Erin McKeown has packed a ton of music into her young career. With seven recordings to her credit, the 29-year-old songwriter and multi-instrumentalist hasn’t stopped for a breather in the last 10 years. Along the way she has averaged 200 shows a year and garnered the praise of fans and critics alike. After high school, she attended Brown University, where she earned a degree in ethnomusicology and spent her evenings performing in local bars and coffeehouses. After making the semi-finals for the Songwriters’ Association of Washington, DC, Mid-Atlantic Song Contest, she released her debut album, Monday Morning Cold on her own TVP label in 1995.

McKeown spent a time performing around the Northeast with other young singer/songwriters Beth Amsel, Jess Klein, and Rose Polenzani as the collaborative group, Voices on the Verge. Since then, she has slowly gained notoriety among Americana enthusiasts, though managing to skirt national recognition on a large scale. She has appeared regularly at festivals around the world, including Falcon Ridge Folk Festival, Boston Folk Festival and Newport Music Festival, and continues to tour on a rigorous schedule. McKeown’s album, Sing You Sinners (2007), is a tribute to classic jazz and swing numbers, and marks somewhat of a departure for the artist, though not entirely. In fact, McKeown has often veered from the strictest interpretation of American folk songs, playing pop, rock, electronic, and other forms of music. Lafayette, her latest album, is her first live album, recorded at the well-known New York cabaret, Joe’s Pub, located on Lafayette Street.

. . .

Iain Campbell Smith is a former Australian diplomat who just happened to be a musician as well. He served as a civilian peace monitor in the war ravaged islands of the South Pacific. He learned pidgin dialect and began writing songs, in both English and pidgin, from the stories of the people he worked with as they struggled to build trust and peace after a bitter war. He became a celebrity on Bougainville Island collaborating with local musicians to release 20,000 copies of a “Songs of Peace” cassette, and hosting a weekly program on the islands’ only radio station. The Bagarap Empires CD reflects his experiences working in Pacific island conflict zones. This album was rated among the top five albums of the year by ABC Radio’s Paul Petran. Smith is a regular at major Australian festivals including the National, Woodford, and Blue Mountains. He has led workshops on “Songs of Peace” during which he often has attendees singing along in Papua New Guinea pidgin! Smith has also lived in the U.S. and has performed coast to coast. In concert he performs songs ranging from wry comic dirges to tender ballads of loss and survival reflecting personal stories from life in a conflict zone. He presents with a gentle humor and a unique gift for illuminating worlds both familiar and unfamiliar to the audience.

Airborne metaphors carry the songwriter Erin McKeown all the way through her fourth album, “We Will Become Like Birds” (Nettwerk). Her clear mezzo-soprano sounds perpetually optimistic, and so do the syncopated electric guitar parts she picks and plucks through the sparsely arranged but fully realized songs. A degree in ethnomusicology, and African undercurrents, separate her from more rhythmically earthbound folk-rockers. The ballast is lyrics about breakups and aftermaths; her first words on the album are “I’m in shambles, blown to bits by our troubles.” Those troubles give her something to rise above. Jon Pareles,
New York Times

. . .

You'd have to go a long way to find a singer-songwriter with more scope. From performing in the schoolrooms and on the airstrips of South Pacific islands to revving up the locals at dingy inner city pubs, Smith makes the term 'versatile' seem an understatement. . . . The crux of his craft is a wonderful sense of melody, wrapped in some of the most accomplished songwriting you will hear.
Matt Levey, Revolver Magazine