Ten out of Tenn. at the Square Room

(Our resident music critic Jed comes back for round two. Enjoy.)

If you like finding new music you might want to check out the Ten out of Tenn series at the Square Room. It's a perfect show to get a sampling of new regional musicians.

The founder Trent Dabbs gets together 10 singer/songwriters from Tennessee (primarily our music capital, Nashville) and takes them on tour, with the members playing backup for each other and each getting to perform two of their own songs live. That way they all get a little bit of exposure, while hopefully drawing a bigger crowd than each individually would. This was the 3rd edition of Ten out of Tenn. Past editions have featured artists you might have heard of: Erin McCarley, Andy Davis and Matthew Perryman Jones.

The current group brought a mixed bag of tricks to the show. Full disclosure: The main reason I went was that my sister’s former middle school friend (and Knoxville native) Ashley Monroe was part of the lineup. Ashley’s sound was definitely more country than most of the artists. So while I’m biased towards Ashley’s performance, I thought on the whole that the ladies put on a better show than the guys.



Based on the short 2 song samplings, here is my (subjective) enjoyment of each artists songs in Tiers (Tier 1 – I liked both of their songs, Tier 2 – I liked one of their songs, Tier 3 – Didn’t really care for either song/maybe I just didn’t get it. Let’s be honest, if we all didn’t have different music tastes we’d all still be listening to Gregorian chants).

Tier 1: Madi Diaz, Joy Williams, Andrew Belle, Ashley Monroe

Tier 2: Trent Dabbs, Kyle Andrews, K.S. Rhoads

Tier 3: Mikky Ekko, Jedd Hughes, Sarah Siskind

(ed. note: Be sure to check out the next Ten out of Tenn. show at the Square Room! And check out the links to the musicians' MySpace pages.)