Americana Special at The Cavern Club!
Three fantastic artists, all on the same night!
LAURA OAKES
Two-time winner of best Female Vocalist at the British Country Music Awards, Laura Oakes has enjoyed some of the UK’s most prestigious festivals and stages including C2C, The Great Escape, The Long Road, Cornbury, Cambridge Folk Festival and Camp
Bestival. As well as support for some of the most notable talent coming out of the UK and the US including Morgan Evans, Lauren Alaina, Jimmie Allen, Devin Dawson, The Shires, Ward Thomas and Sarah Darling.
Her 2020 EP ‘How Big Is Your World’ was released as the pandemic swept the world but non the less received playlisting from BBC Radio 2 and pick up across Chris Country Radio, Country Hits with feature pieces online across Popmatters, Maverick Magazine and Popdust. Reaching no.11 in the UK iTunes Country chart the EP also pricked the ears of Spotify and Apple on both sides of the pond securing playlists and amassing over 1.5 million streams.
In addition to creating and releasing her own material, Laura has launched her own ‘Hosts’ show on Country Line Radio, bringing the format of the increasingly popular format of ‘The Round’ to the ears of the listeners.
Guests so far have included Tiera Kennedy, Seaforth, The Shires, Ward Thomas and Eric Paslay. Forever productive, Laura has also been working on new material written with some of the world’s best song writers; James T Slater (Martina Mc Bride), Beth Nielson Chapman (Faith Hill) and Jason Lehning (Alison Krauss). Stay tuned for further releases in 2023.
JEFF COHEN
Jeff Cohen is a 6 Time BMI Award winning, Grammy Nominated Songwriter/Producer/Publisher based in Nashville whose songs have appeared on over 20 million albums sold, over 100 placements in TV/Film and over 10 million video games.
Jeff’s songs have been recorded by The Band Perry (Hit single/BMI Award – Postcard From Paris), Evan and Jaron (Hit single/BMI award – Crazy For This Girl), Big and Rich (Hit single/BMI award – Holy Water), The Shires (Hit Singles – I See Stars, 1000 Hallelujahs, Daddy’s Little Girl ,Echo, ), Laura Bell Bundy (Hit single – Giddy On Up – also #1 Video CMT and GAC), The Worry Dolls – Endless Road (2018 UK Americana Award Song of The Year Nomination), Jake Bugg – (Single – Downtown), Richie MacDonald of Lone Star (Hit single – I Turn To You), Ilse DeLange (Hit Single – Beautiful Distraction), Waylon (Hit Single – Hey), Nell Bryden (Hit Singles “Amy” and “These Changes”), Nikhil D’Souza (Singles – “Beautiful Mind” and “Silver and Gold”), Sugarland, Josh Groban, Mandy Moore, Macy Gray, Spin Doctors, Nick Lachey, Teitur, Tina Dico, Doc Walker, Mickey Guyton, The Wandering Hearts, Hush, Luz Casal, Sandi Patty, Marc Broussard, Kristian Bush, Jasmine Murray, Cho Yong- Pil, and many more.
Jeff’s songs have been featured in TV shows such as Paw Patrol (Theme/3 BMI Awards), Jack and Jill (Theme), I Married A Princess (Theme), The Exes (Theme), Roll The Tape (Theme) , Out Of Pocket (Theme), Dawson’s Creek, One Tree Hill, Monarch, Party of Five, The Simpson’s, American Idol,, Saturday Night Live, Catfish, Sonny With A Chance, The Fame Game and many more.
Jeff’s songs have been featured in movies such as Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, My Super Ex-Girlfriend, Stuart Little 2, Aquamarine, Princess Diaries, Grandma’s Boy, Dakota and more.
Jeff’s songs have also been featured in Major Commercials such as the Samsung Holiday International TV spot for Galaxy AirBuds (2021), Dignity Healthcare (2022), Timex Watches (2018) and more.
Among his constant co-writers are Jamie Hartman, Sacha Skabek, Kara DioGuardi, Liz Rose, Jeff Trott, Kristian Bush, James T Slater and many more.
Jeff is a Board Member of NSAI (Nashville Songwriters Association International) and Board Member of Inspired Nation Foundation founded by Kara DioGuardi.
He is also founder and songwriter of the critically acclaimed band Pancho’s Lament
In a previous life he was a music executive at BMI working with such talent as Jeff Buckley, Lisa Loeb, Joan Osborne, Spin Doctors, Ben Folds, Wilco, Ani Di Franco and many more.
SYKAMORE
Pinto
“Writing these songs put me through an emotional wringer,” says breakout Nashville
newcomer Sykamore. “I was living in a new town and working with new people and going
through all this change and self-discovery at the time. Looking back now, I can hear an
entire chapter of my life in the music.”
