Tony Lucca + Rachel Platten

Singer-songwriter Tony Lucca's sixth studio album "Rendezvous With the Angels," out July 13, 2010, on Rock Ridge Music (through Warner Music Group's Alternative Distribution Alliance), finds the performer crafting his most thoughtful, tuneful, and mature work yet. The album includes appearances by Lucca's 2009 tour mate Sara Bareilles (who duets on "Back to Me") and Lady Antebellum guitarist Jason "Slim" Gambill (featured on the bonus track "Nobody But You").

The songs on the new album, mostly penned on the road over the course of a busy 2009 touring schedule, demonstrate new growth and fresh perspectives on the artist's part.

Lucca notes, "A lot of my earlier records have break-up songs on them, and woe-is-me songs, and pointing-finger songs. Those make for emotional music, and a lot of people can relate to those songs. But that's not really so much where I am anymore."

Now married for three years and the father of a baby girl, Lucca found the expanding emotional parameters of his life working their way into his material.

"‘Always' was a song I wrote for my baby girl," he says. "I wrote that before she was born; I wrote that while I was on tour in September of 2009, and the baby was born in October. I had a lot to think about on the road. The idea of being able to honestly, unconditionally love someone, forever and always, became an overwhelming source of inspiration, and I was able to write that pretty easily. ‘Love Light' follows that, and is a creative take on the miracle-of-life adventure, about how wonderful it is to pass things along."

Three tracks on the album - "Stay With Me Tonight," "Song to a Martyr," and "Nobody But You" - are longtime concert favorites that attained a life of their own via exposure on the Internet and YouTube. Lucca decided to record them after years of fan requests at shows.

The album also includes a nod to one of Lucca's key influences in a cover of Billy Joel's "Vienna." He says, "That was a song that I have loved since I was a kid. I spent a lot of time with Billy Joel's ‘The Stranger' and ‘52nd Street.' Those two records were in full rotation when I was growing up. When I started learning how to play piano, I, of course, took to Billy Joel and Elton John. ‘Vienna' was always one of those tunes that you had to tackle. I started playing it live, and the lyrics really hit home for me."

"Rendezvous With the Angels" is the culmination of a life spent in music. Raised in Waterford, Michigan, Lucca began singing at age 3; by 12 he was writing and playing in Detroit-area bands. As a teen, he lived in Orlando, Florida, where he worked for four seasons on the Disney Channel's "Mickey Mouse Club" alongside such future superstars as Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, and *Nsync's Justin Timberlake and JC Chasez.

Lucca says of that experience, "A lot of the kids who came out of ‘Mickey Mouse Club' wound up sitting at a big banquet of stardom and celebrity and pop success. That was awesome for them, and exciting. That was what they chose to do. There was another handful of us who didn't do that. I got to California in 1995 and saw what was out there, and got away from the star-making machinery, and thought about what I was going to say before I had other people tell me to say it. For me, it wasn't so much about being big and famous and doing whatever it took to do that. It was about having a sense of self as an artist and a sense of credibility, and doing something that I was happy with, regardless of the accolades or the success."

Lucca went the Internet route and sold his first two independent releases, his debut "So Satisfied" (1997) and the follow-up "Strong Words, Softly Spoken" (1999), through his own website. His first commercially distributed album, "Shotgun," arrived in 2004. It was succeeded by his Rock Ridge Music debut "Canyon Songs" (2006) and "Come Around Again" (2008).

His songs have been featured on TV's "Friday Night Lights," "Brothers & Sisters," "Shark," and "Felicity" and in Kevin Costner's feature "Open Range." He has been seen on E! Entertainment Television and A&E, and performed numerous times on NBC's "Last Call With Carson Daly."

