Deluge Music is expanding its Nashville presence with the opening of Deluge Management. The management company will be led by Chris Alderman, who was previously at the helm of Rough Hollow Entertainment.

Initial Deluge management clients include Smithfield, Michael Cleveland & Flamekeeper, Jason Scheff, and the Becky Buller Band.

“We are thrilled to be working with Chris and his associate Megan Bocklage and we are excited to provide expanded services to our artists and writers,” said David Robkin, CEO and Chairman of Deluge. “We believe there to be wonderful symmetry between our publishing, recording and management capabilities and we look forward to working and growing together.”

“I am so excited to get the opportunity to work with David, Mark, Emily Dryburgh and their incredibly talented roster,” said Chris Alderman, President of Deluge Management. “I look forward to continuing their passionate and creative approach to music. I am proud of what we have accomplished together as a team over the past year with Smithfield’s ongoing success and to what the future holds for Deluge Music.”

“Chris and Megan joining us is a perfect fit,” said Mark Friedman, President of Deluge Music added. “Their work ethic and tenacity bring great value. As we start our fourth year we look forward to all of the opportunities this union will provide.”

The Nashville and Los Angeles-based publishing, recording and management company is home to artists and songwriters including Smithfield, Madeline Merlo, Jason Saenz, Kevin Savigar, Olivia Rudeen, Mason Thornley and the recently announced Kylie Sackley.

Newcomer Caroline Jones has seen a whirlwind of success over the past 12 months. Her EP Bare Feet, which released in March 2018, reached the Top 20 on the country albums charts. She spent much of the year opening shows for artists including Kip Moore, Tim McGraw and Faith Hill’s Soul2Soul Tour, and Vince Gill.

2019 promises to be even busier for Jones, who has booked shows at C2C: Country 2 Country, and has a coveted opening slot on Kenny Chesney’s Songs For The Saints tour this summer. But first, the 28-year-old Florida resident launches 2019 tonight at the Alabama Theater, with a series of shows opening for Gill, which were postponed from last fall.

“He’s a hero of mine,” Jones says of Gill, “and it’s a completely different type of audience. It’s a listening audience, where they sit there and really listen to every word, every lyric. They love music.”

And as the saying goes, there is always a Nashville connection.

Glenn Worf, known for his work with artists Miranda Lambert and Pistol Annies, is a member of Gill’s current band, and also played bass on Jones’ Bare Feet EP.

“Vince’s band just comes out and there is no production and no track and no pyro,” Jones says. “They come out and play and they are extraordinary.”

On Bare Feet, her fifth independent project, she displays a casual mastery of an array of instruments including guitar, banjo, dobro, mandolin, keyboards, and lap steel. She penned every song on the EP.

“Guitar is my main instrument, but piano is up there, too,” says Jones. “I always considered songwriting to be lyrics and melody—and it is—but being able to play different instruments just opens up so much more freedom as a writer and performer, and by extension, as a producer.”

While unconventional, her path to country music is authentic. The daughter of Tudor Investment Corporation founder Paul Tudor Jones, Caroline graduated from prestigious arts academy The Professional Children’s School in New York. She later studied creative writing at NYU.

Though she grew up on ‘90s pop, classic rock and R&B, Jones discovered country music around the same time she took up guitar, at age 17. At 22, she met writer and artist Mac McAnally, who set up her first Nashville sessions.

“I became so interested in country music and began just studying it, going back and listening to Hank Williams and The Carter Family and just going through every single decade of country, so my favorite artists are probably Hank, Willie Nelson, Keith Urban, Emmylou Harris, Zac Brown Band. A lot of them are lead guitar players, and songwriters and producers. I’ve always looked up to artists who are well-rounded.”

By November 2017, her career took off, courtesy of a chance meeting with “Margaritaville” singer Jimmy Buffett, who signed her to a distribution deal with his Mailboat Records. That same year, she opened shows for Zac Brown Band.

“We just hit it off and Jimmy brought me out on some shows and it was just an organic process and he mentored me and has been so supportive and given me so many incredible opportunities.”

Bare Feet marks the first project Jones has worked with a co-producer on; she teamed with Ric Wake, known for his work with Celine Dion, Jennifer Lopez, and Mariah Carey. Wake also manages Jones’ career.

“It’s very natural and complimentary to each other. I love production and building songs and creating parts. It has been one of the most beautiful learning experiences, musically and professionally, in my life. The biggest thing I learned is how to simplify in production and in the layering process. I get really inspired and have a million ideas and he taught me how to communicate and articulate them in a clear and concise way.”

While Bare Feet is not even a year old, Jones is already focused on a follow-up project.

“We basically started the new one after we finished the last one, so we are a few songs in,” she says.

Though Jones is working with Buffett’s Mailboat Records for distribution and is booked by CAA’s Nashville office, she hasn’t committed to signing with a major label, instead opting to go about her career independently.

“I’ve tried to set up my whole career so that my music and career keep an integrity to it, and that means getting to steer your own ship, and that’s not traditionally how this industry is set up. I know not every artist wants that kind of autonomy over their music, but I always have. In this day and age, kind of for the first time where that’s a real possibility for artists, I feel like that’s the route I wanted to go.

