Produced by Matthew Sweet
Release Date: April 18, 2006

LOS ANGELES, CA Two of pop musics darlings Matthew Sweet and Susanna Hoffs of The Bangles - have joined voices in celebration of one of the most important eras in pop music. Featuring 15 of the duos favorite pop tunes from the 1960s, Under The Covers Vol. 1 combines popular hits and obscure gems from such important names in music as The Beatles, Bob Dylan, The Beach Boys, The Who, Neil Young and Crazy Horse, The Zombies, The Mamas And The Papas, The Left Banke, The Bee Gees, The Marmalade, Fairport Convention, Love, The Stone Poneys, and The Velvet Underground. Sweet and Hoffs, each with a stunning and highly distinguishable voice of their own, mingle melodies and tones for new, unique harmonies that truly reflect the sounds of the time. Shout! Factory will release Under The Covers Vol. 1 on April 18th

Matthew Sid Sweet and Susanna Susie Hoffs have always been fans of each others work, performing guest vocals at each others concerts a few times throughout the years, and collaborating with comedian Mike Myers as members of Austin Powers on-screen band Ming Tea in Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery and Austin Powers in Goldmember. Now Sweet and Hoffs explore a classic era of pop music together for the first time, on Under The Covers. The down to earth feel of the record reflects the ease of the sessions; recorded entirely at Sweets home facility, Lolina Green, the work was a true labor of love, done, as they both put it, purely for the fun of it! The newly formed duo wanted to start with a few of their favorite, though lesser known tracks: She May Call You Up Tonight by 60s baroque rock band The Left Banke, The Warmth Of The Sun by The Beach Boys, and the melancholy ballad Who Knows Where The Time Goes? by British folk-rock group Fairport Convention, among others. They also threw in a few more well-known songs from the era; Neil Youngs Cinnamon Girl, Pete Townsends The Kids Are Alright, and John Phillips Monday, Monday were on the short list. Sweet and Hoffs, both Lou Reed fans, also added Sunday Morning from The Velvet Underground & Nico. Of course no 60 music collection would be complete without a selection from The Beatles, so the Sweet/Hoffs consensus was And Your Bird Can Sing from Revolver. And, one exception to the rule requires mentioning; the Bee Gees Run To Me, actually came out in 1971.

A 60s pop primer of sorts, Under The Covers Vol. 1s 15 songs span a wide range of genres from rock to folk to pop but all have that unmistakable 60s vibe. Its obvious that Sweet and Hoffs have put their own stamp on these covers, individually and collectively, but have done so with a sense of respect and admiration for the original versions and composers. On Under The Covers Vol. 1 Sweet and Hoffs pay homage to arguably the most important decade in pop music by inserting their own musical personalities and unique harmonies for a fresh and new sound. Dig it.

MATTHEW SWEET & SUSANNA HOFFS: UNDER THE COVERS VOL. 1

	Track	Artist	Preview
1	I See The Rain (The Marmalade)	Matthew Sweet / Susanna Hoffs
2	And Your Bird Can Sing (The Beatles)	Matthew Sweet / Susanna Hoffs
3	It's All Over Now, Baby Blue (Bob Dylan)	Matthew Sweet / Susanna Hoffs
4	Who Knows Where The Time Goes? (Fairport Convention)	Matthew Sweet / Susanna Hoffs
5	Cinnamon Girl (Neil Young And Crazy Horse)	Matthew Sweet / Susanna Hoffs
6	Alone Again Or (Love)	Matthew Sweet / Susanna Hoffs
7	Warmth Of The Sun (The Beach Boys)	Matthew Sweet / Susanna Hoffs
8	Different Drum (The Stone Poneys, featuring Linda Ronstadt)	Matthew Sweet / Susanna Hoffs
9	The Kids Are Alright (The Who)	Matthew Sweet / Susanna Hoffs
10	Sunday Morning (The Velvet Underground)	Matthew Sweet / Susanna Hoffs
11	Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere (Neil Young And Crazy Horse)	Matthew Sweet / Susanna Hoffs
12	Care Of Cell #44 (The Zombies)	Matthew Sweet / Susanna Hoffs
13	Monday Monday (The Mamas And The Papas)	Matthew Sweet / Susanna Hoffs
14	She May Call You Up Tonight (The Left Banke)	Matthew Sweet / Susanna Hoffs
15	Run To Me (The Bee Gees)	Matthew Sweet / Susanna Hoffs
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Produced by Matthew Sweet
release date: June 10, 2008

On their Verve Forecast debut album Limits of the Sky, the Oxford, Alabama-based quintet the Bridges unveils a disarming brand of heartfelt, harmony-laden pop-folk-rock that combines youthful exuberance with surprisingly mature songcraft.

