Tommy Guerrero

Tommy Guerrero may be better known in the world of skateboarding than music. Born in San Francisco, Guerrero joined the skate company Powell Peralta in 1984 and became one of the original members of the legendary "Bones Brigade" team. TG has been playing music since the late 70's with his brother Tony  -both raised on a steady diet of DIY punk music/ethos and skateboarding-which informed and shaped the person he is today. Since then, Guerrero has become an accomplished bassist and guitarist with influences as diverse as John Coltrane, Bad brains, Joy division Gabor Szabo and on and on...

The Autumn Defense

John Stirratt and Pat Sansone have been playing together as The Autumn Defense for 18 years after originally forming in New Orleans following the completion of Wilco’s Mermaid Avenue sessions with Billy Bragg. Since their begginings in 2000, The Autumn Defense have released five full length LPs ... The Green Hour (2001), Circles (2003), The Autumn Defense (2006), Once Around (2010), and Fifth (2014).   The Autumn Defense’s music takes inspiration from the crisp season in the duo’s name, combining classic pop-rock sounds from both ‘60s and ‘70s traditions. 

William Tyler

...too sublime for words

I met William Tyler on the Exeter line out of London, and never such an autodidact had I met. He’ll tell you about James Kunstler, about Rudy Wurlitzer, about how Michael Cimino got a raw deal with Heaven’s Gate. We were both far hungover and lugging plenty gear, guitars and records and books, more than we could carry.

William Tyler comes from good Southern stock, a Nashville lifer who’s played with Lambchop, the Silver Jews, Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy, Charlie Louvin, Candi Staton. People love this man, rightfully so. When you meet him, you’ll feel that compulsion. William’s father Dan came from Mississippi; he wrote songs and lawyered around Music Row in the 1970s and later worked with Eddie Rabbitt, who toted a monkey on his shoulder and smoked grips of weed. Dan was once accosted by David Allen Coe, who chased him with a knife. (...)

I could lay in the far rolling fields of North Somerset and listen to Willy play all day long. What kind of world would that be for me? Better than the one ahead? So call it the Extermination Rag. The Glory Rag. March of the Jokers, you know? A hillbilly devotional with the lateness of dancers. I call it Impossible Truth.

MC Taylor, Durham, NC

Willy Tea Taylor

Willy Tea Taylor is a father, brother, and son. His remarkable ability to sing about profound subjects in a simple way makes his songs a great place to lose yourself. Much of that comes from his upbringing.

Willy grew up surrounded by rolling hills and horses in the small town of Oakdale, California. Known as the “Cowboy Capital of the World” for breeding so many world champion rodeo cowboys, Oakdale is still Willy’s home and the setting for many of his songs.

At the age of 18, a discerning and intimate set by Greg Brown at the Strawberry Music Festival inspired Willy to pursue life as a folk singer. Strawberry would play an integral role in Willy’s development as a musician, going from spectator to stagehand, to performer. He made his main stage debut with his band the Good Luck Thrift Store Outfit at the 2009 festival. In 2015, Willy made his solo debut on the main stage. Willy has charmed fans at some of the best festivals in the country.

Willy calls John Hartford, Roscoe Holcomb, Bob Dylan, KISS, Weird Al Yankovic and Willie Nelson his biggest influences, but is always quick to advocate for his favorite contemporary songwriters which include Tom VandenAvond, Nathan Moore, and his Good Luck partner in crime, Chris Doud. He and VandenAvond have travelled the country together on a series of tours they call “Searchin’ for Guy Clark’s Kitchen” where each evening’s show is just a precursor to an endless quest for the kind of serene late night scene depicted in the cult classic documentary Heartworn Highways.

On his new release Knuckleball Prime, Willy received support from greats like Benmont Tench (Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers), Greg Leisz (Bruce Springsteen, Eric Clapton), and Gabe Witcher and Noam Pikelny of the Punch Brothers. Of the album’s title, Taylor says “most baseball players peak in their twenties, but knuckleball pitchers tend to blossom in their late thirties and early forties. I’m staring down my knuckleball prime.”

