SXSW 2012

"The combination of JT’s sweetly fractured blue eyed soul voice and Allison Russell's silver and gold tones is a thing of sheer beauty. This is no manufactured thing-it's real hair on the back of the neck standing up stuff. This is more or less perfect Americana" Americana UK

Whether touring as an acoustic duo or backed by the scintillating Chicago rock and soul outfit, the Clouds, JT Nero and Allison Russell, have emerged as two of the most compelling new voices in American roots music.

For several years Russell and Nero’s respective bands, Po' Girl and JT and the Clouds, have collaborated extensively, but in 2011’s Mountains/Forests, released under the JT Nero banner, they tapped into the true, bewitching power of their voices together on an entire record. After a much buzzed about performance at the Kate Wolf Memorial Fest in 2011, they decided to get folks more of the same, and quick. Their first proper duo record, Birds of Chicago, Volume 1, is set for release in January, 2012.

Nero’s fractured country-soul voice wrapped in Russell’s silver and gold tones is a fine thing. Not too perfect, not at all saccharine, you’ll hear echoes of mountain gospel, street corner doo-wop, classic soul. Accompanied by just a banjo and a guitar, it’s chilling. Fired by a full band, it’s a full tilt revival.

There’s not much Allison Russell can’t sing. She’s got a bit of the speakeasy chanteuse in her, a bit of old R & B, but with a delicacy and clarity of phrasing that Ma Carter or Loretta Lynn would surely approve of. She plays banjo, ukelele, guitar, and clarinet. She’s also a top shelf whistler. She writes gorgeous, unpredictable songs, and makes other people's - often Nero’s - tunes her own with startling ease.

JT Nero is a strange and distinct new American songwriter - he lists Mark Twain and Sam Cooke among his biggest songwriting influences. He is a poet of the everyday and the absurd, the lonely and the ever hopeful. When backed by the Clouds he's a rock n' roll preacher -- with Russell and on his own, he digs deeper into the nuances of his work. The Chicago Tribune recently tabbed him as an “artist on the verge of breaking big.” If "breaking big" allows him to broaden his collection of single batch American bourbons at his home bar in Chicago, he’s all for that happening.