a tribute to Savannah’s father, singer-songwriter Kevin Welch. They had no plans to pursue a joint musical future — they didn’t even have a name, and wound up calling themselves The Trishas on a whim (it popped into their heads because they were covering a Welch-authored Trisha Yearwood hit).

But when magic happens, sometimes you have to give in to its power. The sound of their voices soaring in close four-part harmony so transfixed listeners that night in Steamboat, Colorado, that show offers began to come in, luring them into testing the waters as a group. By that September, The Trishas were showcasing at the Americana Music Association Conference & Festival in Nashville. The next year they recorded their EP, the somewhat tongue-in-cheekily titled They Call Us The Trishas. (Astute readers have likely noticed by now that there is no Trisha in the band, though fiddler Trisha Keefer Beckham was an auxiliary member until recently.) That August 2010 release signaled — to them, as well as fans — that their commitment was real. In 2012 they released their second album, High, Wide & Handsome.

 

Collin Raye, April 23, 2013
Born Floyd Elliot Wray on August 22, 1960, country artist Collin Raye was one of the true hit makers of the 1990s. Collin still continues to crank out soulful, heartfelt material with the honesty and richness that is signature to his vocals, making him one of the greatest vocalists of our time.

Collin Raye is nothing if not passionate. His fiery delivery has made country standards of such searing ballads as “In This Life,” “Not That Different” and “Little Rock.” Always an electrifying showman, he has also blazed through such vivid rockers as “My Kind of Girl,” “That’s My Story,” “I Can Still Feel You” and “I Want You Bad.” Collin shot to fame with “Love, Me” in 1991. Listeners were so touched that they used its lyrics at funerals and memorial services. That set the cornerstone for a career built on meaningful songs. “Little Rock” was an anthem for the recovery community. “Not That Different” pleaded for tolerance. “In This Life” became a wedding favorite. He won awards for the child advocacy video “I Think About You” and has been nominated five times as country music’s Male Vocalist of the Year.

 

Walt Wilkins & The Mystiqueros, May 7, 2013
Walt has made top shelf recordings that are direct evidence of the emotional depth of the man and the harmonious skills of the artist and his fellow muse compadres – Bull Creek Souvenir (1994, out of print), Fire, Honey & Angels (2000), Rivertown (2002), Mustang Island (2004), Hopewell (2006).  He cut Diamonds in the Sun with his Tejas soul brothers, the Mystiqueros, in early 2007, after about eight or nine months of initial seasoning and finding their tongues, treads and grooves.  The release of Diamonds in the Sun was followed with critical acclaim, many best of the year pick lists and considerable airplay on XM and Texas radio.

Walt completed his 7th record called Vigil in 2009 and it is a beautiful, honest and graceful kaleidoscope of the life cycle.  Vigil documents the ranging and interconnected thoughts of the author, who expresses concerns for his child, throws questioning fireballs at God, honors those close friends that fade too soon by carrying on, wonders what will happen to his life’s works when he passes, bathes in healing waters prior to his final judgment and mostly exercises a grateful heart and an agile mind. Walt has produced and cultivated creative records by a variety of artists including Brandon Rhyder, Jamie Richards, Jason Eady, Ryan James, Josh Grider, Bonnie Bishop, Autumn Boukadakis, Sam Baker, Monty Russell, Brian Langlinais, Bobby Duncan, Brad Hines and his lovely wife, Tina Mitchell Wilkins.

 

Willy and Cody Braun of Reckless Kelly, May 21, 2013
For fifteen years Reckless Kelly has been doing things their way, bucking the mainstream system and playing by their own rules, straddling the fence between country and rock as if they built it themselves. Throughout the years their old school approach to recording has always adhered to one main objective: make each record better than the last. Their latest effort, “Good Luck & True Love” is no exception to this rule. Recorded in an old farmhouse-turned studio in Austin Texas, and released on the band’s new independent label “No Big Deal Records,” the album is pure, driving, uncut Reckless Kelly. The songs are all written or co-written by front man Willy Braun and range in subject matter from road songs, (“Weatherbeaten Soul,” “Hit The Ground Running”) to songs about music, (“New Moon Over Nashville,” “I Stayed Up All Night Again”) and songs about good old-fashioned heartbreak (“Guarded Heart,” “She Likes Money, He Likes Love,” and “I Never Liked St. Valentine”). The album is the ninth in RK’s ever-growing catalogue and is the third they have produced by themselves.

