Andrew Crocker

Andrew Crocker grew up on country music and never really left it, even when he wanders off into Prince or James Taylor mid-set. Been doing this over a decade around the Upstate now, bars and weddings and the Greenville Country Music Fest twice over, once opening for Lonestar. Soulful voice, eclectic setlist, the kind of guy who can follow Alan Jackson with Queen and make it feel natural. Still writing his own stuff between the covers.

Cody Gentry

Cody Gentry grew up in the Upstate, the first song he ever learned was John Prine's "Please Don't Bury Me," and it shows. His debut album, "Blue Ridge Gold," was recorded in Nashville and produced by Dean Miller, paying homage to the Blue Ridge foothills and the storytellers who raised him. Genuinely well traveled too, five years playing music halls, bars, and coffeehouses across the Southeast before landing back home.

Benny Hagerty

Somewhere on I-85 South, there's a boy with a guitar case in the back seat and the whole Upstate calling him home, and that's where this thing starts, in a car, at night, windows cracked, radio off cause he's writing the song himself right now, ain't got time to listen to nobody else's. Except he isn't alone anymore; he's got a whole band behind him now, Riley Myer bendin the lead guitar, AJ Barrett switching off between banjo and harmonica, and Fanny Wonder holding the whole thing together on drums so it doesn't just fly apart somewhere around exit 40.

Benny Hagerty fronts the band; his rhythm guitar and voice sound like he's confessing something he ain't fully worked out yet himself. The whole outfit's rooted in Appalachian folk and blues, a Blue Ridge Mountain sound that's stripped down to the bone and then built back up with four people instead of one. I keep listening to one called "Keowee Moon," off their debut record "Hills & Highways," which dropped back in February, and it's named for that lake up in the foothills that we all know and love.

Benny hits home with this song. Death Valley on a Saturday. Triple T's, and anyone that's passed through Clemson has lost something at Triple T's: a fake license, a Saturday night, a bad decision, a phone number scrawled on a napkin. Anyone that's driven I-85 at 2 am has talked to themselves the whole damn way just to stay awake and stay sane. This is no postcard song, this is a whole band driving eleven hours cause somethin in em told em to.

They been on the road too, hauled this sound up through North Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, all the way up to New Jersey and New York City and back again, and still they come home. It always seems like there is a fair bit of loneliness in the good ones; always has been. Isn't sad exactly. Homesick, I guess.

Darby Wilcox

Darby Wilcox has been doing this for a decade in Greenville, and she has earned every bit of the praise she gets. The singer-songwriter and self-proclaimed Mayor of Babetown — a community she founded on the radically simple premise of babes supporting babes — plays that Americana which pulls directly from the Joss Stone and Janis Joplin end of the dial: soulful, direct, tender. Usually found with The Peep Show backing her up the way a good band should, dynamically flowing as one. Her debut album 11:11, in 2018. EP It's OK in 2023. Fall for Greenville. The Brooks Center. The Radio Room. A decade of showing up and meaning it, and she's still just getting started.

Members: Darby Wilcox (vocals, guitar) with The Peep Show

Reedy River String Band

Three writers, three singers, three-part harmony — Reedy River String Band play the kind of boot-stomping Appalachian music that makes you feel like you've been missing something your whole life, which you have, and they've been making that case around the world.