“This one feels a little different,” Joan Osborne says of her new release Love and Hate. In addition to being the beloved singer-songwriter and seven-time Grammy nominee’s eighth studio album and her eOne debut, the 12-song set is one of the most personally-charged, creatively ambitious efforts of her two-decades-plus recording career.
 

While Osborne has already earned a reputation as both a commanding, passionate performer and a frank, emotionally evocative songwriter, her soulful songcraft reaches a new level of musical and lyrical resonance on Love and Hate. Such insightful, emotionally complex new compositions as “Where We Start,” “Work On Me,” “Kitten’s Got Claws,” “Keep It Underground” and the pointed title track survey some of the more complicated terrain of romantic relationships, in a manner that’s rarely been attempted in popular music, while the album’s intimate, stripped-down sound marks a stylistic departure from the gritty blues-based rock for which Osborne is best known.
 

“I feel like each song on this album talks about a different aspect of love,” she says. “Love isn’t just one thing; it encompasses faith, passion, power struggles, humor, anguish, spirituality, lust, anger, everything on that spectrum. The people we love can bring out the very best and the absolute worst in us, because the leap that you make in trusting another person makes you vulnerable. When the endorphin rush of falling in love stops, that’s when the difficult work comes in. So I tried to come up with songs that were about different aspects of this continuum.
 

“These songs,” she continues, “were very influenced by things outside of the music world—poetry, film, short stories—that I felt had nailed truths about romantic love that I hadn’t heard a lot in popular music. The depictions of romantic love in blues and soul and pop music are usually either about the high of falling in love, the pain of being abandoned, or the power politics of breaking up with someone and kicking them to the curb. But in adult lives we seldom have the luxury of just saying ‘Alright, this isn’t working for me so I’m out of here.’ Most people’s situations lie somewhere between those extremes, and the challenge of navigating and surviving these situations is something that I wanted to reflect in these songs.”
 

Love and Hate is the product of an extended birth cycle that spanned no less than seven years—a period during which Osborne released two other albums and worked on an assortment of other musical projects. She and co-producer/guitarist Jack Petruzzelli—with whom she also recorded 2012’s Bring It On Home, which was nominated for a Grammy in the Best Blues Album category—had initially intended to make a lush, pastoral album in the mold of Van Morrison’s Astral Weeks or Nick Drake’s Pink Moon. But as she continued to write songs for the project, Osborne found herself drawn towards more personal subject matter.
 

“Jack brought me some pieces of music,” she explains, “and as I started putting lyrics and melodies to them, the lyrics that I was coming up with started to present a theme. It seemed very clear to me that these songs wanted to be a record about romantic love, so I didn’t fight it.”
 

The resulting album—which, in addition to Osborne’s sublimely expressive vocals and Petruzzelli’s stellar guitar work, features instrumental contributions from Wilco guitarist Nels Cline and Spin Doctors drummer Aaron Comess, and backup vocals by Gail Ann Dorsey, Catherine Russell and Ollabelle member Amy Helm—more than justifies the amount of time and energy that went into its creation.
 

“I feel like this record is like the novel that sat in the author’s drawer for 50 years,” Osborne notes. “More than any record I’ve ever done, it felt like it needed the time to change and evolve and become what it was supposed to be. Whenever you make a record, there’s always an element of uncertainty, of not knowing how people are going to receive it, and that was really amplified in this case because of the time element. But I felt like I had to keep going, so we just kept taking the next step and kept moving until it arrived at the place it had to be.”
 

The same creative dedication that spawned Love and Hate has been a hallmark of Joan Osborne’s work from the start. Although the Kentucky native grew up with a passion for music, when she arrived in New York City in the late 1980s, it was to attend New York University’s prestigious film school. But she couldn’t resist the pull of the city’s live music scene for long, and soon she was performing her own songs in downtown rock clubs and emerging as a popular presence in a vibrant scene of rootsy new acts that included such then-unknowns as Jeff Buckley, Chris Whitley, Blues Traveler and the Spin Doctors. In 1992, Osborne launched her own indie label, Womanly Hips, and released the live Soul Show: Live at Delta 88 and the studio EP Blue Million Miles.
 

Osborne’s regional success led to a major-label deal and the release of her 1995 multi-platinum breakthrough album Relish, which included her Number One single “One of Us.” That song, along with a well-received run on 1997’s inaugural Lilith Fair tour, introduced her to a wide audience. But Osborne quickly made it clear that she was more interested in musical integrity and creative longevity than transient pop success, and she made that point repeatedly with such subsequent albums as 2000’s Righteous Love, 2002’s How Sweet It Is, 2005’s Christmas Means Love, 2006’s Pretty Little Stranger, 2007’s Breakfast in Bed, 2008’s Little Wild One and 2012’s Bring It On Home.
 

