Join us in welcoming this year’s panel of judges, all music industry professionals. We appreciate their insight and expertise in selecting a Grand Prize Winner, who will receive a six-song EP, recorded and mixed at Citizen Studios, with vinyl records pressed at Citizen Vinyl.
Garret K. Woodward has been the arts/music editor for The Smoky Mountain News, an alt-weekly covering Western North Carolina, since 2012. He’s also the music editor for Smoky Mountain Living magazine, a national publication whose jurisdiction rolls across seven states in Southern Appalachia.
In 2018, Woodward joined Rolling Stone as a contributing writer, focusing
mainly on music festivals from coast-to-coast. As an author, Woodward penned the 2017 book If You Can’t Play, Get Off the Stage: Bluegrass in Western North Carolina and Beyond. To date, Woodward has been nominated three times for “Writer of the Year” by the International Bluegrass Music Association.
Otto Vazquez is the Artistic Curator for LEAF Global Arts, working to book bands and create themes for the organization’s signature events, including the annual LEAF Global Arts Festival. He is also a prolific street dancer, choreographer, published author and poet, filmmaker and grand educator who has taught at more than 100 universities both in the United States and abroad.
Jamie Beck is the Sales Director at Merge Records in Durham, N.C. Her first concert was a performance by Kitty Wells on a cattle farm outside of Kansas City, Missouri.
Gar Ragland is a producer, musician, and president and co-founder of the NewSong Music Group. He is also the founder of CEO of Citizen Vinyl in Asheville, N.C. Gar is a voting member of the Recording Academy (Grammys).
Martin Anderson, Music Director and Host at WNCW, will emcee the evening. Martin joined WNCW in 2001 as the weekday morning host. He loves interviewing the many talented musicians who come to Studio B, stretching out with the many styles ‘NCW embraces, and reflecting listener requests, events of the day, and the beautiful Southern Appalachian landscape. As Music Director, he books live sessions, and keeps in touch with the record labels and promoters that send new music.
NewSong Music is now accepting original song entries for its 22nd annual Performance and Songwriting Competition, presented by Citizen Vinyl. The program’s curated showcases have been a fixture in the national music scene since 2001. The competition finals will be held at Citizen Vinyl, in Asheville, N.C., on Saturday, November 18.
While the deadline for submissions has been extended to Sunday, September 10, NewSong has already announced two of this year’s finalists. The first, Jimmie Griffith of MaisCeu, earned his place when he won the LEAF/NewSong Singer-Songwriter Competition in May. Last week Corey Laitman of Cloudbelly was named this year’s Early Bird Finalist.
Corey shared some thoughts with NewSong Music on songwriting, mutual friends, and their summer adventures.
NewSong Music: What song(s) did you submit to the NewSong contest and why?
Corey Laitman: I submitted four songs — “Garbage,” “Phantom Lung,” “Poppa,” and “Psychopomp.” My band and I were in the process of recording an album, and three of these songs didn’t make the cut.
Toward the beginning of the album process, I was working with a friend who was interested in hearing my back-catalogue of songs I’d written and decided to shelve. We dug through my endless voice memos and re-discovered these four tunes. They’re all super vulnerable songs — and while I don’t remember exactly what happened, I feel sure the first folks I played them for gave a lukewarm reception. And that was enough for me to say, okay, maybe now is not their moment — or, more brutally, maybe they’re not strong enough to warrant a moment.
So we found these songs and my friend went crazy over them, he was totally aghast that I’d left them behind to rot. It was exactly the reception they needed to come alive to me again. Oh yeah, these are actually pretty good! It’s so powerful, how positive mirroring can make or break a piece of art’s life in the world. That’s always been the case for me, at least.
At that same friend’s behest, I made acoustic recordings of all four tracks with my buddy and bandmate, Reed Sutherland, and proceeded to submit the lot of them to a handful of song contests.
It was a pretty moving experience for me, falling back in love with these previously picked-over tunes. And it’s been ULTRA gratifying to have the folks at NewSong and New Folk fall in love with them as well — it’s all been a great reminder that my job as a songwriter is really to just show up for the music and do the work, not judge the work.