 

Sugar Candy Mountain

Sugar Candy Mountain deliver carefully built psychedelic odes in the style of Jacco Gardner and Tame Impala. Their newest album 666 feels like something unearthed from a box of records found in your dad's garage, glowing wistfully with vintage inspired tones rambling organs, fuzzed out guitars, shimmering keys and sprawling drums. Reiter's woolly voice croons with icy warmth of Francoise Hardy, while Halsey's tender Lennon-esque vocals uncoil with easy languor. Recorded with Jason Quever of Papercuts, the band’s sophomore album, 666 sits comfortably between 60's Laurel Canyon bliss and more modern production of Dave Fridmann (Flaming Lips/Tame Impala).

Kelly McFarling

Kelly McFarling is an Atlanta, GA born, San Francisco-based songwriter. Her work is reflective of transitions, the wilderness, and its navigation. Sometimes she plays banjo, other times acoustic guitar. Often, she plays a Telecaster fronting her band, The Home Team, featuring pedal steel (Tim Marcus), drums (Nick Cobbett), bass (Oscar Westesson), and various other Bay Area musicians.

During her ten years in San Francisco, McFarling has released five independent recordings: studio albums. Water Dog, McFarling’s latest release, is her most intimate and folk-leaning record to date. She recorded the album in seasonal segments of 2016. The songs were first demoed with Allen Rothschild in his bedroom in Asheville, NC, where the creaks of his wood floor and the sounds of summer winding down made their way onto the recordings through open windows and live takes.The demos became the foundation of the record, and McFarling took them back to San Francisco, where Avi Vinocur of Goodnight Texas produced and engineered the majority of the record at his home in the Sunset District. “Recording at Avi’s house gave us the time to let the songs breathe and evolve.” McFarling said of the process. “It gave us space to make decisions at our own pace. I’ve never made a record like that, and it was a really special time. These songs were written in quiet spaces that were lived in. It made sense to record them in that way.”

The album is a reflection on inward motion; on the way that water and its movement dominates our lives and bodies. It’s about love, trust, and how we come to know the things we know. Above all, it’s about the cycles of nature that have the power to be both grounding and destructive. “While I was writing these songs, I was thinking a lot about family, stability, and love; and I was simultaneously starting to spend more time in and around the ocean. I was getting in the water a lot, and it opened a conversation about the nature of flow; learning to move with changes, instead of against them.”

In addition to producing, Vinocur also plays on most of Water Dog and his work is prominent on signature tracks, like “Both.” “That song was totally different when I brought it in. Avi simplified the groove, and made it more compelling.” says McFarling. Vinocur also helped complete the writing of “Caney Fork Overlook,” one of the record’s more classic country tunes. “That song had been half written for years. I wrote it in my van while on a road trip on the Blue Ridge Parkway, and it was one of those songs that I never had expectations for. I wasn’t sure it would be on the record. Avi helped get it to a place where it shines.” In other more stripped down songs, McFarling often played live in one take. “The Storms are Getting Stronger,” “Spring Clean”, and “Box” are songs that have been played in many different arrangements, mostly upbeat with a full band. For the recordings, I wanted them to go back to what they were when they were first written. Simple, quiet folk songs.”

Although Vinocur and McFarling play the bulk of the instrumentation on the record, they also tapped several trusted Bay Area musicians to explore additional layers of sonic texture. Water Dog features Tim Marcus on pedal steel and dobro, Graham Patzner on fiddle, Andrew Laubacher on percussion, Andrew Brennan on guitars, Oscar Westesson on upright bass, and John Elliott on piano. Austin-based band Whiskey Shivers also makes an appearance singing backup vocals on “Caney Fork Overlook.”

Water Dog is a first for McFarling in many ways. It is the first record she has made without a band, the first time she approached recording without a deadline, and the first time she has explored stripped down instrumentation. “From the beginning, the idea was always to let the songs speak for themselves and try not to get in the way.”

