A performer since childhood, Lynn Drury’s first accolade was at the age of five. She won a 4-H pole-bending competition in her native Mississippi. Though her rodeo career didn’t follow her into adulthood, she was primed and ready for the spotlight by the time she first picked up a guitar nearly twenty years later.
Born in Yazoo City, MS and raised in Carriere, MS, Drury relocated to New Orleans, LA in the mid-nineties and performed her unique style of roots rock on most of the stages in the city. Over the past two decades, that meticulously cultivated style – NOLAmericana® – has brought Drury’s original music to stages all over the world. Her music, along with her personality, is reflective of her two hometowns – “Mississippi Grit – New Orleans Groove,” as Drury calls it.
Drury’s impressive catalogue includes “Crossing Frequencies” (2001), “Blackberry Winter” (2002 with Bad Mayo), “Spun” (2003 with Bad Mayo), “All You Need” (2006), “Dal Vivo (2009), “Sugar on the Floor “ (2011), “Come to My House” (2014), and 2017’s critically acclaimed “Rise of the Fall.” She has earned multiple nominations and awards from New Orleans’ most prominent publications.
Her latest release, “Rise of the Fall” showcases Drury’s “exponential growth as a songwriter” and was hailed as “another breakthrough” by Offbeat’s John Swenson. She is currently on tour in support of the release as she writes material for her next effort.
Ted Hefko and The Thousandaires bring original stories to life with the spontaneity of jazz, the bare-bones sensibility of early folk and the vibrancy of New Orleans. Ted Hefko and The Thousandaires encompasses the full range of his musical experiences and talents, with Ted strumming a guitar while he sings his original lyrics before switching to tenor sax or clarinet for his solos.
Born in Madison, Wisconsin, Ted Hefko moved to New Orleans on a Greyhound Bus when he was 18 and fresh out of high school. He chose to travel by bus to buy himself a little time to make the adjustment and also so he could pack more. His luggage totaled two guitars, a saxophone, cooking utensils, books, cassettes, and a pin-striped suit. He dreamed of a city on the water, full of music, and the sweet safety and serenity of the thick New Orleans air about him. He rode next to a Memphis call-girl, nearly twice his age, who entertained him with stories of the ins and outs of the business as they rode. Ted began writing song lyrics when he was in second grade and picked up the guitar a couple years later along with any instrument he could get his hands on. Wanting to dig a little deeper into modern jazz at The University of New Orleans, he chose saxophone over guitar as his primary instrument. That choice led to ten years of working as a freelance horn player in New Orleans and New York, before song writing and the guitar called him back.
The musician’s internship is long and tortured, but it is all these adventures and mis-adventures that add character to a young player. The proposition, in the late 90’s, was to drive across this great country in a van, living off sandwiches and bar menus. The pay was abhorrent but the scenery was rich whether driving route 66 through the painted desert or Colorado’s Rabbit Ears Pass in a blizzard. Ted toured nationally with jazz-jam band, idletime, from 1998 through 2001 opening for acts such as The Funky Meters, Leftover Salmon, Leo Neocentelli, Derek Trucks, Rebirth Brassband, and North Mississippi Allstars.
