singer-songwriter

Tania Bowers still remembers the rabbit footprints that once dotted her bedroom floor. It's hard not to. That's where it all started, after all—where she'd hide for hours dreaming up songs, letting her imagination take flight alongside schoolteacher parents who were "great storytellers" and "didn't always separate fact from fiction." "I was an outsider from an early age," says Tania, a Sydney native who's weaved in and out of the Chicago music scene for the past decade. "I've always been quite comfortable with it, though."

Paul Howard has been toiling in song for more years than he cares to remember. He started out playing bass and writing songs for Dark Horse and This Happy Breed. When he was 20 he summoned up the courage to start singing. Paul started doing solo gigs as well as playing duo gigs with guitarist Jo Clack, and fronting The Tender Trap. His first ever recording, "We Will Win", was included on the compilation LP "Not Just Mandela", alongside The Neurotics, Billy Bragg and The Housemartins. This song brought about the downfall of Margaret Thatcher.

Amelia Curran is a Canadian singer-songwriter. She was born in St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador and currently lives in Halifax, Nova Scotia. The National Post describes her music as “a bit like Leonard Cohen being channeled in a dusty saloon by Patsy Cline.” Curran started playing guitar and writing songs as a teenager and eventually dropped out of university in order to busk on the streets of St. John’s. That led to her first album release in 2000, and since then she has released four more.

Hayward Williams grew up with a guitar in his hands, performing from an early age in cafés, bars, and eventually rock clubs throughout his home state of Wisconsin and around the Midwest. A high school 'Battle of the Bands' champion, the textbook lonely college kid making dinner dates with his guitar, Williams took the well-worn suburban route to musical accomplishment: he hit the ground running with a '64 Gibson that his mother bought at a garage sale, listened hard to everything from the Beatles to Buckley, and somewhere along the way began to write the tunes that would become his own voice.