When 17-year-old Sean Rowe was a fledgling songwriter in Troy, New York, he discovered Otis Redding’s vocal tour-de-force “Open the Door” which inspired him to sing. Listening to Rowe’s limber voice it’s easy to hear traces of the great Redding but Rowe is more than just another blue-eyed soul singer. After honing his songcraft in open mics, bars and cafes, Rowe joined forces with percussionist Marco Halber as the duo Mudfunk which produced a live album. Rowe released his first solo album, Magic, in 2009 and after that things really took off. He was invited to open for indie rock darlings Noah and the Whale in the UK and signed with ANTI-Records, which released Rowe’s second disc The Salesman and the Shark in 2012. Rowe performed the jangly, psychedelic-flavored single “Downwind” on Jimmy Kimmel Live in the same year.

Unlike previous, more produced discs, every cut on Her Songs was recorded in a single take with just Rowe on guitar and a touch of harmonica. Rowe’s stripped-down acoustic takes of songs by Sade, Cat Power, Neko Case, Regina Spektor, Feist and Lucinda Williams are drawing rave reviews. Another notch in Sean’s growing resume occurred in late September when he opened for the legendary Robert Plant of Led Zeppelin at the Capitol Theatre in Port Chester, NY.

The road can be a lonely place for a musician, but not Rowe, who often travels with his wife Christina and their children. Their blog, This Is Our Life, is a playful, personal and unfiltered chronicle of “our messy, strange, nomadic lifestyle.” A common thread throughout the blog is Rowe’s desire to connect with nature, with his audience, with the world. Rowe is an avid naturalist who completed a 24-day solo survival trek, foraging for wild food and sleeping in a shelter crafted from leaves and twigs. When he isn’t on the road or recording, Rowe leads wilderness survival workshops and wild edible plant foraging tours. “My love affair with nature reaches far into my music, my personal life, and my spirituality.”

Photo by Anthony Saint James

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Hushed, haunting, hypnotic, ethereal, otherworldly. These are some of the adjectives that capture the experience of listening to Allysen Callery, a self-taught folk artist from nearby Rhode Island. Although her roots are in the tiniest state just south of Massachusetts, Callery sounds like the long lost sister of Sandy Denny and other bewitching nightingales of the British Folk Revival. While her spellbinding performances and masterful and understated finger-picked guitar have cultivated a loyal fan base from Boston to Austin, Callery is revered in Europe, in particular Germany, Switzerland and the UK, where she frequently tours.

In 2016, Callery’s sixth full-length album, The Song The Songbird Sings, will be released on the German label JellyFant. Reviewing Callery’s 2013 disc Mumblin’ Sue, Rolling Stone said it best: “If flickering candlelight has a musical dimension, so it might sound.”

Photo by Jarige photography

• Singer Sean Rowe has a deep soulful voice that can stir even the most hardened soul. NPR
• In the tradition of Leonard Cohen and Van Morrison, Rowe utilizes his extraordinarily soulful baritone, along with a poet’s skill, to sketch a world where man and nature lie down uneasily side by side. Anti-Records
• On paper, Sean Rowe’s music should be the stuff of ineffectual self-parody. He is, after all, a bearded guy who sings acoustic folk-rock songs, complete with themes revolving around humanity’s relationship to nature. But this is big, bold muscular stuff — a closer relative of Man vs. Wild than the nearest coffeehouse. National Public Radio, Tiny Desk Concerts
• [Sean Rowe] recalls the ecstatic intensity of late-’60s Van Morrison and stark subtlety of late-era Johnny Cash. The Wall Street Journal
• . . .
• When she’s not singing with the sumptuous group Haunt The House, Allysen Callery is bringing back to life the delicate and soul-stirring sounds of the folk revival that swept through the UK in the ’60s and ’70s. In fact, her lilting voice and heartfelt lyrics are eerily close to the work of the late British songstress Sandy Denny, the highest compliment I could hand down to this brilliant artist. It’s little wonder then that she has gained a welcome audience in Europe, where she will be touring this coming fall. Now it’s time for folks in her home country to sit up and take notice. Robert Ham for Paste Magazine
• While the hypnotic intertwining of Callery’s fancy finger-picking lulls you into a meditative state, it’s her petal-soft lilt that really does a number on your heart-strings, plucking them with the same fervor as she does her guitar. The music is stoic yet still yearningly bitter-sweet. The lyrics, poetic and steeped in country wisdom, relate stories of heartache seen through sadder-but-wiser eyes. The power isn’t only in the words themselves, but in they way they’re sung — in a melancholy, reverberating sean-nós style. Something tells me she could be singing in Swahili or Cantonese and anyone with ears would still have some idea of what she was singing about. Will Barry for The Noise-Boston

• Sean Rowe’s

• Website | Video | Interview

• Allysen Callery’s

• Website | Video