Welcome to Black Potatoe

Ellis Paul is a critically-acclaimed singer, songwriter, poet, and troubadour originally hailing from a potato farming family in northern Maine. He is the recipient of thirteen Boston Music Awards, second only to multi-platinum act, Aerosmith. Over the course of fifteen years, Ellis Paul has built a vast catalog of music which weds striking poetic imagery and philosophical introspection with hook-laden melodies.

Trooper has made an impact on the music scenes in all the places he’s lived since leaving home after high school: Austin, Texas, Lawrence, Kansas, New York and Nashville. His albums have demonstrated creative vision as well as a collaborator’s heart. Americana star Buddy Miller produced 1998’s Popular Demons album, while soul legend Dan Penn steered 2005’s extraordinary Make It Through This World.
His songs have been recorded by Vince Gill, Steve Earle, Billy Bragg, Lucy Kaplansky, Maura O’Connell, Robert Earl Keen, and Bill Lloyd among others. He’s released 9 records and toured throughout the US and Europe including stints with John Prine, Billy Bragg and Joe Ely.

It’s been a few miles across America, Canada, the UK and Europe since Willy Porter released his debut CD, The Trees Have Soul in 1990. Each night, he clearly showcases his mastery of the acoustic guitar in his most comfortable environment—his live show. He continues to stretch each show by morphing performance art, live audio looping, and improvisational sketch comedy into his solo whistle stops. Each tour date becomes a unique event, a musical experience much greater than just a review of past, present and future recorded work. With his most recent release, Available Light (2006), Porter has dug in and built on his strengths as a guitarist, singer and songwriter, extending the range and scope of his vision.

Native Pennsylvanian Craig Bickhardt’s big break came unexpectedly in 1982 when he was chosen to write and sing two songs for Robert Duvall's Academy Award winning film "Tender Mercies". In the wake of that film’s success, Craig made his move to Nashville where his songs found their way onto platinum and Grammy winning CDs by legends such as Ray Charles, B. B. King, Alison Krauss, Martina McBride, The Judds and Dianne Schuur to name just a few. Along with his friends and collaborators Thom Schuyler, Fred Knobloch and Don Schlitz, Craig also helped to establish the original Writers In The Round series at The Bluebird Café.

He went on to have three hits as an artist when he joined Schuyler and Knobloch to make their SKB CD No Easy Horses for MTM Records. The group's version of Craig's song "Givers And Takers" entered the top ten on the Billboard country charts in the fall of 1988. His work on Music Row garnered him several boxes full of awards from ASCAP, the CMA, and the IAMA.

Peter Mulvey began as a self-described "city kid" from Milwaukee. He played, wrote, and sang in bands while studying theatre at Marquette University. After graduating he traveled to Ireland, where he learned the trade of busker on the streets of Dublin. Returning to the U.S. a few years later, he settled in Boston, and built an audience through street and subway performing, while also immersing himself in the thriving musical community. Since 2000, he has found a home with the venerable indie label Signature Sounds, and released his most recent album, The Knuckleball Suite, with that label in the Spring of 2006. The CD is a collection of thirteen new songs that aptly display why Mulvey has, over the length of his extensive career, been compared to such heavyweights as Tom Waits, Leonard Cohen, Randy Newman, and others. Collaborating once again with longtime writing partner and producer David "Goody" Goodrich, the album is vibrant, surprising, and in many ways, like a notch falling perfectly into a groove for a musician with a history as rich and diverse as Mulvey's.

Chris Kasper is a songwriter's songwriter, an artist who won devoted fans and awards seemingly from the moment he released his first record, a demo recorded in a friend's living room in 2002. Kasper soon relocated to Philadelphia, where he has built a devoted following not only of music lovers, but of his fellow songwriters and musicians. His songs take you on a musical ride, ethereal, floating, delicate, and genuine. Kasper is pleased to announce the May 17, 2009 release of his new record, "Chasing Another Sundown". Produced by longtime collaborator Jeff Hiatt, "Chasing Another Sundown" features key contributions from guests Devon Sproule and Ben Arnold, among many others.

Gregg Cagno is an acoustic slinging singer/songer who covers bandwidth from folk to
pop to jazz to country. A native of Clinton, NJ this Black Potatoe recording artist
has 4 CDs, 3 guitars, 2 capos and 1 cat. He's gigged from Kerrville to the Kennedy
Center and opened for America to the Dorkestra. He's won 2 ASCAP Plus Awards and
Best Mellow at the South Florida Folk Fest. This year he was commissioned to write 2
pieces for the modern dance company AiR. His songs have also appeared in the short
film Babie and on Car Talk. He is not on facebook, doesn't have a space and doesn't
tweet. You can find all you need at greggcagno.com
"Music is the true north that connects all that's important in my life. It's the
home that I can always go back to for inspiration"

Singer-Songwriter Colin McGrath delivers an energetic, engaging live performance. He writes feel-good, lyrically inventive, sometimes quirky, other times moving songs. His music is heavy on story telling and old time American folk references. Colin won first place in The Belfast Nashville ’09 Songwriters Festival Competition, is the Grand Prize Winner of the ’08 Listening Room Retreat Competition, and was a Finalist at Kerrville New Folk, Telluride Troubadour, and Wildflower Songwriting Competitions. His latest CD "Window Seat," is an Editor's Pick on CD Baby.

THE BELIEVERS are a band that effortlessly straddles indie rock and alt-Country, converting listeners nationwide in the process. The Believers continue to garner praise from all corners of the music world, described as “what Johnny Cash and The Tennessee Three might have sounded like if they’d jammed with the White Stripes” [David Burke, Rock ‘n Reel Magazine] for their tunes that carry the suggestion of X, Gram Parsons, Emmylou Harris and Heart at the same time. At the helm of The Believers are guitarists/vocalists Craig Aspen and Cyd Frazzini who playfully call themselves “the rock band with a country problem” floating country harmonies over four-on-the-floor rock beats and displaying a particular predilection for the folk tradition of the story song.

To describe Jaymie Gerard as prolific would be an understatement. At the age of 27, this NJ native has written just shy of 600 songs in various genres – one of which, “Chevy in Drive,” recently won Grand Prize for placement on the Chevrolet Legends Volume II album. Armed with her guitar, her outstanding voice, her honest lyrics and her stunning smile, Jaymie Gerard puts on a performance that lights her audience up.