Sky Country

Sky Country are at the core of the do it ourselves spirit. Representing the DIO crew out of Big Sur, these dudes inspire all the brainwaves you might feel when cruzing a sun-swept Pacific highway... 

Sky Country offers up warm, hazy sun-soaked Rock n Roll inspired by the coasts and deserts of the western frontier - a genuine California sound born and bred from the lineages of renegade surf culture and ramblers of the lost nowhere lands to the east. The songs amble down the bleached highways and byways of windswept americana where guitars can still sound like bones, drums still barrel down the tracks, and poets still wink and grumble at the human heart.

Emily Afton

This will be Emily's second time performing at DIO Fest, and we couldn't be more stoked to have her as a special announcement. In addition to rocking our amphitheater, she'll also be hosting a swab drive to combat blood cancer and other blood disorders. Learn more about this here.

Emily Afton’s voice is transporting. Powerful, and emotive, Emily delivers her soul to you in the form of nostalgic indie-pop songs - with dark ribbons of folk and electronica interwoven. Solo or with her band, Afton aims to snatch your heart with her live performance playing haunting vocal-driven narratives in the style of Fiona Apple followed by heavy synths and uptempo dance tracks that can turn an aloof audience dancing. Last fall one of her performances did just this for Third Eye Blind lead singer Stephan Jenkins, who promptly asked her to join their U.S. tour as the opening band. An inspired Afton quickly returned home to finish her debut full-length album. 

ARCHETYPE [album], released in September 2016, and has been called an indie-pop explosion from "an artist who is clearly on an ascent" (Pure Volume). The episodic debut LP, co-produced by David Earl and Lila Rose reveals a new edge and depth to the once sweet singer-songwriter's music. ARCHETYPE laces together stories of an artist discovering both the sonic and emotional worlds and ghosts that exist within us all.

Emily and her band have spent the bulk of 2017 touring ARCHETYPE across the U.S., while beginning the clockwork for their next musical release (coming 2018).

Shannon Lay

“The first time I saw Shannon my heart was broken into a million pieces. I had known her from her wonderful punk band Feels as the lead guitarist who shouted back up, but I wasn’t sure what to expect from her performing solo. But there she was – at a small bar in Los Angeles to maybe 15 people watching while she sat in a chair with an electric guitar on her knee, orange hair covering her face and a picture of Bart Simpson projected behind her. She began her set and my heart stopped the moment her voice leaped into the air – and I did what I do in those rare situations – I recorded it. I pulled out my phone, opened up the voice memos and recorded her whole set (the last time I had done this was three years earlier while watching Kris Kristofferson and Harry Dean Stanton do duets set at Cinefamily). After her performance I was in complete awe and wasn’t sure how to approach her to convey how much I loved it. Suddenly Shannon, an acquaintance from around town, had exposed her super power and I felt instantly star struck in her presence. “I recorded your set so I could listen to it again” I told her, and then to my surprise I found myself saying “let me put out your record” and after convincing Jeremy at Woodsist to do a collaborative release with me, here it is.

Living Water is an instant classic. Recorded by Emmet Kelly (Cairo Gang, Bonnie Prince Billy, Ty Segall) in his Los Angeles home studio, this is an album where you can hear the room reacting to the music taking shape around it. Shannon has a voice that transcends time and space. You can’t tell if she’s old or new, if she’s sitting next to you, on a mountain top, or down in some canyon. Already her second LP to be released in 2017, Shannon is a prolific songwriter, one who lives and breaths melody and with guitar skills to boot. Despite it’s 14 tracks, Living Water comes in well under 40 minutes, but like Pink Moon or Just Another Diamond Day before it, this is music so potent it exists outside the realms of time – but in a world specific only to itself and the new feelings it creates.

Shannon has been dominating the local scene in Los Angeles over the past two years, leaving everyone who witnesses completely breathless. Having just finished a tour with Ty Segall, Shannon is set to support Kevin Morby on a national tour this fall.”