Osborne’s talents have also made her a sought-after collaborator and guest performer. She joined forces with the surviving members of the Grateful Dead when they regrouped to tour in 2003 as The Dead, sang with Motown’s legendary Funk Brothers in the acclaimed 2002 documentary Standing in the Shadows of Motown, and produced two albums for the great blues trio the Holmes Brothers. She’s shared stages with a wide range of performers, including Bob Dylan, Stevie Wonder, Emmylou Harris, Patti Smith, Melissa Etheridge, Taj Mahal, Luciano Pavarotti and the Chieftains. More recently, Osborne has toured and recorded as a member of Trigger Hippy, which also includes rising Americana star Jackie Greene and Black Crowes drummer Steve Gorman.
 

Love and Hate shows Joan Osborne’s creative iconoclasm, and her determination to make music on her own terms, to be as strong as ever.
 

“The experience of coming up playing in clubs,” she says, “made me understand that this is about communicating with other human beings, and that music has this incredible power to communicate and to uplift people. That’s the thing that keeps me feeling good about giving my life to this. As difficult as any of the other stuff gets, I can still look out into the audience and still have that sense that whatever I’m doing in that moment is reaching people and that it has meaning for them.
 

“I’m getting better at what I do,” Osborne concludes. “I can look at the songs on Love and Hate and realize that it’s better than I could have done 15 or 20 years ago. I have an audience that I’ve built up over time, and I feel like they’re with me. And because of that, I don’t feel any pressure to fit myself into anyone else’s idea of what I should be doing. So I feel like I can write my own rules at this point. That can be scary, but it’s also liberating, and it’s an exciting place to be.”
 

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Dan Zanes occupies a unique place in American music where sea shanties, English music hall, North American and West Indian folk music, play party songs, the spirit of early rock-and-roll and soulful originals collide. With his band, Dan Zanes and Friends, he has toured the world sharing handmade 21st century social music with enthusiastic crowds of kids and kid sympathizers.
 
From thrift shop basements to Carnegie hall, from Brooklyn to Bahrain and beyond, the Grammy award winner has been introducing new songs and reconnecting people to songs that have always been there, and still are—although people may have forgotten about them. Referred to as “the family-music genre’s most outspoken and eloquent advocate” by Time Magazine, his widely- acclaimed music has all been featured on Sesame Street, Playhouse Disney, Nickelodeon, HBO Family and Sprout.
 
In 2014, Dan partnered with the Brooklyn Conservatory of Music to launch an innovative new music education program for kids. In Dan Zanes House Party: Songs and Stories from Americas Neighborhoods, children and their parents sing, dance, listen, and learn to make music an integral part of their everyday lives while interacting with the music and stories of the diverse cultures that make up America’s neighborhoods. Children in the classes are able to explore the rich tapestry of American folk traditions through songs, stories, movement, puppetry and games. Learn more at http://bqcm.org/danzanes.htm
 
Zanes was born in Exeter, New Hampshire in 1961. He was a member of the Del Fuegos from the beginning to the end of the eighties and with them made The Longest Day(1984), Boston, Mass (1985), Stand Up (1987), Smoking in the Fields (1989), and the hit single, “Don’t Run Wild.” In 1994, he released a solo CD, Cool Down Time, shortly after which he moved to Brooklyn, New York with his family, where he then released Rocket Ship Beach (2000) which became an immediate hit with families around America as well as with The New York Times Magazine, which said, “Zanes’ kids music works because it is not kids music; it’s just music—music that’s unsanitized, unpasteurized, that’s organic even.”
 
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Miss Redbone’s music flows equally from her own unique, award-winning blend of Native American elements with funk and her deep roots in Appalachian folk and Piedmont blues favored by the matriarchy that raised her on a rich sojourn from Clinch Mountain, Virginia to Harlan County, Kentucky and beyond to Brooklyn’s Dodge City-esque mean streets. Indeed, Garden Of Love seamlessly evokes the mid-20th century old timey gold rush when such artists as her fellow Kentuckians Jim Ford and Jackie DeShannon fearlessly infused their downhome blues between canyon air ballets and retronuevo cabinessence – before their followers developed newgrass and Redbone’s twangy forebears Buffy Sainte-Marie and Rita Coolidge brought Indigenous concerns to the rock & roll arena in the 1970s. Yet don’t call this project bluegrass or the purists might have a fit.

Jen Chapin’s music is urban folk soul — story songs that search for community and shared meaning, powered by the funk and improvisation of the city. Critics have hailed her work as “brilliant.. soulfully poetic” (NPR), “thoughtful … worth-savoring” (People), “addictive” (Boston Globe), “smart, observant, lyrically deft, politically aware and emotionally intuitive” (Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel). JazzTimes has called her “a first-rate storyteller” while Relix regards her as “one of the freshest voices singing today.” Jen has been featured on “Late Nite with Conan O’Brien”, NPR’s Mountain Stage and WoodSongs Old-Time Radio Hour, Sirius Satellite’s The Loft with Mike Marrone and Mary Sue Twohy’s The Village, been honored by the USA Songwriting Competition, has performed on stage with Bruce Springsteen, and has opened up for Bruce Hornsby, Smokey Robinson, and the Neville Brothers.
 
