The good news about 2009 is that rock and roll is recession-proof. So, apparently, is hip-hop, folk, blues, rap, funk, bluegrass and sensitive acoustic rock, all of which are alive and well in Central PA, as is evidenced by our featured local musicians over the past year.

The following artists distinguished themselves in their respective genres over the past year and earned themselves a nod in Fly Magazine for their efforts. Collectively, they’re the best hard-rocking, washboard-playing, rhyme-spitting, tight pants-wearing, speed-picking, horn-blowing, soulful-crooning, finger-tapping, poetry-spewing Buffett tribute band around. Whew. We may not have any money left in our 401Ks, but at least we’ve got someone to help us sing our blues.

JANUARY
PERKASIE
The award for Band That Least Resembles The Band We Originally Wrote About goes to Perkasie, Central PA’s mighty folk-rockers, who replaced virtually every original member in the past year but singer/primary songwriter Alex Wash. Fortunately, what hasn’t changed is the band’s singular sound, which at its core is old-timey music for new-timey people. It’s anachronistic in its rollicking ragtime feel, in its wandering troubadour pathos, equal parts shoot-’em-up saloon music and rambling Woody Guthrie folk.
Simultaneously, Perkasie maintain the edgy, youthful wink you’d expect from a group of 20-somethings with thrift store dresses and eyebrow piercings. Regardless of the lineup shift, the six-man (and one lady – new singer Liz Zito) band remains one of the area’s brightest beacons of hope, thanks in part to heavy support from press like Philly Weekly and Impose (and Fly, thank you very much) and national tastemakers like WXPN. –Jeff Royer

FEBRUARY
THE LOVE HATERS
Some cover bands pretend that they are just original bands in a holding pattern, just about to emerge, but Central PA power-trio The Love Haters is not one of them. “Right now, we’re happy doing the cover thing,” says drummer/singer Trent Sprenkle without a hint of regret.
Sprenkle says that the trio’s shared pedigree in metal, hard rock, disco and R&B determines The Love Haters’ lineup of covers, which includes songs by everyone from Metallica to KC & The Sunshine Band to Garth Brooks.
The members also moonlight in area bands like American Posse and Screamin’ Daisys, and still find time to maintain family lives and full-time jobs. However, Sprenkle doesn’t see it as a hindrance to The Love Haters’ ambitious agenda of, as he puts it, “spreading the Hater Nation.” –Keith Wilson

MARCH
RHEA SILVIA
The award for Best Disappearing Act goes to Rhea Silvia, who in October announced that they were going on hiatus, to the chagrin of their adoring fans. The good news is that, for once, “hiatus” isn’t just a euphemism.
“We didn’t break up, but we are taking some time for a few new opportunities in life and music,” explains frontman Jason Barshinger. “We’ll be back out playing some shows next year.”
Rhea Silvia experienced nearly instant success in their first go-round, snagging the Best New Artists honors at the 2008 717 Awards and warming up the stage for a bevy of national acts. But the band’s true ambition played out in the studio, where Rhea Silvia composed grandiose prog-rock tapestries with an early-’00s modern rock flair.
Until the band reunites, fans can catch Barshinger as a solo act (a solo acoustic album is planned for 2010) or with his new project, Autumn Theory, featuring ex-members of Adrian Blitzer and Serving The Industry. –JR

APRIL
PARADISE MOVEMENT
Paradise Movement blasted into the indie hip-hop world in early 2008 with a fantastic debut album, Freshman 15. Original member Mello Paul bailed by the year’s end, but rapper Johnny Free carried on the torch with new partner, honey-voiced hook man Ralph Real. In March 2009, the two issued the band’s lauded follow-up record, Kinetic Magnetics, a witty and wildly fun underground booty-shaker.
“We wanted to release an album that is radio-ready and geared for the club, but still just as much a respectable rap record,” Free explains. “The songs on this album are catchy as hell and will have your girlfriend wishing you were a better dancer!”
Lead single “Shake It Off” received high praise in October from Spin, who said the track was so fun that listeners “should feel guilty listening to [it] on a weekday.” The group – rounded out by DJ Pherensik – recently signed a deal with Son of Issachar Talent Management Firm, and is currently ironing out details for a European record deal and tour. We’re beaming with pride. –JR

