Max Stalling With Kelley Mickwee

Max Stalling

Stalling’s style is modern with a vintage feel. With Tom Lewis on drums and percussion, Bryce Clarke on nylon-string guitar, electric guitar and mandolin, and Jason Steinsultz swapping between stand-up and electric bass, Stalling creates a dynamic live show that’s smart, charming and as listenable as it is danceable. Stalling and troupe are equally at home on a huge concert stage in front of thousands or playing an acoustic set for a hundred. Attendance numbers at shows have continued to rise. “I chalk it up to the strength of the songs and the strength of my band”, comments Max.

Stalling put together an elite team for his newest project, including recording heavyweight and Grammy winner Lloyd Maines. Maines has been instrumental in developing the sounds of some of the best artists in music and has worked with industry giants including the Dixie Chicks, Jerry Jeff Walker, and Bruce Robison. Band members Steinsultz, Howe and Clark are featured prominently on the recordings as well as Stalling’s wife Heather. “I’m very proud of the life that everyone has given these songs,” says Max. “They poured their hearts and souls into this project and I think people will be wowed by what they can do.”

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Kelly Mickwee

When most artists decide it’s time to begin a bold new phase of their career, more often than not they’ll chalk it up to a need to step outside the lines of their regular comfort zone or to express a side of themselves previously muted by audience expectations or the democratic process of a band dynamic. But ask Austin’s Kelley Mickwee about the impetus for her first-ever venture into solo waters after years of being a duo and group member, and she’ll straight-up tell you it was a matter of survival. “I’m totally starting from scratch again,” says the 34-year-old singer-songwriter. “And it’s scary, starting from what’s basically a blank slate — but it was totally out of necessity.”

But as they say, “necessity is the mother of invention.” Might have been Plato who said it first, and a few other folks here and there since him, but for our purposes here, “they” would of course be the Trishas — the band of sisters (in song if not by blood) that Mickwee hooked up with a year after moving to central Texas from her native Memphis. “Mother of Invention” was the leadoff track on the Trishas’ winsome 2012 full-length debut, High, Wide and Handsome, and at the time its “make something out of nothing” message seemed to be the story of the band itself: four gifted young singers — not all of them (Mickwee included) yet songwriters or even musicians in the beginning — who somehow parlayed what was supposed to be a one-off gig at a Kevin Welch tribute concert into a life-changing adventure across the highways and byways of Americana roots music.

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