Here’s some info on each song:
“Garbage” is a song written from the perspective of a couch rotting on the roadside. It felt super sad and beautiful to try and inhabit the “mind” of something so exposed and discarded.
“Phantom Lung” is about how, in the aftermath of a destructive relationship, it’s easy to feel like you’re dangerous, somehow — like all you do, in spite of your best efforts, is hurt the people you love.
“Poppa” is about my Mom’s dad, who I call Poppa. He was my favorite adult growing up — I’m his first grandchild, and we had this special connection built around nature and music. He’s well into his 90s now, and when his wife (my Nana) fell and hurt herself at their house in LI, it was clear they had to move to somewhere nearer to my parents. Their home now is on the 17th floor of an apartment building in White Plains, N.Y. My Nana is deep in her dementia, and most of what my Poppa does is watch TV and help their aids care for her. I wrote this song from an honest place of grappling with the tension between the sweetness of remembering, the brutality of aging, and the strange grief abiding at their intersection.
“Psychopomp” is a meditation on a person in my life whom I love deeply and no longer speak with.
Cloudbelly is a quartet — who will be performing with you at the NewSong Music Performance & Songwriting competition?
Yes! I’ll be joined by electric guitarist Sam Perry.
What sort of music was playing in your house when you were growing up?
Ah, so much good stuff. My parents listened to The Beatles, Elton John, Billy Joel, Electric Light Orchestra, The Moody Blues, America, Tracy Chapman, Carole King, Pink Floyd, Cat Stevens, Simon and Garfunkel… we had a ton of fun jams in rotation at my house growing up. And occasionally some Beethoven.
Share a musical adventure from this summer with us — could be a show you played, a tour you took, a recording you made, a concert you attended, etc. Tell us about an experience that really stood out for you.
A few weeks ago I traveled from where I live in Western MA to Rockport ME in a blinding downpour, the sort that’s come to define this summer in the northeast. What should have been a 4 1/2 hour drive turned into 7 hours on the road, replete with hydroplaning and spooky visibility issues. My friends and I missed the 1:30 ferry to Vinelhaven — the island off the coast of ME where the venue, Skäl is — which meant we’d have to catch the next one at 2:30, landing us at Skäl after our scheduled soundcheck and perilously close to performance time. We were a wee bit stressed, but the ferry ride was lovely (the weather had cleared by then), and when we disembarked there was someone from the venue waiting there to pick us up and haul us over. When we arrived wearily at the venue, our host showed us to our bedrooms, where we immediately brightened at the sight of the clean and cozy space. The next few hours involved a hurried soundcheck, a gorgeous meal their chef-in-residence cooked for us, and the happy discovery that the *entire second floor* of the venue set up with big couches and a full kitchen was, in fact, our green room.
The show itself was honestly middle-of-the-road — I was playing by my lonesome and the bar crowd was feeling rowdy — but my spirits could not be dampened, for I have rarely felt so gorgeously taken care of by a venue. At the end of the show, the proprietor handed both my friend and I healthy checks, and we spent the remaining hours before bed carousing with the crowd of lingering Vinalhaven natives and visitors. The next morning we woke to some venue-provided coffee and explored the island for a few easy hours before catching a ferry back to the mainland. It was a totally invigorating hoot of a trip, and it would not have felt that way if we’d arrived all road-bedraggled and ferry-wind-whipped at a place that wasn’t quite so generous and hospitable as Skäl.
I noticed on your Instagram that you know past NewSong Music winners Jobi Riccio and Sadie Gustafson-Zook. What’s the connection?
Ah yeah, I love those guys.
Sadie and I met at Club Passim in Boston many years ago — we got to know each other a bit more at NERFA in 2018, and then during the lockdown she and her partner and the time and me and my partner at the time did a lot of zoom hanging-out. Hah! She’s fantastic. I’m obsessed with her record, Sin of Certainty.