MAY
RIVER TOWN REVIVAL
River Town Revival frontman Earl T. Funk is well aware of the dilemma presented by playing his band’s brand of rule-breaking bluegrass.
“If there is anything I want to get out there, it’s that we may play bluegrass instruments, but we definitely are not a traditional bluegrass band,” he says. Case in point: River Town Revival does a mean, sarcasm-free cover of Motörhead’s “Ace of Spades.”
“The purists are like, ‘You’re not bluegrass!’” Funk says with amusement.
The diversity of the band’s influences, from the aforementioned Motörhead to Yonder Mountain String Band, is the root of River Town Revival’s left-of-bluegrass melting pot sound – a “stranger than fiction” melding of metal and bluegrass. “[There’s] a punk rock intensity when we’re playing this music,” Funk says. “We’re playing bluegrass from a completely different approach.”
While Appalachian bluegrass isn’t exactly a lucrative genre of music to play, the members of the Marietta band soldier on, writing and performing “because we love to do it,” says Funk. “That’s what brought us together, is just the love of playing.” –KW

JUNE
BEN PIERSON

Ben Pierson has his own private graveyard of bands, from Millersville-based Lucid to Giver to his most prominent project, The Secrecy.
“We wrapped that band up in 2008 when my daughter was born,” he explains. “I still wanted to play music, but kind of on my own terms.” And so, after years of sharing the spotlight, Pierson launched the solo career that he’d unknowingly been searching for all along.
Pierson lists a dizzyingly broad palate of artists as influences, from Matt Nathanson to John Hiatt, whom he credits for inspiring his use of Americana elements like banjo, mandolin and harmonica.
Pierson’s full-length debut, Sidewalk Autumn Nights, is a straightforward singer-songwriter record. To see and hear him perform, however, it’s clear that Pierson hasn’t left his inner rock and roll guitar player behind. He plays hard and sings confessional heart-on-sleeve songs with passion.
In raising his daughter, working as a teacher and playing music every chance he gets, Pierson seems to be finding a stride that works for him. “It’s fun, it’s a creative outlet,” he says, “and I’m happy to be doing it.” –KW

JULY
ROSE HUDSON

Blues and jazz chanteuse Rose Hudson’s life has taken a meandering path, to say the least. From her formative years singing in Catholic school choirs while living in the projects to the birth of her eight children to her performances everywhere from New Orleans to Copenhagen, it’s apparent that her story has been anything but ordinary.
In the early ’80s, Hudson sang in an R&B band called Sunburst that was similar to Earth, Wind & Fire. A marriage and children derailed her career for most of her young adulthood, but her love affair with music got back on track after Hudson ran into local luminary CoCo Coleman, who invited her to attend a series of local jazz and blues jam sessions.
“I was very amateur … an amateur that turned into a professional by the time the jams were done,” Hudson says. “How to be a band leader, I learned that at the jam sessions.”
Years later, Hudson has become a diva in her own right; “the maternal diva” is her nickname of choice. –KW

AUGUST
TROPICAL SOUL
Tropical Soul’s Dennis McCaughey and Randy Zimmerman have crafted a career out of giving local ParrotHeads what they want, and what they want is Trop Rock. McCaughey describes Tropical Soul’s “gospel” of Trop Rock as “a little bit country, a little bit of Caribbean and a lyric that relates to a laid-back lifestyle.”
McCaughey formed Tropical Soul after noticing a gap in the market in the local scene in 1998. He soon found fellow Jimmy Buffett disciple Zimmerman on the Internet, and the two quickly discovered that they lived eight doors down from one another. Tropical Soul has performed 60-70 gigs a year ever since, from PA to MD, NJ, DE, OH and VA. The group has also performed 11 times at ParrotHeads in Paradise Meeting of the Minds, the massive annual Jimmy Buffett fan gathering in Key West, Florida.
“It’s been amazing. I don’t see it winding down,” McCaughey says. “People still identify with the whole lifestyle and the message of the music, and it just makes people feel good. There’s nothing better than that for me.” –KW

