M. Lockwood Porter
M. Lockwood Porter's Communion in the Ashes is a rallying cry for the hopeless and heartbroken, its lyrics set to a soundtrack of anthemic heartland rock & roll. This is a record that addresses our modern-day social problems from a perspective of hope, encouraging those who listen to focus on activism and community-building rather than despair. Along the way, Porter delivers some of the most engaging, electrifying songs of his career, rooting these melodic calls-to-action in the stomp and epic swagger of a five-piece road band.
Born into a working-class family in rural Oklahoma, Porter launched his songwriting career after relocating to the San Francisco Bay Area, kicking things off with 2013's Judah's Gone. There, in the nation's most expensive real-estate market, he also taught classes to underprivileged students at an inner-city school, a job that gave him a close-up view of the nation’s growing class divide and its many symptoms, including poverty, gentrification, and homelessness. As his cross-country touring increased, so did the presence of political and social issues within his music, with 2016's How to Dream Again taking influence from the socially-conscious works of Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen. After writing 2019's Communion in the Ashes, Porter returned to Oklahoma with the goal of contributing to a growing artistic community and, hopefully, affecting social change.
Watch and listen to M. Lockwood Porter at www.mlockwoodporter.com
John Calvin Abney (photo by Rambo)
“Safe passage, in any case, is a porch light lit, a proverbial lighthouse in the miles of vast darkness, a hope. A hope of making it through, one way or another, without losing yourself or what you hold dear.”
On the gentle opener to John Calvin Abney’s new album, he draws a line between himself and the expectations of others. The weight of those judgments, wanting to be what others have wanted from him, has always sat heavy on Abney’s heart—the depths of which he’s plumbed for plenty of albums’ past—but here, he’s distilled that pressure and perhaps his own past posturing down to the most fundamental human desire.
Abney is a songwriter, producer, and multi-instrumentalist sideman who’s spent nearly 10 years in the studio and on the road in instrumental service to the songs of other writers, including John Moreland, Samantha Crain, and, recently, Lee Bains III and the Glory Fires, along with a veritable swath of writers and musicians that quickly become friends. Recently, he has also spent time scoring short films and documentaries between session and show, and even picked up part time work cleaning and repairing old video games from the 80's and 90's at a local shop.
He writes when something moves him, when nothing moves him, whenever he can capture a spare moment, and when he senses something that sparks the myriad musical kindling that sits bundled in his thoughts. If his hands aren't moving, his mind surely still is.
Check out more of John Calvin Abney at www.johncalvinabney.com