Jo Smith—named one of Rolling Stone’s 10 New Artists You Need to Know in 2017 and CMT’s Next Women of Country 2018— is a country singer/songwriter originally from south Georgia. After high school, Smith moved to Nashville, and spent the next sixteen years prioritizing songwriting in pursuit of her dreams of being a signed recording artist. As a staff songwriter at various publishing houses, she wrote songs for other artists (Billy Ray Cyrus, Taylor Hicks, Cody Johnson), as well as for her own artist endeavors. In 2009, she signed with “the label of her heroes,” RCA, and starting touring as the opening act on several major tours: Blake Shelton’s All About Tonight tour, Chris Young and Thomas Rhett’s Liquid Neon tour, and Miranda Lambert and Dierks Bentley’s Locked and Reloaded tour. Old School Groove, from Smith’s Introducing Jo Smith EP was featured as a Highway Find on Sirius XM’s The Highway and became a fan favorite in the summer of 2017.
In February 2021, Smith’s first independent release, “Wyoming”—featuring Vince Gill—debuted on all major streaming platforms and was playlisted on Spotify’s popular New Boots, Wild Country, Next from Nashville, and Fresh Finds: Country. Apple Music featured Jo on Country Risers, New from Nashville, and she held the leading spot on the new Speakin’ Easy playlist in March of that year. Jo consistently continues to release new music from her new home in Whitefish, Montana that appears on popular DSP editorial playlists.
Greg Bates is a rare find these days in the music business. A Nashville native, Greg is a multi-talented songwriter, producer, singer, and guitarist with a resumé that includes songs cut by Chase Rice, Justin Moore, Montgomery Gentry, Tyler Booth, and William Michael Morgan. His time as an artist on Republic Nashville, highlighted by his Top 5 hit “Did It For the Girl”, gives Greg a perspective that few writers possess. His deep roots in traditional country music, as well as his love of hit, contemporary radio has led to amazing collaborations with some of the best young talent in Nashville today.
Archertown was founded after a chance meeting between Kyle Archer and Natalie Archer (then Natalie Distler) in a New York City recording studio. The couple started performing as a duo and signed their first production deal shortly thereafter. During this time Natalie was also busy with her career as an actress, most notably starring on the hit FX television series Rescue Me for seven years. After the series came to an end, the duo signed a publishing deal as a writing team and decided to make the move to Nashville to further pursue their music career. Life sometimes doesn’t go as planned and after Natalie was diagnosed with a life-threatening illness, Kyle and Natalie decided to leave Nashville for a fresh start and to be closer to family in Montana. They took a break from music, taking time to heal and move forward with a different future than they had planned for themselves. It wasn’t until they found out they were expecting their son, something they were told might never be possible, that they were inspired to start writing and playing music again. As luck may have it, Kyle’s best friend from college and old bandmate, John Kaye, had recently moved to Montana with his family as well and the three began playing as a trio locally. Archertown has continued to grow with more band members, and Kyle and Natalie continue to follow their passion of writing and releasing new music from their home in Northwest Montana.
Stephanie Chapman is a singer and songwriter whose lyrics employ many of the
scenes from her pastoral childhood in rural West Virginia to form a painterly
landscape in story and song. Stephanie credits this fertile soil and her dad’s
eclectic taste in music with shaping her song style.
In 2001 a fortuitous meeting in Normandy, France led to 22 years of marriage
and musical collaboration with her husband Nathan Chapman. A Nashville-born
son of Steve and Annie Chapman, revered and celebrated Christian singer
songwriters, Nathan had decided to leave the music industry in his past until he
met his wife and they formed a duo, got a record deal and started recorded
music together.
Stephanie’s songs seem to keep finding homes with some of the best artists in
music and now she has had songs recorded by Bonnie Raitt, Ricky Skaggs and
Sharon White, Eric Church, Mickey Guyton, Martina McBride, and Lady A and
more. After a long absence on music row to tend to her three children she is set
to release a full-length album called Under An August Sky on May 24th.
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