SEPTEMBER
FULL TILT
From the beginning, Harley Felton knew exactly what he wanted Full Tilt to be: the best damn “’70s R&B and funk and soul [cover] band” ever.
“The philosophy of the band was to do more difficult music than most any band would tackle, and to do it better than anybody would,” explains Felton, trombone player and de facto musical director for the ambitious eight-piece funk band. Full Tilt uses every ounce of skill and ingenuity available from the three-piece horn section and the five-piece band. Felton’s wizardry encompasses writing sheet music for horn arrangements, writing background vocal arrangements and then orchestrating that with the rhythm section and guitar players. “We might spend … four, five, six hours writing up a horn chart,” he says.
The songs come to the stage in the form of expertly crafted montage-style blocks that aim to take people back in time, from Motown medleys to songs by Average White Band. “We put a lot of time and effort into them,” Felton says, “and people are like, ‘Wow, is that ever neat!’” –KW

OCTOBER
WINDCHILL

Harrisburg indie rapper windchILL has been writing, recording and performing since 1996, both as a solo artist and as part of hip-hop consortium Artists Over Industry. Inspired by old-school heavyweights like De La Soul, Artifacts and A Tribe Called Quest, as well as underground heroes like Atmosphere and Brother Ali, the artist born Matthew Groce has carved out his own niche with thought- provoking, witty, conscious rhymes over left-of-center beats produced around the globe, from Switzerland to Canada to Milan.
WindchILL turned heads in early 2008 by snagging Album of the Year honors at the Central PA Hip Hop Awards for his appropriately named solo effort, I Have Arrived. By the time AOI dissolved in 2009, windchILL already had his second solo record in the bag; Self Medication was released in October on windchILL’s own Fist Up Records. The young emcee has shared the stage with hip-hop luminaries like KRS-One, Method Man and, most recently, Rakim. –JR

NOVEMBER
WAITIN ON A TRAIN
Waitin on a Train is at its heart a folk band. The mandolin/guitar/bass trio channels old-timey crooners like Bill Monroe and the Stanley Brothers, country pioneers like Hank Williams and traveling folk troubadours like Woody Guthrie, but the members’ shared affinity for The Clash and Mikey Dread keeps its country-bluegrass mish-mash nice and rowdy.
In 2006, the band suffered the loss of bass player Adam Sullivan in a tragic hiking accident at Chickies Rock. Band co-founders Tony Staub and Paul Wykowski released their last recorded work with Sullivan as a tribute to their friend. Ultimately, local musician Johnny Hank stepped in on bass duties and Waitin on a Train soldiered on.
In the three years since, the trio toured from New York to West Virginia, shared the stage with bluegrass legends like Del McCoury and, in early 2008, opened for a rising star on the international political scene that you might have heard of: Barack Obama. In September, Waitin on a Train released an eponymous second album, whose first single, “You’re Killin Me,” has gotten spins on the Sirius/XM Bluegrass Show. –JR

DECEMBER
DON JOHNSON
Harrisburg-area blues guru Don Johnson discovered the guitar around the age of 6 and has been playing ever since. Today, he is best known as the leader of the Don Johnson Project, one of Central PA’s premier blues outfits. The Don Johnson Project incorporates everything from R&B, jazz and funk into its music. “We got our own little niche and twist to things that we do,” Johnson explains. “We do real-deal music.”
Inspired by everyone from Buddy Guy and SRV to Stevie Wonder and Prince, Johnson performs a wide swath of covers, from Motown classics to jazz standards, as well as originals that remain faithful to blues and R&B. The Don Johnson Project are two-time winners of the Blues Society of Central Pennsylvania’s competitions for entry into the International Blues Challenge in Memphis. Overall, Johnson says, the band has one singular goal – to heat up the dance floor.
“If you want to dance, the Don Johnson band is the band to see,” he says, “’cause I’m-a get you dancing, get you moving.” –KW