Mason Jennings

MASON JENNINGS

Use your voice. It seems simple but in reality it's complex. We use our voices to teach the young and to whisper our darkest fears and sweetest dreams to our confidants. Our voices give form, shape and vision to our memories, cultures and ideas. There is no division, no better or worse, no right or wrong in our voices. They are our most valuable and powerful assets because there is no inequality among our voices.

Mason Jennings knows the importance of using your voice. Since he was a teenager, he has chosen to use his voice to sing, to stand up and to call out to the world the highs and lows of life and love, to cast a light on the shadows of doubt, to loosen the grip of fear on our hearts and minds, to laugh, to cry.

MICHAEL McDERMOTT

Noise From Words , the new album from singer/songwriter Michael McDermott, is a candid song cycle of addiction and redemption—or more accurately, the struggle for redemption. The Chicago-based artist holds nothing back on this boldly autobiographical work, motivated by the same impulse that led him to the lecture circuit, where he speaks to troubled individuals who are battling the same demons McDermott has at long last managed to subdue—though he would assert that this battle is never over. “I do it not because I’m ‘fixed’ or healed,” he says of this impulse to lend a helping hand, “but because I’m broken.”