The group, whose members range in age from 18 to 24, consists of siblings Natalie Byrd (piano and guitar), Stacey Byrd (guitar), Isaaca Byrd (bass) and Jeremy Byrd (drums), and cousin Brittany Painter, who provides hauntingly expressive lead vocals and plays acoustic guitar. Brittany writes most of the band's lyrics, with all five collaborating on the music.

The Bridges' tight-knit chemistry is apparent throughout Limits of the Sky, which was produced by noted pop-rock auteur Matthew Sweet and consists entirely of the band's original compositions. Their effortless harmonies and seamless instrumental rapport are prominent on such compelling tunes as "All the Words," "One Way," "One I Love" and "Echo," which combine a subtly inventive melodic sensibility with insightful, emotionally resonant lyrics that belie the artists' youth.

"I think it's a really good representation of who we are," Natalie says of the album. "We didn't care about making it perfect or polished; we wanted it to be real and organic and emotional. It's kind of raw in some ways, and maybe there are some flaws, but they're our flaws. I think it sounds like us."

The members of the Bridges have been making music together for much of their lives, developing their musical vision on their own terms, free of the influence of transient musical trends. The musicians grew up in families that were both musically inclined and church-oriented, and were not encouraged by their parents to listen to secular pop music.

"I always had a special connection with my cousins growing up, and music was always a big part of that," says Brittany, who began writing songs in her early teens. "When I first started writing, I would call them and play what I'd written over the phone. Then when I'd see them over the holidays, we would arrange harmonies and they would create their guitar parts."

During her senior year of high school, Brittany relocated from her family's home in North Carolina to join her cousins in Alabama, in order to concentrate on their budding musical collaboration. Brittany, Natalie and Stacey initially performed as an acoustic trio, under the name Long Story Short, playing at church events and in local coffeehouses.

In 2005, younger siblings Isaaca and Jeremy joined to make the group an amplified five-piece. "When we went electric, we pretty much had to start over and figure a new way to create music together," says Natalie. "We totally reinvented ourselves, and wrote a whole new set of songs, and pulled from a whole new set of influences."

By that point, the band had tapped into a rich new vein of musical inspiration, belatedly discovering a world of classic pop music recorded long before they were born. "We started listening to a lot of '60s and '70s music," Brittany explains, "and we loved it so much that it pushed us into a different direction. We really pulled a lot from that stuff, and that's when the songwriting really took off."

"All we had really known before that was church music," Natalie adds. "But when we discovered acts like the Beatles, Fleetwood Mac and Crosby, Stills and Nash, we fell in love with their music and bands like these became our musical inspiration. When we heard these recordings, it taught us a lot about what makes a real song, and it made us shake up what we were doing."

Along with the lineup change came a new name. "We liked the Bridges because of the symbolism," states Natalie. "We want to make music that bridges gaps between modern music and '60s and '70s music, and between our Christianity and our secular career. Also, the bridge is a really important part of a song, and we love writing bridges."

Shortly after becoming a quintet, the Bridges made the jump to playing in rock venues, and their regional touring efforts soon began to yield the beginnings of an enthusiastic fan base. Subsequent tours with Rooney and the Bangles continued the band's steady progress.

"We were all a little naive when we started, and we didn't know anything about the music industry," Brittany notes. "But there's always been a natural progression. From the start, there's always been a series of little things that kept us motivated, and made us feel like we have something good going on here."

When it came time to record Limits of the Sky, the Bridges found a sympathetic ear in studio veteran Matthew Sweet. "We loved working with Matthew," says Brittany. "We'd heard so many stories about new artists getting pushed around by producers, but Matthew kept everything organic and real. He was very respectful of our ideas, and he was very supportive and careful not to step on anybody's toes. He seemed more interested in capturing what we do, rather than imposing some other agenda on us."

The resulting album offers ample evidence of the Bridges' powerful musical and familial bond. "I can't imagine being in a band with anyone else," Natalie asserts. "We've all gone through the same things together and discovered music together, so we all speak the same language, musically and otherwise."

"We want to last," Brittany concludes. "Of course we want to be successful. But if that didn't happen for us, that wouldn't stop us from making music, because it's what we love and what keeps us going."

Produced by: Brendan O'Brien
release date: May 20, 2003

If ever a group's moniker were wrapped in florid irony, surely it's this bright, buoyant summit meeting of contemporary popmeisters Matthew Sweet, Shawn Mullins, and Pete Droge. Backed by an all-star studio ensemble that includes Jim Keltner, Greg Leisz, Brendan O'Brien, and Roy Bittan, the three nominally insulated musicians don't so much claim the legacy of Crosby, Stills & Nash on the harmonic riches of "Think it Over" and glorious "Now I Know" as find a musical common ground that can't help but echo history in its folk-rooted vocal glories (although it's hard to imagine the baby-boom icons wrapping themselves around the chunky funk of the title track here or the pointed impressionistic allegory of "Dragonfly.")