After the original songs on her 2004 release Linger and her 2006 effort Ready were met with critical acclaim, Jen’s recent work has highlighted her gift for interpreting classic songs — notably those with a message. Her 2008 CD/DVD Light of Mine featured songs from Van Morrison, Radiohead, Joni Mitchell and others, as well as live performances filmed at NYC’s Joe’s Pub and other music videos. In 2010 the audiophile label Chesky Records released Jen’s ReVisions: Songs of Stevie Wonder. Both albums were built on the strength and intimacy of live performances from small ensembles: Light of Mine was a collaboration with her husband, acoustic bassist Stephan Crump, and his “Rosetta Trio” with Liberty Ellman and Jamie Fox on guitars. ReVisions had Jen joining forces with Stephan and Chris Cheek on saxophones. The Jen Chapin Trio as well as Jen with Rosetta Trio have toured over this time throughout the US and UK.
 
A 2011 EP release titled 5 songs, served as a prelude for the album Reckoning, Jen’s first full-length album of her original songs in 7 years, produced by 5-time Grammy award winner Kevin Killen. Reckoning is “songs of ambition (and the lack therof), of anger, and gratitude, of privilege, and being without, of being overwhelmed but still hungry for more life. In short, of family.”
 
Jen’s music reflects a diversity of experience. She is mother to 7 year old Maceo and 3 year old Van Crump, who most often accompany their parents on tour. She is an activist, with a life-long involvement in WhyHunger (founded in 1975 by Jen’s late father Harry Chapin), an organization that champions innovative, community-based solutions to hunger and poverty; and is also active in the local and sustainable food movement. She is an educator, leading workshops and presentations to college, community and church groups, with a background teaching full-time in Brooklyn classrooms. And she is a student, with a BA in International Relations from Brown University, additional studies at Berklee College of Music, extensive travels and studies in Zimbabwe and Mexico, and an ongoing passion to learn more about the world, and its emerging pathways to greater social justice.

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“a shockingly gifted, stunningly complex performer who’s just slightly out of place in too simple a setting.” – LA Times

“Watching Kaki King perform is like seeing guitar-playing for the first time… The effect is of sculpting rather than of playing music.” – NY Mag

“bare, powerful, and propulsive.” – KUTX Austin

Hailed by Rolling Stone as “a genre unto herself,” Brooklyn-based composer and guitarist Kaki King has released 8 albums over the past 13 years. She has performed on every continent over the course of multiple world tours, and has presented her work in a variety of prestigious arts centers, including the Kennedy Center, MoMA, LACMA and The Met. She has created music for numerous film and TV soundtracks, including “August Rush” and Sean Penn’s “Into the Wild”, for which received a Golden Globe nomination for Best Original Score.

Her most recent work until now, “The Neck Is A Bridge To The Body,” is Kaki at her visionary best: deconstructing and redefining the role of solo instrumental artist though virtuoso technique, insatiable imagination, and boundless humanity. This groundbreaking new multi-media performance uses projection mapping to present the guitar as an ontological tabula rasa in a creation myth unlike any other, where luminous visions of genesis and death, textures and skins, are cast onto her signature Ovation Adamas guitar which has been customized specifically for this production.

Atoosa Grey is a poet and singer-songwriter living in Brooklyn, NY. She has released one EP and three CD’s: Out of the Jar, Sound Travels Up, Night of the Deep Bloom, and most recently When the Cardinals Come. She has performed nationally and contributed music to several independent films.
 
Her poems have appeared on Fat City Review, The Best American Poetry Blog, Eunoia Review, and in Common Ground Review. She has received a 2nd place prize in the Paul Violi Poetry Contest.
 
Atoosa is also a piano teacher with her own studio in Brooklyn, NY.
 
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Chilean singer/songwriter/arranger CLAUDIA ACUÑA possesses one of the most beautiful and compelling voices in jazz and creative music. While singing primarily in Spanish, her music crosses language barriers to communicate with power and deep feeling.
 
Acuña was born in Santiago, Chile on July 31, 1971. When she was quite young, her family moved first to the mining town of Rancagua and then to Concepcion, the site of a rich arts community. A guitar was always around the house, as is the case in most South American homes, but her parents provided limited exposure to music and little encouragement when their daughter expressed an interest in the arts. “They saw music as a hobby, not a career,” she says. Yet once she heard recordings by Violeta Parra and Michael Jackson on the radio, she decided to become a singer. “The family did not own a television, so my imagination became my own TV. I began to fantasize about being in front of an audience, and would search the radio for things that moved me – from Parra and Michael Jackson to Earth, Wind and Fire to Mozart to movie musicals. When I finally heard people like Erroll Garner and Thelonious Monk, I was drawn to the music’s freedom without knowing that what they played was called jazz.”
 
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