Speed Dating with SXSW Americana, Country & Roots Showcasing Artists

January 16, 2020 Hailey Hess

Genres are less linear than ever before, proven by the Americana, Country, and Roots artists joining us at the SXSW 2020 Music Festival. The artists included in our On The Rocks playlist mix traditional sounds with new, childhood experiences with the present, and experimental production with classical sounds, to deliver music that stands against the genres’ status quo.

Read more about this year’s batch of Americana, Country, and Roots artists and listen to the On The Rocks playlist on Apple Music and Spotify. And don’t forget to explore the full list of Showcasing Artists on the <a href=”https://schedule.sxsw.com/?year=2020″ rel=noopener” target=”_blank”>SXSW Schedule.

Gothenburg’s Sarah Klang catapulted onto the music scene while working as a waitress at her father’s bar. The 26-year old decided to take a stab at songwriting and we sure are glad she did. Her music lies between good old-fashioned ballads, classic sixties and seventies pop, Americana, and country. Her lyrics reflect her self-confessed “saddest girl in Sweden” M.O. and won her a Swedish Grammy with her debut album Love In The Milky Way’.

Following her first album, Sarah Klang embarked on two sold-out Scandinavian tours and released her second album last October. Complete with grandiose string sections, bleeding heart piano, dreamy Americana-tinged guitars and Sarah’s powerful hair-raising vocals, Creamy Blue skirts a very fine line between the deadly serious and the self-satirising.

Growing up the son of a wedding singer in Philadelphia on a steady diet of R & B, hip-hop, rock, blues, and soul music, Devon Gilfillian gravitated to records that ignited his mind while making his body move. For Gilfillian, the key ingredient in music he loved seemed to be the “soul”—not simply the genre, but the feeling. In search of a career in music, Gilfillian moved to Nashville, Tennessee where he released his first EP in 2016 followed by various singles since.

His music centers on themes of falling in love, out of love, and everything in between. He has shared the stage with acts such as Local Natives, Brothers Osborne, Keith Urban, Mavis Staples, Anderson East, Trombone Shorty, and will continue to tour in 2020.

Born in Toronto, Canada, Basia Bulat grew up listening to her mother’s piano students, Sam Cooke, and Stax on the oldies station. Soon she became a musician herself, blending a unique intrinsic contemporary sound with her forever love of classic folk, country and R&B. Basia Bulat’s sound is not only marked by her powerhouse vocals, but also by her being a multi-instrumentalist, recording and performing on electric guitar, piano, autoharp, ukulele, bass and charango.

She has joined Sufjan Stevens, The National, St Vincent, Head and the Heart, Arcade Fire, Jim James, Dawes, and more on tour. Along with her impressive touring experience, she is also a three-time Polaris Music Prize finalist and has been nominated for three Juno Awards in Canada.

Vera Sola grew up as a member of the ninth generation on a family farm in Ontario, Canada, that was formerly a hub for séances, is third cousin to Dolly Parton, and has a degree in poetry from Harvard University. Need we say more? Vera Sola is quite literally one of a kind and her music proves it.

After writing hundreds of songs throughout her lifetime, Sola finally decided to record her own music in 2017. The product was her debut album Shades – written, performed, and produced entirely alone. The result is a record both complex and sparse, lyrics full of sorrow yet arch and wry. Sincere but sardonic, self-aware and scathing. Poems and stories set to music. Songs of the present that conjure the past. All tethered by that sudden, startling voice.

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