-Kevin Morby, Birmingham, Alabama, June 8th 2017

Texas Funk

Texas Funk was founded in 2005 in Modesto, California. Third and fourth generation musicians of the Familia Gloria, the groups musical roots go back to the family’s musical group of the 1970’s, “Grupo Gusto.” Grupo Gusto passed on their musical talents and love of the tejano/conjunto sound to the younger generation of their familia. Those children fused the unique, funky sound they inherited from their parents, with their own style and talent and turned that into the sound of Texas Funk!

The members of Texas Funk understand the importance of giving back to their community and to those families in need, and they do so by donating their time and musical talents to non-profit organizations such as Toys for Tots, Camping for Twin Rivers School, a newly organized fund raiser for children with parents who have been affected by cancer, and the “Camp Kesem Benefit Concert” whose goal is to provide financial support to send children on a week long summer camp.

Texas Funk’s talent consists of bassist Rob Gloria, Joel Gloria on accordion, John Castillo on Bajo-Sexto, and drummer Jacinto Cantu.

Zeb Zaitz

The Sextones

The Sextones are a family of music renegades known for viciously executed soul compositions and white-knuckle driving funk. Fronted by the charismatic and soulful vocalist Mark Sexton - The Sextones’ sound is a tip of the hat to the days of Tower of Power and Stevie Wonder while actively The Sextones are a family of music renegades known for viciously executed soul compositions and white-knuckle driving funk. Fronted by the charismatic and soulful vocalist Mark Sexton - The Sextones’ sound is a tip of the hat to the days of Tower of Power and Stevie Wonder while actively forging the path for a new generation of soul and funk. Based in the wild desert of Reno, NV, The Sextones continue to diligently craft their distinctive brand of soul with face-melting guitar parts, intricate bass-work, commanding drum rhythms, sticky Hammond B3 comping, brutally honest and heartfelt vocal acrobatics and a fearless and exciting stage performance.
 
In 2014 the original trio of Mark Sexton, bassist Alexander Korostinsky and drummer Daniel Weiss employed the talents of keyboard virtuoso Ryan Taylor to complete their musical family.
 
Over the last 10 years, these young soul renegades have relentlessly toured the United States gaining a multifarious group of loyal fans that help turn every show into an all-out funk dance party. The future has continued to get brighter for The Sextones as they have shared the stage with music heavyweights, Macy Gray, Charles Bradley, Galactic, Ziggy Marley, The Nth Power and their idols are starting to take notice. Festival appearances have included Railroad Earth’s Hangtown Halloween Ball, Wanderlust and Brews Jazz & Funk Fest just to name a few.

Loos Leaf

Loos Leaf began as a studio project between composer/multi instrumentalist Elliott Kay, and producer/engineer Lucas Heinel. While traveling together on a trip in Central America, the two friends discovered their shared love for jazz, hip hop, dub reggae, psychedelic rock, and other forms of music. Upon returning to the states they decided to make music together that would encompass their diverse tastes and showcase their different talents. With a recently released self-titled album, Loos Leaf has morphed into a live band that reimagines studio compositions into exciting improvisational shows, featuring some of the most talented young musicians of the Santa Cruz and Bay Area.

Salt Suns

salt suns bring the perfect mix of old-time vibes and new-school songwriting and aesthetic. A trio sweet in it's simplicity, these three are a perfect match for the amphitheater stage...

Hailing from North of the Golden Gate in Point Reyes National Sea Shore, Salt Suns create a sound that is intricately crafted, yet refreshingly understated. Rooted in American folk and rock; Guitar, bass, and drums weave nuanced harmonies to create a subtle, dark, and honest sound born from beneath the grey stratus and green hills of coastal California.

Founding members Dylan Flynn and Isaiah Mead met and began making music in the mountains of North Carolina where the strong traditional Old-Time music overlaps with the modern sounds of Asheville’s indie scene. After Dylan and Isaiah returned to their native west coast, what began as a folk duo grew in size and sound, adding Ryan Hett on electric bass (Someone Company, Jeff Manson Band).

Salt Suns’ first full-length album will be released the spring of 2018. Their 2016 EP is available at www.saltsuns.bandcamp.com.