Vincent Neil Emerson with special guest Blaine Bailey

Vincent Neil Emerson

Vincent Neil Emerson has become a staple among folk and country music fans nationwide, celebrated for his honest tales of life on the road, heartbreak, and struggles of all sorts. His albums have established him as a refreshing voice in the modern country music landscape.

On his brilliant new album, 2023’s The Golden Crystal Kingdom, produced by Shooter Jennings, Emerson transcends the role of a honky-tonk country singer and becomes a chronicler of his history. The album is a bold continuation of the story he tells on previous records, with songs exploring the feelings of playing in Texas honky-tonks and the early days of living in his car and busking on the streets. 

Blaine Bailey

On January 3, 1970, a meteor fell from the sky in a screaming blaze of fire over Lost City in Cherokee County. Today another firestorm lights up the Northeast Oklahoma skyline.

Twenty-two year old Blaine Bailey learned to play blues guitar growing up among his elders of the Keetoowah Tribe in rural Lost City, a small town north of Tahlequah. Bailey grew up listening and jamming along with the bluesy music of his Keetoowah elders, as well as his rock and roll heroes Jimi Hendrix and Stevie Ray Vaughn. He was also greatly influenced by the red dirt music his mother listened to while he was growing up in their small town.

From these influences his own unique style of storytelling, singing and six-string picking emerges, producing a compelling sound unlike any other that strikes the soul. His Native roots and heritage are a fundamental part of his identity, and his love of his people is evident in every strum of his guitar, every syllable he sings, and every beat of his heart. Bailey’s hauntingly unique and raspy voice enthralls audiences with tales only he can weave, born from his deep love and devotion to his home, his tribe, and to his wife and child. His unique voice combines the soul of the blues, the force of rock and roll and the spirit of country and western music to make a sound all of his own, featuring lightning fiddle and mournful pedal steel with some serious groove and head-bopping beats.

Musical tastemaker Kyle “Trigger” Coroneos, the brilliant and insightful writer behind the website Saving Country Music, referred to Bailey as, “the Native American representative that Red Dirt country rock has long needed.”

Bailey began writing and playing his own music at age 13, and his first album, Lost City, was released in 2021, paying tribute to his birthplace and upbringing. His single Cigarettes and Roses was featured in the third season of the star-powered FX television series Reservation Dogs, catapulting Bailey into the stratosphere and garnering him national attention.

From his latest album, Home, a new sound emerges from the heart of Indian territory and the heart of Blaine Bailey himself.

“Blaine Bailey’s debut album Home (ᎣᏪᏅᏒ in Cherokee syllabary) is a bold, auspicious, full, rich, and entertaining specimen to authentic Northeast Oklahoma country rock,” reported Saving Country Music. “...If nothing else, this album gratifies with its full tilt attitude, while blazing fiddle and steel guitar ground the music in country roots.”

“The theme on Home and many of its songs is spelled out right there in the title. This album is about Bailey’s sense of place, about leaving it, coming back to it, contrasting it with the big city, and seeing it through the experiences of visiting other regions. Sometimes you have to leave your home to really discover it, or stay away too long before you can appreciate it. Home is a young man figuring all of this out, while figuring out some things about himself along the way.” Sometimes meteors fall to the earth. In this case, a new star rises.