 

Cory Morrow, June 4, 2013
Singer/songwriter Cory Morrow was born and raised in Texas, and he’s become a local legend in the Lone Star State, producing a handful of self-released albums and playing an endless string of shows from Amarillo to Corpus Christi that have made him a major attraction in the Southwest. Morrow was born in Houston on May 1, 1971, and began learning to play guitar when he was 15 on an instrument his stepfather won in a coin toss in a Mexican border town. Originally a fan of hard rock acts like ZZ Top and Led Zeppelin, Morrow started writing songs while in high school, but while studying at Texas Tech University in Lubbock, he developed a taste for Lone Star singer/songwriters such as Ray Wylie Hubbard and Robert Earl Keen, and struck up a friendship with fellow aspiring songwriter Pat Green.

Morrow enjoyed a career boost when Green recruited him to help record an album of classic country covers, Songs We Wish We’d Written. Morrow continued to record and tour at a frantic pace, and eventually he moved 200,000 discs in Texas through his own label. In 2008, Morrow released Vagrants and Kings, an album that featured several songs affirming his renewed faith in his own rough-and-tumble way, which received nationwide distribution under a new deal with Universal’s Sustain label.

 

The Dirty River Boys, June 25, 2013
You can tell a lot about a group of musicians by the name they give themselves. The Dirty River Boys make music with the type of sound and texture that is soaked in the realities of the hard-scrabble city they call home in the far west Texas desert. Members Nino Cooper, Travis Stearns, Marco Gutierrez and newest member Colton James on stand-up bass/banjo have become quickly renowned for their rousing live shows which feature the boys winning four-part harmonies and stout acoustic instrumentation. Fans clamored for the release of the band’s first two EPs, Long Cold Fall and Train Station, and buzz for their first full-length LP is deafening.

It takes determination and talent to make waves when you come from the dust and dirt of El Paso, but the Dirty River Boys are continually proving they are up to the challenge. By utilizing traditional folk instruments with rock and bluegrass arrangements, they are blazing a trail paved by their own, unique style of music. The Dirty River Boys’ style blows away any preconceived notions of what acoustic music can be. Harmonicas and fiddles cut melodies that blend with furious licks spilling from guitars and mandolins alongside explosive percussive rhythms all combined to create a whirling dervish of musicality.

 

Ed Jurdi and Gordy Quist of The Band of Heathens, July 2, 2013
Since emerging as a favorite new live band out of Austin, Texas in the late 2000s, the Band of Heathens’ Ed Jurdi and Gordy Quist have toured relentlessly, building a devout following and landing on some of the finest stages in music. Three studio albums and hundreds of shows later, they’ve evolved as musicians and broadened their sound. The Heathens got their start in late 2005 when a group of likeminded songwriters established residency gigs on the same night of the week at Momo’s, a club on Austin’s famous Sixth Street. Friendship, sit-ins and harmony jags gelled into something quite rare: a band with multiple front-men including Jurdi and Quist, each with enough humility and passion to invest in the larger project. The sum transcended the parts, and very quickly, word spread about TBoH’s special chemistry. The strong voices up front all played a role, whether as leaders or locked together in harmony.

 

Brandon Rhyder, July 16, 2013
Brandon Rhyder had a vision for his “Live at Billy Bob’s Texas” and new songs were definitely a top priority. “I just didn’t want to play all previously released songs. I wanted the fans to have something different and something with some new perspective mixed in with the songs that helped get us to where we are now,” Brandon said.

In this double disc set you will hear more outside written songs. Songs like “You Can’t Outdrink the Truth” by Walt Wilkins and Liz Rose and “Nowhere USA” by Keith Gattis; “Shine” by good friend and guitarist in the band Matt Powell; “In the Country” by Jon Randall and the final track called “Lucky Man” was penned by Paul Thorn. Brandon adds, “There are so many great writers and performers out there that I admire and I have wanted to record these tracks for some time. I also relate to these songs so I can sing them with ease and conviction, no pun intended. It’s nice to get to sing such great tunes.”

Of course, Brandon made sure to give the fans what they wanted too. Songs like “Freeze Frame Time,” “Backroads” and “Let the Good Times Roll” are all staples for any given Brandon Rhyder show. “As an artist there are songs that define your career and those songs need to be played at shows and most definitely placed on a “Live at Billy Bob’s Texas” record. We are so blessed to live this crazy dream and our fans are the reason we get to do so. I say it each night. Without them I’m a nine to fiver,” Brandon says with a smile. It’s easy to see and hear when you listen to this collection of tunes that Brandon really gave all he had on this recording… just like he does each and every night his feet touch the stage!