“I’ve always been more concerned with what I’m building than how I’m building it, rather than the immediate commercial success of it. It’s definitely a longer road for sure, but it’s so rewarding. I’ll never say never, because you just don’t know what could happen. For right now I love the team that we are building and the audience we are building.”

Following features on Apple Music, SiriusXM, and The Bobby Bones Show among others, new artist Filmore has inked a recording contract with Curb Records.

His major label single, “Slower,” will release this spring. Filmore co-wrote the track with Justin Ebach and Steven Dale Jones. Following his own headlining tour last year, Filmore joins Walker Hayes’ Dream On It Tour later this week.

“Today we reaffirm Curb’s commitment to signing artists of the highest caliber and with strong artistic vision. We are creating an environment where artists can be artists. Filmore represents this new direction perfectly. He and his team have built an incredible foundation and fan base. We could not be more excited to be working with Filmore and look forward to taking his music to a global audience this Spring,” noted Curb SVP/GM Ryan Dokke.

“Partnering with the team at Curb Records will only amplify and further what we’ve been building over the past few years. I couldn’t ask for a better fit as we roll into 2019,” added Filmore.

Chris Janson‘s first-ever new music preview was held at Jeff Ruby’s Steakhouse in downtown Nashville on Tuesday (Jan. 29) for his forthcoming Warner Bros. album, which was described as the perfect vehicle for his live show.

Hosted by longtime supporter and CMT SVP, Music & Talent, Leslie Fram, Janson eloquently described his process on the project, which was recorded at his home.

The sampled tracks were prefaced with Janson hoping they will make the album, with some presented in unmastered form, in addition to live performances.

Songs included a play on words with the country two-stepper “Check” (which was in the running for the first single), “Waiting On Five” (co-written via phone and email with Craig Wiseman, Tommy Cecil, and Shy Carter), “Say About Me” (a flamboyant, country rap “setlist staple” written with Carter in one take), “Hawaii On Me” (written with his wife Kelly Lynn, and previously recorded by Tim McGraw, but not released), “Good Dogs Die, Daddies Get Old” (written about the family dog passing, in addition to his father in law), and the official first single, due Feb. 8, “Good Vibes.” Janson says the track was written with Zach Crowell and Ashley Gorley after everyone was hanging out complaining, and Janson only wanted good vibes.

“We wrote and produced [the single] in one day,” said Janson of “Good Vibes.” “Zach suggested we write the title and I was like, ‘Everyone says it, I’m sure there’s a million songs about ‘Good Vibes’—there’s not. When I sing it, it’s subliminally reminding myself—they say sometimes when you give an uplifting talk that you’re really talking to yourself. ‘Good Vibes’ is talking to me, too, because it’s a great reminder—Every day you have the choice to be nice to somebody or not.”

Janson confirmed his songwriting approach has changed over the years, after having cuts by artists such as Tim McGraw, Randy Houser and LOCASH.

“I always would sit down to write for someone else,” he explained. “Now I write in a total reverse way, for me first and whatever I don’t think I can do, it’s open game for my friends…I write songs like a full-time, 9-5 staff writer—every chance I get.”

In what he partially described as country flamboyance, the titles previewed are all conducive to his stage show. “I gauge songs that are going on an album by if they work live or not, because that’s my bread and butter and the biggest way I’ve gotten to people. If people aren’t immediately singing along, hands up, clapping or something then I won’t do it anymore.

“This whole record is just true to life stuff. I’m not putting anything on this album that is made up, fake, hokey—that I wouldn’t want to walk in a room and talk about. I feel like I’ve really come into my own with this [album]. What I mean by that is I didn’t know I was making an album. I just wrote a bunch of songs and had a meeting with Cris Lacy [and wife Kelly Lynn], and it’s been that fun from the get-go. I’ve never actually had that 110 percent opportunity until now—you’re catching me at a great time, it feels so right.”

Janson is riding high on the heels of becoming a Grand Ole Opry member, and has performed at the revered Opry House more than 150 times, in addition to opening/closing the 2018 CMA Awards and ACM Awards. Janson teased the CMT exec, “I hope to put the CMT Music Awards on that list soon.

“When I’m making music, I feel like I’m doing my best at that moment,” continued Janson. “And when I get an opportunity to shine, I give it my all and at the end of the day the cream always rises to the top, the music always wins and the hardest worker always gets there.”

Signature harmonicas were a parting gift in a nod to his time earning tips on Lower Broadway. “I was too poor to eat but I bought a Cracker Barrell harmonica. My tips started doubling and quadrupling and I thought, ‘Well, now I’m a harmonica player.’ And two months ago Hohner Harmonica endorsed me, so it’s full circle.”

Looking back on his life in Nashville, Janson does not see struggle, rather a payoff for hard work.

“It was not so long ago that I was just graduating high school in a farm town in Missouri, listening to J98 The Boot, never thinking I’d be here—but I did believe it deep down,” explained Janson, who slept in his car for the first few months. “Sometimes you look back and say, ‘I can’t believe we did that.’ I can believe it. I don’t come from money, so you either go to Nashville and don’t make it, or you stay at home and don’t make it ever. When I got here, I realized you really have to go to work.”