Yet The Thorns forges an ego-sublimating higher ground that's anything but nostalgic. Fans of the three musicians may recognize their various sensibilities at work throughout, but it's a rewarding collaboration that virtually defies deconstruction. Don't be misled by the name--this is a beautiful, musically fragrant bouquet. -- Jerry McCulley

The Thorns - In Stores Now Buy CD 1 - Runaway Feeling 2 - I Can't Remember 3 - Blue 4 - Think It Over 5 - Thorns 6 - No Blue Sky 7 - Now I Know 8 - Dragonfly 9 - Long, Sweet Summer Night 10 - I Told You 11 - Such A Shame 12 - I Set The World On Fire 13 - Among The Living Pete Droge on what makes the Thorns sound so distinctive: "With a lot of great harmony bands, people would individually bring songs in and they'd work up their harmonies -- CSN, Fleetwood Mac, etc. I'm not really aware of a band that has been this focused on the harmonies from the conception of a song. On our demos, very often the vocals were identical to what ended up on the final record because, as we were writing the songs, we were tailoring the melodies for the three-part harmonies. That process has everything to do with the sound of this band. There are places in the record where I swear I hear my voice and I know I'm not singing. It's that X factor. You can't tweak it in with an expensive equalizer or the right compressor. It either happens or it doesn't. I have to give Matthew credit for getting us in the mindset of thinking this way. He was adamant about having harmonies all the time. It was good that we pushed ourselves that way.

The Thorns are: Matthew Sweet, Pete Droge, Shawn Mullins It was good timing that brought the three of them together in the spring of 2002, good timing and a shared desire to stretch out after being turned inward for so long. Matthew Sweet and Pete Droge had just finished typically intensive solo album projects, while Shawn Mullins had recorded a sizable batch of demos for his next Columbia Records album. Because they played a variety of instruments and knew how to operate the recording hardware, all three were in the habit of doing most of the work themselves. Each of them, then, was up for a break from introspection and a taste of interaction when the idea for the experiment came to them through the artist grapevine. So it was that three resolutely self-contained and single-minded solo artists found themselves face to face, and voice to voice, in a room at Hollywood's Sound Factory, working on a song. Sweet, Droge and Mullins didn't know each other particularly well, but there were countless connections among them -- common managers, producers and sidemen, mutual friends, a history of bumping into each other along the circuit -- more than enough connections to bring them together to conduct this experiment, which is best presented as a rhetorical question: Wouldn't it be cool if several first-rate writer-singers managed to blend their sensibilities and their voices into a distinctive sound and style? That's hardly a new idea, obviously. But Crosby, Stills & Nash formed in 1968, the Eagles in 1971; Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks joined Fleetwood Mac in 1974. Isn't it about time something similarly ambitious and audacious was attempted in this century? Quite separately, all three of these unlikely collaborators had thought about singing with others, with Sweet even giving serious consideration to putting together a male-female harmony group in the manner of the Mamas & the Papas as a side project. Concurrently, Droge realized how much he wanted to jump off what he describes as "the solo-artist treadmill," with its endless cycle of demo-record-wait-tour. And Mullins was simply antsy to do something different. So their antennas were out; still, they never expected to work together -- or with anyone else -- on an equal basis. They got together, spending two weeks at a ranch in picturesque Santa Ynez Valley north of Santa Barbara (where they would come up with "the Thorns" as their name). Mullins, Droge and Sweet were writing with a sense of purpose. During those informal sessions, which Sweet jokingly refers to as the nascent group's "first golden period," the songs tumbled out one after the other: "Think It Over," "Thorns," "Dragonfly," "Such a Shame," "Long Sweet Summer Night," "I Told You," forming what Droge calls "the cornerstones of the record and of the band's sound." "I'd never worked so fast and come out with such good stuff," says Mullins. Droge again: "It was hot, middle of summer, and we'd just sit out on the back porch all day and work on these songs. Then at night we'd put a microphone out on the back porch and cut the demos right outside, with the crickets chirping, the wind blowin'. We'd have two mics, one on the guitar, one for the vocals, and we'd track it into Matthew's laptop." "We had to demo right away because of so many details on everything -- all those backgrounds," Sweet explains. "We did all that live together. That's the magical thing." Produced by Brendan O'Brien, (O'Brien had done three records with Droge and two with Sweet, including each of their biggest sellers, Matthew's 100% Fun and Pete's Necktie Second), the three band members and O'Brien played the bulk of the instruments, with the legendary Jim Keltner on drums, the E Street Band's Roy Bittan on piano and string wizard Greg Leisz providing accents on a variety of stringed instruments. The centerpeice of the album, however, are the harmonies between the three artists. Mullins enthuses. "The immediacy and the spontaneity we had is a lot of what's so great about it. There were several times during the process of writing and demo-ing -- especially out on the porch at the ranch -- where we'd all look at each other and it was like, 'Wow, man, this is why we're here.' At those moments, I was feeling that this music is going to touch a lot of people."