A river beneath a river with an edgy sense of humor, Sara Jean Kelley is an explorer, a rescuer, naturalist, and an active member of her creative community. Born and raised by the venerable bluegrass songwriter, Irene Kelley, Sara loves wild plants and animals and music and people and has the scars and stories to prove it. Sara’s songs are conceptual, yet relatable. Her voice is timeless, yet singularly her own. And her delivery can shift, like the weather, from dark and sultry, to light-as-a-feather.

A lover of wild things— plants, animals, people, and music— Nashville native Sara Jean Kelley crafts songs that combine upbeat, pop-inspired country hooks with thoughtful, often philosophical lyrical themes that explore our human connection to the natural world. Due to her dark sensibility and slightly melancholic sense of humor, Kelley’s particular brand of alternative country is multidimensional, with one foot firmly rooted in her Nashville Country/Americana background, another foot exploring the realms of alternative rock, rock and roll, pop, and even hip hop influences. Her voice, at times husky, dark and sultry, at times floating light-as-a-feather, has been compared to celebrated female country stars Brandi Carlisle, Patti Griffin, and Lucinda Williams. She’s opened for country music icons Emmylou Harris and Rodney Crowell, and her songwriting reveals a clear, intuitive understanding of what makes a song work. Her latest EP Black Snake, is about life and death, transformation and rebirth, strength and resilience; all the things you experience in your early thirties that you wish you had known a decade earlier.

Brian Revels is energy and angst in a comet trail of music that is as perceptive as it is entertaining. His observations of Americana ring with authenticity. He’s a wily veteran of the Atlanta, Georgia music scene, a multi-instrumentalist, and a natural-born storyteller with a poetic edge. Before forming his current ensemble, The Heat Lightning, he helped to build the folk trio, City Mouse, into a regional force, sharing stages with acts like The Steeldrivers, Parker Milsap, The Whiskey Gentry, and Faye Webster.

Brian Revels & The Heat Lightning made their streaming debut on 2020’s “Jasper County Blues” which Immersive Atlanta called “a collection of stories set between the opening of saloon doors and the desperation of last call.”

Revels draws from folk and blues and country and bluegrass, is an alternative to them all and a better man for their influences. The hole he’s worn in his guitar is not as large as the one he’s worn in his heart with the care of the lives he hopes he can redeem one song at a time. His timeless musicality will touch your soul with the drama, and the significance, of love lost and regained, of the human frailty that reduces and yet ennobles each of us.