Watch him strap a guitar on his back, board a public bus with 75 strangers, and traipse his way across the country. Here’s a singer-songwriter who loves nothing more than the sound of his voice reverberating off a music venue’s back walls, and the look in someone's eyes when you know they're with you. This is Jeff Campbell’s life, and as he’ll readily tell you, it isn’t so much a choice as acalling. “This is just who I am” says the vocalist, impassioned songwriter and lifelong musician who is willing to do whatever it takes to feel the rush of human connection.

Jeff’s onstage experiences have taken him to coast to coast countless times and have allowed him to make a life of singing and playing his songs on the road his living. After being crowned winner of Guitar Center's National Singer Songwriter Competition out of over 13,000 entrants, his 2013 EP Release, “In Spite of Everything”, produced by 6x Grammy Winner John Shanks, premiered at #1 on the iTunes rock EPs and singles charts, following a performance on the Jimmy Kimmel Live! show.

2015 saw the release of 'The Kitchen Sink', a self-produced EP that was born on the road and Jeff and Band toured in support of the ISOE EP. It's sound is what comes from 4 guys playing live, dozens of nights at a time and living in small spaces together. They hope you like it as much as they liked making it.

Named the 2016 Durango / American Songwriter Sole Performer, artist Jamie Kent’s future as a performer looks quite promising. Drawing on influences from modern country rock artists like Jason Isbell and Chris Stapleton, as well as paying tribute to classic greats like Bruce Springsteen and Tom Petty, Kent’s perfectly mellifluous tunes are roll-the-windows-down, soak-up-some-sun kind of good. Kent has no fear of hard work, playing over 200 shows a year including tours with Huey Lewis & The News, The Doobie Bros, America, Brothers Osborne, Brandy Clark, Marc Broussard, and multiple showcases at the South By Southwest Music Festival. Kent is supported by The Collective, an amazing grassroots group of fans who help advise and fund his career in exchange for access to exclusive music, merchandise, and vote in the major decisions he makes. He's officially endorsed by BOSE and Telefunken Microphones, and his song "Changes" was used by The Boston Red Sox this past season. Most recently, RollingStone.com named Kent one of the "30 Must See Acts" of CMA Fest 2016, alongside Eric Church, Carrie Underwood, and Chris Stapleton. Kent is now gearing up to release his brand new album "All American Mutt", recorded in Nashville with Grammy nominated Producer Dave Brainard (Brandy Clark, Jerrod Neimann, Jamey Johnson) coming out on his own label, Road Dog Records, in October 2016.
“I feel like I’m at a point where I have the most opportunities and the most momentum I’ve ever had, but there’s always so much more to do,” he says with a laugh. “In that sense, these songs are aspirational, and motivational, as well. They’re a reminder: continue working hard, and at some point there will be a break.”

The songs certainly merit one. Recorded in Westfield, Mass., with producer Joshua Meltzer, Kent's last record Embers and Ashes found a songwriter coming fully into his own. The rootsy, rollicking opening track “Broke, Not Broken,” has a wide-open feel that suits his tousled voice, while “Bonfire” simmers with a pulsing urgency that breaks loose in the chorus. “Still a Dream” is a wistful acoustic ode to love adorned with subtle piano, and “Prince of Pain” unfolds into a clear-eyed recrimination with Kent singing knowing lyrics in a steady voice.

Much of his burgeoning confidence comes from all that time on tour, where self-aware musicians become intimately familiar with their strengths and weaknesses, and the talented ones, like Kent, learn to convert the latter into the former. “You have to completely kick ass whether you’re playing for five people or 500 people, because you never know who’s going to be in that room. And if you can kick ass for five people, you’re going to kick ass for 500 people.”

Another lesson from the road: playing shows night after night can be a tutorial in what kinds of songs work best live, something Kent paid special attention to as he moved away from the looser groove-based tunes he wrote earlier in his career toward tightly focused Americana songs with undertones of folk and rock ’n’ roll that evoke Bruce Springsteen and Steve Earle.

With the new direction in songwriting came a new self-assurance in his singing. A formally trained vocalist who studied privately at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston, he can perform in essentially any style. The trick was identifying his own. “It took me being on the road day after day, singing my songs over and over again, for me to find a voice that was truly my own, that felt like me,” Kent says. “My songs are often autobiographical, and because they’re so directly applicable to me, the emotion comes through the vocals in a way that really resonates with people.”

Embers & Ashes is direct and emotional, with songs that are as relatable as they are memorable. After years of driving around the country, honing his craft onstage night after night, Kent now finds himself traveling the path he’s been seeking all along.

Kent recorded the new album after raising money through The Collective, which he launched in 2010 as “a community of my most loyal fans, friends, and advisors who support my career from day one, and reap the greatest returns from its growth.” The idea for the Collective, which also voted on the album art for Embers & Ashes, came from the realization that the music industry is in a state of flux that requires musicians to figure out ways to support themselves instead of relying on record labels or radio airplay to build their careers.

“At each stage of my career, the support of the Collective will help to quickly push me to the next level,” Kent says. “Up until today, this kind of acceleration has been nearly impossible to accomplish as an independent musician; looks like that’s about to change.”