Song of the Soul

Peter Alsop's latest release is Camping With Dads, and it includes all the fun & profundity you expect from Peter, providing learning about all kinds of stuff, from racism to listening to violence to gorillas.

Shawn Gallaway is a minstrel of health, wholeness, hope, & love, a message and mission that opened its stride to cover more of the Earth with his anthem, I Choose Love. His music is soul-deep, a power conveyed clearly through his crystal vocals and heart-opening lyrics. Shawn is a long-time resident of Nashville emanating his Transformational Music across the country and world. He was a top-ten finalist in the 2017 Songs For Social Change contest featured by RAWA.net.

Amanda Udis-Kessler is a music-creation fountain whose recent project is QueerSacredMusic.com, 60-plus songs beginning with sacred music relative to LGBTQ concerns, but enriched by the spiritual experiences relative to the arrival of COVID-19 and the nationwide uprising against racism and other injustices. Amanda's theology is open, accepting, and rooted in a universal love, and is enriched by the training and talents of her Ph.D. in Sociology, her time in seminary, and her wide and deep lyrical and musical creativity. Raised as a secular Jew, her never-ending spiritual pilgrimage has included sojourns and enrichment with the UU, Quakers, UCC, Buddhism, Bahá'í, and much more.

A look at some of the finalists of the Songs for Social Change contest in 2019, artists with a variety of styles & themes, all about change for the better. With reggae, electronica, rock, & folk, 6 different artists share their various soulful songs, working for a better world, with first prize going to Mary Lou Fulton for Not Going Back.

Sparky Rucker was introduced to the music of the civil rights movement when his mother took him to his first march at the age of 14, but he was already steeped in the music of the era in the black Pentecostal church of his youth and the distinctive Appalachian culture of Eastern Tennessee. Sparky Rucker has woven together music, activism, history and culture for more than 5 decades, raising and inspiring spirits everywhere.

Joe Newberry has a wonderful voice, and writes tunes & lyrics to enrich that wonderful voice to the point of sublime. Writing music that tends toward old-timey, bluegrass, spirituals, torch songs, & more beyond that, Joe's songs draw deeply on the Missouri of his youth and the North Carolina of his adulthood. Renowned for his clawhammer banjo playing, Joe has won multiple awards from the IBMA, and was a frequent performer on A Prairie Home Companion.

Though Rick Ruskin has a voice sometimes reminiscent of James Taylor, with all the enchantment that implies, and though he's got a lot of wonderful lyrics & tunes, the way that Rick most distinctively shines is through his magic on the guitar.

Leslie Evers has been singing and writing songs forever, but she waited decades to release them to the world. With her beautiful voice, lyrical skill, and trusty guitar and banjo, she casts magical-musical spells. Located on the folk-jazz continuum, Leslie has also performed for years with The Gryphon Carolers. Home is Palo Alto, CA, and she will soon release her first hymn!

Lisa Ann Wright (or on Facebook) makes compassionate, thoughtful, creative music, even as she performs as one of the Snarky Sisterz with Diana Quinn. Her song, My Daily Bread, was included in the Songs For Social Change top 10 by RAWA.

Robinlee Garber started out from New York, explored other cities & states while also exploring careers in creating art, stage production, and clinical art therapy, but she found home in Chicago, where she also found found fulfillment in adding music performance to her art therapy work. Her musical passions are life-long, centering around folk, blues, jazz, and what she calls torch-folk, although she only began performing music professionally in the last 15 years or so.