I’m pretty sure the Jobi connection is also through Passim, but I can’t locate the first meeting place in my memory… The first time we really hung out, though, was when she was opening a few dates for Mark Erelli — They played the Parlor Room in Northampton, and she stayed at my place in Great Falls. We got breakfast the next morning and drove her to the train station for the next leg of the Erelli tour in NYC.
In celebration of its 21st Anniversary, NewSong Music Performance & Songwriting Competition will welcome eight finalists to Asheville, NC, for an evening of songs and connection on Saturday, December 3, 2022. The internationally recognized event, previously held at the prestigious Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in New York City, has since found a home in the mountains of Western North Carolina. NewSong is proud to partner with Citizen Vinyl, a multifaceted event space in downtown Asheville, to present the finale showcase.
VIP PACKAGE: Join us as a patron of the arts for a pre-concert gathering. Enjoy drinks, hors d’oeuvres, an exclusive meet & greet with this year’s finalists, preferred seating for the evening and a digital recording of the night’s performances mixed by our own Gar Ragland, Co-Founder and Director of NewSong Music and Founder and CEO of Citizen Vinyl. Doors at 5:30PM.
GENERAL ADMISSION: General admission seating will include concert style and cafe tables as well as some bar stools. Seating is first come first serve. Doors at 6PM / Show at 7PM. The finalists, selected from advance online submissions from across North America and beyond, will bring their musical chops to Asheville to perform, compete, and connect with one another. A panel of music industry judges will select one grand prize winner who will receive a fully funded six-song EP, recorded and mixed at Citizen Studios, plus 500 vinyl records pressed at Citizen Vinyl, and a featured, paid performance at Arts Brookfield’s Summer Concert Series in New York City in the summer of 2023.
Citizen Vinyl, established by NewSong Music director and co-founder Gar Ragland, is North Carolina’s first vinyl pressing facility, and boasts a variety of amenities including a full-scale recording studio, a vinyl-themed craft cocktail and coffee lounge, a farm to table café, a record and art store, and more.
Now in its 21st year, the NewSong Music Performance & Songwriting Competition is one of North America’s premier showcases of emerging performers and songwriters today. This crowd-sourced effort seeks to identify the truly exceptional artists within our communities and to work closely with them to develop their careers and introduce their music to a broader, international audience while building a supportive community of performers and songwriters across all genres of music and levels of skill.
The ‘Early Bird’ discounted entry fee to enter this year’s NewSong Music Performance and Songwriting Competition ends at 11:59 PM EDT this Sunday, July 24. Prices are currently 1 song: $40; 2 songs: $70; additional songs: $25 each.
The final deadline to enter the competition is Sunday, Sept. 18, but submission fees increase after July 24.
From the early entries, we will select one ‘Early Bird’ finalist, who will advance to this year’s live performance showcase and competition finals, which will take place on Saturday, December 3, 2022 atCitizen Vinyl in downtown Asheville.
All entrants will remain in the running for the remaining finalist spots, which will be announced later in the year. To enter, you need an MP3 of each of your songs you’d like to submit, and a non-mobile device to upload your work. Production quality of the recording is not a determining factor for consideration in the contest so don’t be shy to go full DIY.
There is no limit to how many songs you may submit, so enter often and early to become a finalist and win the 2021 Grand Prize!
More about the competition: NewSong Music’s curated showcases have been a fixture in the national music scene since 2001. The competition finals, formerly staged in New York City at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, relocated to Asheville, N.C. in 2017.
Eight finalists, selected from online submissions from across North America and beyond, will bring their musical magic to Asheville where they will perform, compete, and connect with one another. A panel of music industry judges will select one grand prize winner to receive a fully funded six-song EP, recorded and mixed at Citizen Studios, plus 300 vinyl records pressed at Citizen Vinyl, and a featured, paid performance at Arts Brookfield’s Summer Concert Series in New York City in the summer of 2023.
Past NewSong winners and standouts include Ingrid Michaelson, Meghan Trainor, Max Hatt/Edda Glass, Grace Potter, and Crys Matthews.
Congratulations to the finalists in the 18th annual NewSong Music Performance & Songwriting Competition. These eight finalists will network, showcase and compete in the live performance finals in Asheville, North Carolina at Isis Music Hall on Saturday November 23.
