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JPR Live Sessions Presented By Sierra Nevada Brewing Company: The Wild Reeds (2019)

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The Wild Reeds are a band led by women. Not a sister band, not a girl group, but a band fronted by three women, all talented singers, songwriters, and multi-instrumentalists in their own right: Kinsey Lee, Mackenzie Howe, and Sharon Silva, with drummer Nick Jones and bass player Nick Phakpiseth providing the Los Angeles-based band's rhythmic foundation.

Like a harmony at its euphoric best, the leads' powerful - and powerfully distinct - voices merge to form a sound that can only be The Wild Reeds. On their third LP, Cheers, the band comes together to create an ode to the joys and pains of camaraderie. The Wild Reeds' previous LPs caught press attention from outlets including NPR Music (including a Tiny Desk Concert), Billboard, Rolling Stone Country, Noisey, and Garden & Gun. Now arrives Cheers: a career highlight achieved by giving each writer considerable latitude, in the end creating a singular work out of three striking songwriting voices.

Cheers was born out of a strange and painful time, full of tough break-ups, family deaths, and discord within the band itself. The 13 songs are snapshots from that upheaval, touching on illness, therapy, heartbreak and disconnection from three perspectives. Some of Cheers' sunniest songs contain the darkest undercurrents, and The Wild Reeds don't shy away from sadness or open endings. The album creates beauty out of contradictions: It finds community in individuality, tenderness in confrontation, joy in the midst of grief and pain. Threaded throughout is a deep sense of gratitude for the band itself, and the songs became a way for the members to talk to each other - an intimate language that was at times contentious, but in the end, healing.

JPR Live Sessions are recorded with Audix microphones. Located in Wilsonville, Oregon, Audix designs, engineers, and manufactures high performing, innovative products that contribute to the advancement of the professional audio industry.  

As FM Network Program Director and Music Director, Eric oversees many aspects of JPR's broadcast day. He still hosts the occasional Open Air or classical music shift, and is the driving force behind JPR Live Sessions - our popular series of live in-studio music performances and conversations.