Western AF: Chris Acker + Rachel Baiman + Northcote

Northcote

Northcote är det musikaliska projektet för den kanadensiske singer-songwritern Matt Goud, känd för sitt hjärtliga låtskrivande och sina dynamiska liveframträdanden. Sedan starten 2008 har Northcote turnerat internationellt och spelat tillsammans med artister som The Gaslight Anthem, Frank Turner, Hot Water Music och många fler, samtidigt som han byggt upp en lojal fanbas i Nordamerika och Europa.

Under 2026 planerar Northcote att släppa To Cherish, ett fullängdsalbum inspelat i Rain City Studios i Vancouver och producerat av Jesse Gander (Japandroids, White Lung). Projektet visar upp ett utvecklat sound med bidrag från en begåvad ensemble musiker, däribland Paul Rigby (Neko Case) och långvariga samarbetspartnern Stephen McGillvray.

Northcote har släppt sju studioalbum och flera singlar och har stadigt byggt sin publik genom kraftfulla, känslomässigt laddade framträdanden på både intima scener och stora festivaler. Med över 42 000 månatliga lyssnare på Spotify och en stark närvaro i sociala medier fortsätter Northcote att bredda sin räckvidd, med målet att skapa en hållbar internationell karriär samtidigt som han bidrar meningsfullt till musikgemenskapen.

Chris Acker

In a genre full of tall tales and marketable lies, Chris Acker crafts candid songs – weaving his wit and woes into a body of work that exposes the stale plight of the American Songster to the honest, and sometimes hilarious, light of day.

Since leaving his childhood home of Seattle, Washington, Chris Acker has called the haggard decadence of the New Orleans Americana world his purlieu. In the tradition of Guthrie and Prine, Chris lends a quavering voice to the half-rotten romance of the unremarkable and unrefined. Regardless if you’re sitting by a backyard fire on a muggy Louisiana night or standing stage-side in some far flung town, when you hear Chris Acker playing, you’re hearing the end result of countless hours of observing the masters of the craft…and the end result of repeating their mistakes.

Some hard-times don’t happen behind plows, they happen behind dish-pits and cash registers. Some ramblers don’t feel the hot breath of freedom, just the smell of car exhaust and a couch for a bed. From the folk revival through the golden age of country music, deafened by punk shows and brass bands alike, Chris’s songwriting is a nod to the absurd yet muted brilliance that inhabits the molded corners of the bars he patrons and cratered street he treads, paired with a pained honesty that merits a long second look.

Rachel Baiman

Common Nation of Sorrow, Baiman’s 2023 LP,  was called one of “The Best Albums of the Year (So Far)” by The Boston Globe, awarded 4 stars from American Songwriter, and deemed a “Tremendously and remarkable record” by The Amp.  On the heels of an album release year that saw her play move than 130 shows across the globe, Baiman has made 2024 her “Year of collaboration” with a series of A Side/B Side projects featuring some of her favorite songwriters including Pony Bradshaw, Caroline Spence, Nicholas Jamerson, and Kaia Kater. If Common Nation of Sorrow was a novel, this year’s releases feel more like short stories, just long enough to make you want more. 

Raised in Chicago, Baiman made her way to Nashville at 18 with the dream of being a professional fiddle player and has since released two solo records and an EP, alongside session and side-person work with Kacey Musgraves, Kevin Morby, and Molly Tuttle among many others. As a songwriter, she has garnered a reputation for her specific brand of political and personal lyricism, which Vice’s Noisey described as ‘Flipping off Authority one note at a time”. 

In contrast with her previous work, (Watchouse’s Andrew Marlin produced her debut album, Shame), Baiman was the sole producer of Common Nation of Sorrow. After recording for twelve days in Nashville with Grammy-Award-winning engineer Sean Sullivan, Baiman traveled to Portland, OR, where she spent two weeks mixing the record with famed engineer and producer Tucker Martine (My Morning Jacket/The Decemberists/First Aid Kit). For her new collaborative singles, she turned to friend and indie-pop writer and producer Clare Reynolds, known professionally as Lollies.  “One thing I learned from producing my own record is that I love producing, as long as it’s not my own parts”, she laughs.  “I thought it would be great to have another kind of collaboration included in these new songs, on the production side. 

The first In Collaboration single release, “Dominoes”, with Pony Bradshaw, was the result of