Brett Barest When I first met Brooks Dixon back in 2015, he was a recent Clemson graduate, young engineer, and singer/songwriter who was honing his skills as a solo artist around the Upstate. He was a seasoned veteran of Clemson’s Moe Joe Coffee and had just played his first...
Brett Barest After spending the last couple of weeks promoting a variety of efforts aimed to support the livelihood of independent music venues during the COVID pandemic, I had all intentions of returning to the “Artists Picking Artists” series this week. The trouble is, due to a couple of...
Brett Barest When we started this series, I imagined that I would reach out to a few musicians I could call friends, get some picks that would give the local scene some love for a few weeks, and then go back to covering live shows in a few weeks...
Brett Barest In last week’s edition of this column I mentioned that Kelly Jo and/or Phat Lip were frequently finding a place on artists’ list, which is part of what prompted me to reach out to her. That sentiment continues this week as Salti Ray the band, and Salti...
Brett Barest I do not know how I got this deep into this series without talking to Kelly Jo but I am going to blame the local music scene for being too darned talented for me to get to everyone in a timely manner. That’s my story and I...
Brett Barest My plan for this past Sunday was to sit in my backyard with a cold beverage and The LOZ Band’s LionzFest streaming on my phone or laptop. Before I could do that, however, Don at Quest Brewing called me up and said he was letting a few...
Brett Barest When we first imagined this series I knew that I would be asking Vilai Harrington for his contribution and, frankly, I am not sure how it took so long to get here. I am not surprised, however, to find that my friend Vilai’s list was worth the...
Brett Barest When this series started six weeks ago I knew I wanted to make sure each week’s featured artist would bring a completely different perspective to the table. For the most part, I feel like we have done just that with Americana, indie rock, metal, hip-hop, and whatever...