Last summer, Kentucky singer/songwriter Cole Chaney played Tyler Childers’ Healing Appalachia music festival. On stage at the Boyd County Fairgrounds, which were built on top of reclaimed coal strip mines — and the very same land where Chaney’s fellow teenagers used to go to run trucks, light bonfires, and mess around away from adult supervision — Chaney performed his song “Shadow of the Mountain,” the title track from his 2025 sophomore album:

I was barely a boy when the devil crept in
First he took my Pa and then hе took my friends
Be it by way of a pill or by way of a mine
Thеre were many good soul would be relieved of their life

When life gets going, sometimes it goes fast. For Fort Worth-based singer/songwriter Claire Hinkle, that’s exactly what happened. In September last year she called an acquaintance in the music community (now manager Blue Barnett) to ask for help because she felt stuck. By December 2024, she was at Sunset Sound Recorders cutting four singles with Shooter Jennings. A few months later, she performed at Willie Nelson’s 2025 Luck Reunion (on the Fort Worth Stage), and this fall, she played Americanafest.

Borrowing from many and beholden to none, Johnny Mullenax plays a raucous musical smorgasbord he calls “funky country bluegrass.” Though it’s rare for an Americana/country band lead singer also to play lead electric guitar, for the Tulsa, Oklahoma native, splicing lightning-fast solos in between lyric lines appears to be second nature. Mullenax is singularly unconcerned with meeting the expectations of any one descriptor precisely.