To listen to the music of Roosevelt Dime is to take a journey through American roots music. Inspired by Appalachian string bands, Memphis soul, New Orleans dixieland, and the musical melting pot of Brooklyn which they call home, the band has forged a sound they’ve come to call Steamboat Soul. After years of thrilling audiences at festivals and venues across the country, the band has fully captured the energy and musicianship of their live performance on Full Head of Steam (2014).
Roosevelt Dime has recently been featured at The Philadelphia Folk Fest, Musikfest, as well as in No Depression, On Your Radar with WFUV’s John Platt, and official showcases at the International Folk Alliance in Memphis 2011, and Toronto 2013.
Sweetbriar Rose is a band of rootsy, thorny, rose-hipped gypsies who you’re equally likely to glimpse running in full sun, barefoot on a field of bluegrass, brooding in three-part harmony over a murder ballad in a shady grove, or channeling the spirit of a 1940's Balkan jazz joint. If you heard them through the wall, you might imagine a stray melody from the carnival caravan was whirling and beckoning just on the other side of the darkened woods.
Their dynamic performances of original music mix solid Americana tinged with Eastern European folk and jazz, whispers and shouts, foot-stomping and finger-picking, crooning and wailing. The multi-petaled flowers of Sweetbriar Rose include guitar, mandolin, keyboard, and upright bass, and haunting, layered harmonies are central part of their act.