YouTube Playlist of the 2019 NewSong Music Finalists:
For more information on attending this event, please visit our Facebook event page. Buy tickets here.
Thank you to all who submitted their music this year, and we look forward to meeting our finalists next month! Learn more about each finalist and his or her music in the links below.
Parker Ainsworth — the LA-based singer-songwriter who took the Grand Prize at NewSong’s 6th Annual LEAF Competition — will return to LEAF Saturday Oct. 19 for two intimate performances.
LEAF-goers can attend Ainsworth’s two sets on Saturday, Oct. 19 at The Barn at 3:15PM and the Jam Tavern at 8:45PM.
“Playing the Barn was such a magical experience,” says Ainsworth of the competition back in May 2019. “An open space full of music-loving folk, braving the elements to hear songs in their rawness. The event felt like it expanded me with the presence of genuine care … it pretty much blasted my heart wide open.”
He adds, “Talking with my fellow contestants reminded me that though this musical life can feel quite lonely at times, ultimately we’re never really alone. In fact, we’re unavoidably all in this together.”
Ainsworth was chosen from over 400 applicants to the LEAF competition and five other finalists. For the full LEAF schedule and lineup, click here. Those without LEAF tickets this year can catch Ainsworth at Isis Music Hall in West Asheville on Thursday Oct. 17. Tickets available here.
In addition to the paid, featured performances at LEAF, Ainsworth also advances as a finalist in the 18th annual, international NewSong Showcase and Competition, held November 23 at Isis Music Hall in Asheville. The grand-prize winner of that contest will be awarded the opportunity to make a six-song EP, recorded and mixed at Echo Mountain Recording Studios in Asheville and released on the NewSong Recordings label; and a performance showcase at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival’s coveted ASCAP Music Café.
NEWSONG MUSIC PRESENTS 18TH ANNUAL, INTERNATIONAL PERFORMANCE & SONGWRITING COMPETITION IN ASHEVILLE THIS NOVEMBER
EIGHT EMERGING ARTISTS FROM ACROSS NORTH AMERICA TO SHOWCASE & COMPETE
GRAND PRIZE WINNER RECEIVES AN EP RECORDING PROJECT AT ECHO MOUNTAIN RECORDING STUDIOS, RELEASED ON THE NEWSONG RECORDINGS LABEL
COMPETITION HELD AT ISIS MUSIC HALL IN ASHEVILLE, NC, SATURDAY, NOV. 23
Aug. 23, 2019 (Asheville, NC) – For the second year in a row, the live performance finals of the NewSong Music Performance & Songwriting Competition will be held in Asheville, North Carolina at Isis Music Hall. NewSong Music has been headquartered in Asheville since 2012, but for most of its 18 years, the competition was held at the prestigious Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. After a phenomenal, sold out event last year, NewSong founder, Gar Ragland, has elected to host the competition finals in Asheville indefinitely.
“The success and reception we received in bringing the competition finals to Asheville for the first time last year truly exceeded our expectations,” says Ragland. “The support we received from the community here for last year’s finals – as evidenced by the sellout event and its deeply appreciative and engaging audience – affirmed for us that our hometown has indeed become one of the country’s best music towns. We’re excited to build upon last year’s momentum, and to continue to contribute to Asheville’s music scene in this way.”
Eight finalists – selected from advance online submissions from across North America and beyond – will come to Asheville to perform, compete and network with one another in the live showcase and competition finals at Isis Music Hall in Asheville on Saturday, November 23. Located in the city’s hip West Asheville neighborhood, Isis Music Hall is one of Asheville’s best sounding and most intimate music venues.
A panel of national music industry judges will select the overall winner of the competition. This year’s grand prize winner will receive a fully funded six-song EP, recorded and mixed at Asheville own Echo Mountain Recording Studios and released on the NewSong Recordings label. The grand prize winner will also receive a performance showcase at the esteemed 2019 Sundance ASCAP Music Café at the Sundance Film Festival (January 23 – February 2, 2020) in Park City, Utah and a featured performance in the 2020 Arts Brookfield ‘Summer Plaza’ series in New York City. All finalists will be strongly considered for future ‘NewSong Presents’ paid performances across the United States.