Over the course of his career, Lucca has shared stages with *Nsync, Marc Anthony, Macy Gray, Johnny Lang, and the late Chris Whitley. His 2009 dates included an opening stint with Bareilles, gigs with Tyrone Wells, and a cooperative tour with Jay Nash and Matt Duke (which resulted in "TFDI," a collaborative EP recorded at SPACE in Evanston, Illinois, and released by Rykodisc in late 2009).

A variety of musical influences flow through Lucca's music. Among his peers, he says, "There have been a few artists of late who have raised the bar and have forced me to reach higher - Ray LaMontagne, Jeff Tweedy and Wilco, Band of Horses, Fleet Foxes. These are people I listen to now that have become the underscore, the soundtrack to my life. Whenever I'm stuck on a lyric I think to myself, ‘What would Tweedy do?'"

As far as the veteran artists who have helped shape his sound and style, he adds, "I'm a huge Crosby, Stills & Nash fan, and a Joni Mitchell fan. Lyrically and compositionally, I've always tried to incorporate their integrity into what I do. And over the last five years I've spent an ample amount of time with the Beatles. There's music, and then there's the Beatles. They're almost like a course you'd take in school."

Lucca's life-long immersion in music and his ever-deepening experience have resulted in a potently affecting new work. Summarizing his achievement on "Rendezvous With the Angels," he says, "I set out to make a record that was me, as much as possible. I was trying to look at things from another angle. There are songs that deal with faith in love and letting go of relationships in hopes that they may return. It's about the ebb and flow of love."
http://www.tonylucca.com/

Beautiful, but not brazen. Passionate, but never preachy. Populist, but definitely not prosaic. New York City singer-songwriter, pianist and beatboxer Rachel Platten is by no means your average headliner-in-the-making. Her Rock Ridge Music debut, Be Here, is a bewitching collection of 10 wise-beyond-their-years piano-driven pop songs that echo elements of Alanis Morissette, Carole King, Tori Amos and Regina Spektor, while retaining a singular sense of self that is rarely found in such a young performer.

Be Here was born over the course of an epic trans-Atlantic journey that took the singer-songwriter from London to Los Angeles, on to Stockholm and then back home to New York City. At each stop, she collaborated with top-tier production teams, including Fredrik Thomander (*NSYNC, Lady Gaga), Jerry Abbott and Grant Black (Robbie Williams, Britney Spears) and the Wizardz of Oz (MoZella, Britney Spears). The results are immediately appealing, spirit lifting, heartwarming and mind opening no matter where in the world you are.

Platten's uplifting, instantly catchy anthems celebrate the love and light in the world with a passionate intensity that has been missing on the radio dial for far too long. "I write songs that are universally understandable," says Platten. "They're positive and poppy, without ever sacrificing the hard truths out there that we all have to live through." A perfect example is the head bobbing, spirit raising "Nothing Ever Happens." Platten melds introspection to inspiration as she sings, "Never be a winner if you're not in the game/Nothing ever happens if you always play it safe/So, make a little space/And get out of your own way."

On the swooning "Little Light," Platten's voice manages to perfectly skate the fine line between hopeful and inspirational as she sings, "Just looking for a little light to illuminate/The truth in the stillness after everything is blown away/Life fades in the cuts and the struggles/You just need a light at the end of the tunnel." The ebullient "53 Steps" is a twisting, tumbling rave-up that recalls Fiona Apple at her cheeriest crossed with Ray of Light-era Madonna. "That has been an anthem for me," says Platten. "I have the burning desire to be on the road, because there's something magical that happens when you get to travel the world."

"Overwhelmed" was written during one such globetrotting expedition to the UK, but its inspiration came at the oddest moment. "I woke up with the melody at 4 AM, but I had no way to record it," says Platten. "So I just kept singing it over and over until I got to the studio." The result is a poppy pick-me-up that finds Platten reassuring herself, "We get down, down, down/We all need somebody's help/Let's get loud, loud, loud till there's love and nothing else/'Cause the more that you give the more that comes back around.
"http://www.rachelplattenmusic.com/fr_home.cfm