Cliff Westfall, Benjamin Cartel, Jessie Kilguss

Cliff Westfall is a NYC-area songwriter, singer and guitarist. Known for both his vocal prowess and his clever, literate update on classic country songwriting, he is backed by some of the finest musicians in NYC, and is quickly building a reputation as a songwriter to watch. Westfall has lent his voice to records by Brooklyn-based twang rockers Girls on Grass and Chris Erikson. His own debut full-length album, with producer Bryce Goggin (Pavement, The Ramones, Antony and the Johnsons), will be released in Spring 2017.


When his indie-folk band, Kaiser Cartel, took an indefinite break after releasing their second album, Benjamin Cartel decided to move ahead by going back to where he'd started. That meant resurrecting the buzz-worthy solo career he'd kicked off in New York City, back in the early 00's. Combining older songs with newer material, he carved out a sound that split the difference between John Lennon's classic pop and Wilco's wry rock & roll. Cartel began recording the tunes with a group of NY-based musicians, then sent the unfinished products to Swedish producer Kristoffer Ragnstam, who beefed up the acoustic recordings with bass, drum tracks, guitars and keyboards. A proper EP was created, almost by accident, and Cartel chose to call it Money and Love.

When it came time to record a full-length album, he turned to Ragnstam once again. This time, however, he flew overseas and joined the producer at his studio in Gothenberg, a quiet European city that helped fire up Cartel's imagination. Inspired by a feeling longing for his friends back home and a surge of excitement for his new songs, he finished the album in 12 days. The result is Gothenberg, a solo album inspired by everything from breakups to Alfred Hitchcock movies.


With her hypnotic and darkly charged take on Americana, New York-based singer/songwriter Jessie Kilguss possesses a poet-like precision and power to tap into the strange wonder of everyday experience. A former actress inspired to make music after joining Marianne Faithfull in the Tom Waits musical The Black Rider in London and Sydney, Kilguss also reveals an uncommon ability to gracefully and boldly channel a whole spectrum of raw emotion. On her fourth album Devastate Me???a self-released effort and her first record written almost entirely on guitar???Kilguss offers up a stripped-down yet sensuous selection of songs both reflective and impassioned, intimate and refined.