NewSong Music is an independent music organization that aims to build a supportive community of performers and songwriters across various genres of music and skill levels, while identifying truly exceptional artists and introducing their music to a broader international audience.
WHAT: NewSong Music Performance & Songwriting Competition Finals
WHERE: Isis Music Hall // 743 Haywood Road, Asheville, NC
Spotify Playlist of the 2019 NewSong Music Finalists:
About NewSong Music
NewSong Music is an independent artist development company headquartered in Asheville, NC. NewSong’s mission is to build and support a community of performers and songwriters across all genres and levels of skill, and to identify the truly exceptional artists to introduce their music to a broader, international audience. Its programs include a boutique record label (NewSong Recordings), artist management services, concert production and the annual, international NewSong performance and songwriting competition. Its presenting partners include Arts Brookfield and Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in New York, the ASCAP Music Café at the Sundance Film Festival.
For more information about NewSong Recordings and the NewSong Music Competition, visitnewsong-music.com/
For media requests, contact Lea McLellan at leamclellan@newsong-music.com.
NewSong is pleased to introduce 2018 NewSong judge Diana Ezerins, Director of Public Programs at The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C. in the Performing Arts for Everyone / Community Programming department.
Ezerins oversees the curation of several festivals and Millennium Stage, a daily, free performance series with live web streams and an online archive. The programs by her team are designed to reflect society through presenting outstanding, culturally diverse artists, and to be as accessible to as many people as possible, without financial or geographical barriers. These projects and performances are developed in partnership with regional, national, and international artists, activists, educators, youth, and more as they strive to democratize curation, creating a space for all to highlight important voices in various communities as well as telling the stories of our collective humanity.
Ezerins is a newcomer to the NewSong judges panel, and is looking forward to learning more about the contestants. When asked what she looks for in a meaningful, well-written song, she says she pays close attention to “lyrics that reflect and empathize with the human experience and sing along-ability.”
An avid music lover and listener, Ezerins’s most-played albums of 2018 include Neko Case’s Hell-On; Father John Misty’s God’s Favorite Customer; Kacey Musgraves’s Golden Hour; US Girls’ In a Poem; Young Fathers’ Cocoa Sugar; Lucy Dacus’s Historian; The Midnight Hour; Alfredo Rodríguez’s The Little Dream; and The Shins’ The Worm’s Heart.
We’ve created Spotify and YouTube playlists featuring this year’s lineup of NewSong finalists, and these artists are well worth a listen. Follow the playlist on Spotify here, and watch our YouTube playlist here.
From the artist’s bio: Alex Wong’s curiosity has a varied appetite, and he’s always fed it well. A steady diet of projects as artist, producer, composer, and fittingly, as chef, has taught him that the connections between seemingly separate disciplines can be a source of inspiration rather than distraction. Perhaps this understanding stems from his synesthesia, a rare neurological condition where the brain perceives relationships between unrelated senses. Alex sees sounds and hears colors. What a doctor might deem peculiar, his creative mind appreciates as a gift: this multi-sensory approach allows him to find magic in unexpected connections.
Following those connections has rarely led Alex in a straight line, but it has led him to a Latin GRAMMY-nomination (Miguel Bose), song placements in film, television (One Tree Hill, The Lincoln Lawyer, The Last Song) and major ad campaigns (Google, Aquafina), as well as production credits with Delta Rae (Big Machine), Vienna Teng (Universal), Elizabeth and the Catapult (Compass) and Ari Hest (Columbia), among others. It has led him around the globe, to perform at festivals like Coachella and Outside Lands, arenas in Mexico City and theaters in Europe and Japan. Read full bio on Alex’s website.
We asked Alex some questions about his songwriting process and what it means to be a NewSong finalist. To purchase tickets for the Dec. 15 event at Isis Music Hall, visit our ticketing page.
What does it mean to you to be selected as a NewSong finalist, and what do you hope to get out of the experience?
