Ward Hayden & the Outliers (Boston, MA)
Boston is one of America’s great music towns. But among the various styles the city is known for that have launched many musical acts to success and stardom, country music wasn’t a truly thriving genre there, that’s until singer, songwriter and guitarist Ward Hayden and his band The Outliers (formerly known as Girls Guns & Glory) sang and played their distinctive take on C&W with a rock’n’roll kick to the top of the Boston scene and a thriving, critically-acclaimed and highly-awarded career across America and in Europe.
Over the course of 10 albums and playing some 200 shows a year for most of the last two decades, Hayden & the Outliers became leading lights for contemporary country that integrates the music’s finest traditions into a sound Cincinnati City Beat hails as “incredibly endearing.” They’ve won seven Boston Music Awards (including Act of the Year), the French Country Music Awards crowned them the Independent Artist of the Year, plus an Americana Music Awards nomination for Artist of the Year. As well, they are a regular presence on the Americana chart and SiriusXM’s Outlaw Country channel.
South Shore, the group’s most recent release of original material, taps into a major country music tradition of writing about the small town where one grew up and calls home.
The FBR (Leiper’s Fork, TN)
The FBR is fronted by Malarie McConaha and Tim Hunter. McConaha is the band’s lead singer and electric guitar player while Hunter plays acoustic guitar, harmonica, and vocals. The two met at an open mic night at Puckett’s (now Fox and Locke), the local watering hole in Leiper’s Fork outside of Nashville. They bonded over their love of Leonard Cohen and what started as an acoustic project became a blues, roots, and southern rock-inspired band named to honor the Cohen song “Famous Blue Raincoat,” from his album The Songs of Love and Hate. Ghost, their debut album, was released in January 2024.
Golden Everything (Nashville, TN)
Made up of Zach Schmidt and Jackie Berkley, the husband-and-wife duo Golden Everything embody all that’s precious about making music with one’s partner.
A graduate of Berklee College of Music — no relation —Jackie has been singing since before she could talk. When she moved to Nashville, she sought out the best live music spots in town. On a hot July night a few years ago, that was at Santa’s Pub, Music City’s beloved dive bar. When Zach stepped up to the mic and began singing a Townes Van Zandt song, something inside Jackie told her she’d found her creative, romantic, and life partner.
A native of Pittsburgh, Zach’s upbringing was informed by the city’s gritty steel fabrication industry and the Pirates’ dismal baseball seasons. He channeled that underdog spirit into his writing and, when he landed in Nashville, released a pair of celebrated solo albums, 2016’s The Day We Lost the War and 2020’s Raise a Banner, the latter recorded with Jason Isbell’s 400 Unit as his backing band.
About the author: Mild-mannered corporate executive by day, excitable Twangville denizen by night.