Tom Hanson, dubbed Madison's "secret songwriter" by Isthmus Magazine (article), has been crafting moody, melodic acoustic music since the early 90's. Tom's self-released CDs, "Wake of the Moon" (2001) and Everything Takes Forever (2007) each received critical accolades and various 5-star reviews, and generated significant internet buzz. Everything Takes Forever was chosen as a "Top Editors Pick" by CD Baby, the largest online retailer of independent music, and has been included in several of their "best of" collections. Recently, two of Tom's songs were featured on national TV shows (One Tree Hill and Ghost Whisperer).

Tom is fast at work on his next collection of tunes, and hopes to have a new (possibly double!) CD out by years' end. More of a musical recluse and writing/recording-oriented artist, Tom nonetheless likes to do the occasional show, especially when the opportunity comes to play with friends or other musicians he admires. Such as this special night..

ROYAL OSPREY
Chicago-based Royal Osprey strives to make the interesting sad, and the sad interesting. Slow, melodic guitars intertwining with drones, electronic flourishes, and long, drawn out vocals are the band's forte. Never one to play the same way twice, the band constantly changes instruments, lineups, and styles in an everlasting quest for some beautiful, depressing grooves.

DOBY WATSON
Doby Watson is perhaps foremost a musician of the natural world. His pace is not that of a city dweller, caught inextricably within the steady rush of automata continuously moving headlong. His music instead revels in the surety of the tides, between passivity and kinetics, the periods of rest playing as much a part as the periods of movement. Within this framework lie the people his songs, figures of unrest mournfully caught

MATT DILL
Kansas City based artist Matt Dill is a musician in a couple different ways. At his roots, he is a soft and slow singer, a storyteller with a mandolin whose intimacy collects moments of our deep unconscious. By trade, though, Dill has developed an extraordinary electronic craft that puts his dream like narratives on a landscape of noise. Dill slowly integrates his melodious yet somber reality with an aesthetic of noise that is at times grainy, pulsating and pastoral. But unlike artists who struggle to walk the line of accessible song writing and esoteric noise, Dill's songs happen in organic moments that don't obfuscate the intimacy that keeps an audience.