Being selected as a NewSong finalist is especially meaningful to me because it’s the first time I’ve put music out under my own name. I’ve been really lucky to have had a career making music as a collaborator, band member and as a writer/producer in support of other artists, but fear always held me back from releasing music under my own name. Even when I put a solo album out over 6 years ago, I used a moniker (A City On A Lake) because I wasn’t comfortable using my name.
I realized I’d grown up learning to hide … as a minority kid growing up in suburban U.S., we were taught to fit in to white culture and downplay our cultural identities. As a drummer, I learned my place was in the back of the band and that writing songs and being out front was a job for someone else. It’s been a long path to try and re-write that narrative, to stand in my own space as an artist and to let myself truly be seen in the world without the protective layer of a band or collaborator. The Quiet Voice was the first song I’ve ever released under my own name so it means the world to me that it was recognized by NewSong.
What is your songwriting process like, and where do you find inspiration?
For me, songwriting has always been a way to ask questions. I’m not really moved to write until I feel there is a question I’ve been wrestling with and can’t figure out. Sometimes I feel I’m most interested in trying to write (what I pretentiously call) “secular spirituals” because even though I’m not religious, the questions that are most interesting and that pop up in my writing the most are metaphysical in nature and often have to do with the relationship between life on Earth and the before/after life, if there is such a thing.
I am fascinated with why we are here, what lessons we are here to learn and whether we’ve been here before, and I think that seeps into my writing all the time. As far as inspirations, I used to have a big sign in my studio that said “WWTPD” (what would Tom Petty do?) and anytime I was stuck in the writing process I would just try to channel him. I always admired his ability to cut out all extraneous crap and his brilliant economy with lyric and melody. I also tend to worship Bob Dylan, Brian Wilson, Paul Simon, Radiohead, Quincy, Pharrell, Stravinsky and Chopin, to name a few.
What important news about your music do you have coming up?
I just finished my second solo album, called The Elephant and the Seahorse, which I plan to release in April 2019. I will also be releasing a duo concept album with Jesse Terry in 2019, about a town in Alaska struggling with climate change. I’m currently writing a musical called The Paper Raincoat with former NewSong winner Amber Rubarth and NewSong finalist Devon Copley (The Animators, 2006). I will be continuing to release exclusive content and videos on my Patreon site, which I adore. As a producer, I just started work with NC natives Delta Rae on their upcoming double album.
2016 NewSong grand prize winner Wilder Adkins releases peace anthem “Side By Side” on MLK Jr. Day
“This is a song about the city of Birmingham, Alabama and the struggles of the civil rights movement in the 1960s,” says Adkins, a Birmingham resident himself. “It is also an anthem for peace and a call to keep hoping and never give up fighting darkness with the power of light.”
ABOUT WILDER ADKINS Wilder Adkins songwriting gleans as much from the earthy poetry of Wendell Berry and Mary Oliver as it does from the works of folk luminaries Richard Thompson and Bruce Cockburn. His courtly-but-witty lyrics evoke a Deep South Shelley or Yeats, riding a joyful guitar dexterity.
Adkins hails from Marietta, GA, but now lives and writes in Birmingham, AL. He grew up listening to his dad play renditions of Neil Young and Van Morrison songs on an old Guild Jumbo Acoustic. Adkins’ songs, steeped in natural imagery, frequently touch upon the subjects of faith, doubt, and as the title of his new album would indicate, hope and sorrow.
Garret K. Woodward has been the arts/music editor for The Smoky Mountain News, an alt-weekly covering Western North Carolina, since 2012. He’s also the music editor for Smoky Mountain Living magazine, a national publication whose jurisdiction rolls across seven states in Southern Appalachia.
Martin Anderson, Music Director and Host at WNCW, will emcee the evening. Martin joined WNCW in 2001 as the weekday morning host. He loves interviewing the many talented musicians who come to Studio B, stretching out with the many styles ‘NCW embraces, and reflecting listener requests, events of the day, and the beautiful Southern Appalachian landscape. As Music Director, he books live sessions, and keeps in touch with the record labels and promoters that send new music.
