Tom Graves

White Boy: A Memoir is one man's unvarnished story of love, loss, race, Memphis, and a dark past. Everything is laid bare when Memphis author, journalist, and college professor Tom Graves takes a vivid and deeply introspective account of his life.

"Orphans: Brawlers, Bawlers & Bastards" is a limited edition three CD set by Tom Waits, originally released in November 2006. The album is divided into three sections, with each disc being a separate collection in its own. It borrows from Tom Waits’ rock sound, with the first disc being blues and rock-based, the second centred on slow-tempo, melancholic ballads, and the third on more experimental compositions. Additionally, the record contains influences of other genres, including folk, gospel, jazz and roots music. Orphans: Brawlers, Bawlers and Bastards received universal acclaim from critics, who lauded its experimentation and composition, as well as Waits' vocals. It was listed as one of the highest-scoring albums of the year in Metacritic, and was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Folk Album. Furthermore, it was a fair commercial success, charting in the United States Billboard 200, as well as in Australia, Switzerland and Austria, reaching the top twenty in the latter.

Tom Russell is perhaps the only living American songwriter who could get away with describing his album as "Jack Kerouac meets Johnny Cash…in Bakersfield." It may read like conceit, but his work over the last 45 years has earned him that claim. Russell is a renaissance man: He writes songs that have been covered by Cash, Ian Tyson, Doug Sahm, Iris DeMent, and more; he is also a fine painter, poet, essayist, and author.

Failed Attempts at Silence is a pursuit to re-secure place and presence over time. Hall’s slowest recordings to date fuse qualitative approaches to past, present, and future present, with refined consideration of width within time. Failed Attempts at Silence progresses, moving lovingly, slowly, darkly, and aggressively, emerging a more spacious silence than it began.