‘Pinto,’ Sykamore’s exhilarating full-length debut, marks more than just a chapter,
though. Recorded in Nashville with producer Michael Knox (Jason Aldean, Kelly
Clarkson), the album represents both a beginning and an end, the culmination of a
remarkable journey and the start of an even more promising one. The songs here are
equal parts country and pop, mixing intimate reflection and empathetic storytelling with
instantly memorable hooks and sing-along choruses that capture the emotional
rollercoaster of youth and young love. The arrangements are eclectic and infectious to
match, drawing on everything from George Strait to George Michael as they practically
reach out and beg you to hit the highway with the volume up and the windows down.
The result is a record all about honesty and vulnerability, about the strength and
freedom we can unlock by embracing our truest selves, delivered by an artist who’s
learned everything she knows from a lifetime of listening.
“Even before I started performing, music was always a means of escape for me,” says
Sykamore. “When I was a kid, I came across this big box of cassette tapes in the
basement that had all this amazing stuff like Michael Jackson and Elton John in it. It
was like stepping into Narnia. I discovered all of these magical worlds to get lost in.”
As much as she fell for classic rock and 80’s pop, Sykamore always considered herself a
country girl at heart. Born Jordan Ostrom in a small town outside of Calgary, Alberta,
how could she not?
“All those clichés you hear in country songs, I lived them,” she laughs. “My parents met
on the rodeo circuit, and I was raised on a cattle ranch. Country was the music of my
people, and that laid the groundwork for me when I started writing my own songs.”
It didn’t take long for those songs to start garnering some serious attention in Canada.
In 2014, Sykamore won the ATB All-Albertan Song Writing Contest, and the following
year, she was nominated for prestigious CCMA Discovery Award. Soon, she had her music
featured on national television and was sharing bills with the likes of Miranda Lambert
and Josh Ritter. Sykamore’s biggest break, however, didn’t come onstage, but rather
online, when songwriting heavyweight Rhett Akins came across her music on Twitter.
“I read her name, I was curious,” Akins said in an interview. “I saw her face, I was
intrigued. I heard her voice, I was done.”
At Akins’ invitation, Sykamore joined the roster of Home Team Publishing (which Akins
founded along with his son, country star Thomas Rhett, his manager, Virginia Davis,
and Roc Nation/Warner Chappell) and relocated to Nashville in 2018. There, she
released her first EP, ‘Self + Medicine,’ which garnered more than a million streams on
Spotify and helped land her both a record deal and a spot in CMT’s coveted “Next Women of Country” class for 2020. Nashville, it seemed, was embracing Sykamore in a big way,
but privately, she wondered if she was doing the right thing.
“After the EP came out, I had this crisis of identity,” she confesses. “I grew up loving so
many different genres that I just didn’t know where I fit in. The more I tried to write
other kinds of music, though, the more country everything ended up coming out. It
turned out to be the best way for me to realize that I was right where I belonged.”
When it came time to record ‘Pinto,’ Sykamore didn’t shy away from dressing those
country songs up in ecstatic pop production. Over the course of three separate sessions
at Nashville’s Treasure Isle studio, she cut basic tracks live with a full band lineup that
mixed 80’s synthesizers with muscular electric guitar and larger-than-life drums. It was
a sound Sykamore had in her head ever since she wrote the album’s title track, a soaring
earworm that spins a used car into a clever metaphor for new love.
“The Pinto always fascinated me because it was such a disaster of a car,” she laughs.
“It had a reputation for exploding and being easily flammable, and I couldn’t help but
draw a connection between that and a lot of young relationships, which are so hot and
heavy and combustible.”
That mixture of humor and heart is a fixture in Sykamore’s writing, which lives for sly
wordplay and subtle winks. The tongue-in-cheek “Local Singles” raises a glass to the
unattached, while the stripped-down “California King” cuts a self-absorbed egotist down
to size, and the dreamy “Record High” is an ode to the power of music itself.
“My whole life, listening to music has been catharsis and therapy for me,” Sykamore
says. “I wanted to write a fun thank you to music for being a support system that was
always there when I needed it.”
Playful as the record is, it’s also a showcase for Sykamore’s boldly honest self-reflection.
The mesmerizing “Where To Find Me” looks at the darkness that can consume us and
the loved ones who can save us from it, while the piano-led “Out Of Luck” questions if
we ever get a second chance at true love, and the Fleetwood Mac-esque “Go Easy On
Me,” which Sykamore penned with songwriting icon Liz Rose (Taylor Swift, Carrie
Underwood), lays all its cards down on the table for an ex who’s already moved on.
“There’s this unspoken rule that women can’t let their guard down,” says Sykamore,
“but that’s just not realistic. I let my guard down all the time, and I wanted this record
to show that vulnerability, to show that it’s okay to be yourself and share that with the
world. I took Sykamore as my stage name because it’s a tree that’s tenacious and strong
and has roots that ground it any weather, and that’s how I want my music to make
people feel.”
It’s ultimately that embrace of self that defines ‘Pinto.’ It’s an album unafraid to live
in the moment, to take the hurt with the happiness, to appreciate who you are in all
your flawed, mixed-up beauty. The record may be a chapter in Sykamore’s life, but her
story’s only just begun.
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