Clara Baker is a musician/producer/audio engineer from Portland, OR. Her sophomore release, Things To Burn (2019), was recorded live to tape in a Wisconsin living room with Grammy-winning engineer Brian Joseph (Sufjan Stevens, Bon Iver) and produced by avant-folk experimentalist Shane Leonard (Miles of Music Alumn!). The album also featured Miles of Music all-stars Courtney Hartman and Zachariah Hickman. It was during this week of recording that she experienced the difference that each and every microphone can have on a song. This led her down a rabbit hole, where she learned that less than 5% of producers and engineers are women. Determined to change this, Clara enrolled in community college and took all the audio engineering and producing courses she could between tours. After completing several internships/apprenticeships and assisting engineers on recording sessions all over the Portland area, in 2020 she was hired as an audio engineer/producer at The Rye Room Recording Studio -- a boutique studio in SW Portland, where she still works today recording, editing, producing, mixing and mastering music. Clara is a member of SoundGirls, and is passionate about transforming the culture of recording studios, and supporting other women in audio. Randomly, mid-pandemic, she developed a love of painting & refinishing furniture, and started a successful furniture flipping YouTube channel (Know Can Do) where she documents her learning/creative process weekly.

www.clarabakermusic.com

Rachel Garcia is a singer, poet, and songwriter, and performs as one half of the duo, The Singer and The Songwriter. An accomplished poet, her work has been published in anthologies from the Marin Poetry Center and Redwood Writers. As a singer, her evocative alto voice is rooted in ease and precision, with focus on vocal health and sustainability. She has toured and performed across the US and released 3 albums with The Singer and The Songwriter and will release a full-length LP in 2022.

www.thesingerandthesongwriter.com

Omar Ruiz-Lopez is a bilingual songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and co-founder of the original Americana group Violet Bell. Omar was born in Panama and raised in Puerto Rico with Spanish as his first language. His love of music began at an early age thanks to his father's frequent renditions of traditional Caribbean folk songs.

Omar is a composer at heart, and is experienced in music performance, production and engineering. The diversity of his own experience as a multi-genre musician and Latine immigrant helps him connect with diverse international audiences.

When not playing the fiddle or swinging a guitar around, he enjoys cooking, dog-petting and reading fantasy and fiction when life gets too heavy. If you see him talking to himself, don’t worry; he’s just working it out!

www.violetbell.net

Ray Rizzo is a drummer, composer, vocalist and producer who has recorded and/or performed with Bob Weir, King Kong, Dawn Landes, Glen Hansard, Josh Ritter, Julia Stone, Danger Mouse, Bonnie "Prince" Billy, Mark Erelli, Anais Mitchell, David Pajo, Bridget St. John, Doveman/Thomas Bartlett, Ben Folds, Sam Cohen, David Wax Museum, Trixie Whitley, Rhett Miller, Lady Rizo, Days Of The New, Chocolate Genius, James Rado, Mx. Justin Vivian Bond, Emmylou Harris, Daniel Lanois and Yo Yo Ma. He has collaborated with playwrights and developed works for theater, receiving a 2007 Drama Desk nomination for Best Music in A Play (Adam Rapp's Essential Self-Defense) and performing in the company for New York Shakespeare Festival's 2009 production of Twelfth Night in Central Park with Audra McDonald, Raul Esparsa and Anne Hathaway, featuring music by the band HEM.

Ray has founded many bands and musical projects in which he does any combination of drumming, writing, and singing, including the Louisville KY-based instrumental trio Java Men which will celebrate 30 years of existence in 2022. Ray is the founder of Motherlodge, which presents live events and assists bands, artists, and organizations with booking, management, and organization of performances and community events. He is also the creator and producer of On What Grounds, a podcast based in the Bushwick neighborhood of Brooklyn NY that explores property rights and coexistence.

Lizzy Ross is a singer-songwriter, visual artist, and co-founder of the original Americana group Violet Bell. Lizzy spent her childhood painting and paddling through the marshes of the Chesapeake. School brought her south to NC, where she discovered mountain folk who gathered over Sunday potlucks to sing together. Her solitary musical experiments grew community roots, and she started performing her original music in a band under her own name.

Eleven years and six albums later, Lizzy’s still humming and rhyming. She’s a dirt-loving lazy gardener who’s deeply curious about both literal and emotional composting - what gifts can spring from the garbage of life? Lizzy’s art and music explore human connections to the mystical and natural world, healing intergenerational trauma, and the myths and archetypes that frame our past and hold the vision for our collective future.

www.violetbell.net

Gabriella Simpkins is an award-winning singer-songwriter, composer, and musician hailing from Cape Cod, Massachusetts. Originally a hobbyist classical autist and incidental songwriter and arranger, Simpkins began to focus more seriously on a career in music in her freshman year of college. She originally planned to study biology and go to medical school to avoid the economic instability of an arts career, but very quickly realized that a STEM career gave her no sense of fulllment of purpose. Instead of doing homework, she would spend many nights teaching herself to play the guitar and reading voraciously about songwriting and music theory. She would regularly practice in three-to-four-hour sessions and study the lyrics of indie rock and folk legends like Elliott Smith, Nick Drake, and Sufjan Stevens. She began to devote most of her free time to songwriting and composing arrangements for her songs, and began playing original songs as a solo artist at local open mics and events on Cape Cod with encouragement from friends.

Gabriella’s undergraduate studies are now focused in music theory and composition, which has greatly enhanced the cerebral quality of her songwriting and brought to life the depth of her lyricism. An avid student of Impressionism, her songs, instrumentals, and art music are rife with complex harmonies, unshakable melodies, and clever metaphors, all rolled together with hints of very successfully integrated teenage vulnerability. Currently, Gabriella performs regularly in the Boston area and works as a freelance composer while nishing her undergraduate studies at Salem State University. She has won awards from the Cape-based Eventide Theater Company for her songwriting and received grants from the esteemed Club Passim to support her creative journey.

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Valerie Thompson is a Boston-based cellist/composer/songwriter/improviser who has performed nationally and internationally in rock bands, string quartets, chamber folk ensembles and as a cultural ambassador for the U.S. State Department. A cellist versed in many genres, Valerie currently tours with Laura Cortese & the Dance Cards and the MIDI-Marimba/cello duo, Goli. Valerie holds a Bachelors of Music in Music Performance from the Berklee College of Music and a Masters of Music in Contemporary Improvisation from the New England Conservatory. Composer credits include the Umbrella Stage Company’s 2020 production of Bent, and “Bonylil’s: Creation.”

Fun Fact: You can catch Valerie in the 100th episode of WB’s Gossip Girl.

www.valeriethompson.com

Thu Tran is a guitarist and songwriter and one half of the duo The Singer and The Songwriter. He is a self-taught guitarist that blends fingerstyle, clawhammer guitar, and flatpicking for a hybrid style that is uniquely his own. His approach to guitar encourages curiosity over correctness, and keeps the love of music at the heart of his teaching. With The Singer and The Songwriter, he has toured and performed all across the US and released 3 albums of music, with a full-length LP due out later in 2022.

www.thesingerandthesongwriter.com