The 25th Annual Key West Songwriters Festival (KWSWF) has announced its initial artist lineup for this year’s event on May 5-9, 2021. The impressive list of headliners includes Grammy Award-winning, chart-topping acts such as Lori McKenna, Brandy Clark, Lee Brice, Robert Randolph, Chuck Cannon, Bob DiPiero, Dean Dillon, Steve Cropper, Liz Rose, Jeffrey Steele, Luke Laird, Shy Carter and many more. Hosted by Storme Warren, the internationally known festival will feature over one hundred songwriters performing thirty shows on twelve different stages. Additional artists will be announced at a later date.

Festival goers have come to know that KWSWF traditionally boasts over 200 distinctive songwriters across 38 stages at an array of Key West, Florida’s most popular beaches, boats, bars, resorts and historic theatres. In an effort to prepare for social distancing and sanitation protocols, this year’s festival has been condensed with reduced capacities and transitioned to mostly outdoor performances. Festival organizers are focused on bringing back the music and putting the songwriters in intimate venues to create a special experience unique to previous years.

The full initial line-up includes Lee Brice, Brandy Clark, Lori McKenna, Robert Randolph, Chuck Cannon, Bob DiPiero, Dean Dillon, Steve Cropper, Liz Rose, Jeffrey Steele, Bobby Pinson, Scotty Emerick, Adam Craig, Clint Daniels, Luke Laird, Ben Burgess, Shane Minor, Erik Dylan, Ronnie Bowman, Trent Tomlinson, Shy Carter, Barry Dean, Tyler Reeve, Ashland Craft, Rob Snyder, Channing Wilson, Lewis Brice, Emily Shackelton, Anthony Smith, Katie Pruitt, and Rebecca Lynn Howard.

While most of the KWSWF shows will be free to enter, there will be a number of performances that will require advance ticket purchase (with an option for VIP packages).

Parmalee is dropping a new pop version of their smash hit with Blanco Brown, “Just the Way” Friday (4/2) featuring pop/hip-hop maverick, Bryce Vine. Co-produced by Andrew Goldstein and David Fanning, the new mix will go to pop radio on April 12.

The original version of the upbeat, celebratory tune recently claimed the No. 1 spot on the Billboard and Mediabase country charts in the U.S. and Canada. Produced by David Fanning, it was released in 2019 and became an early streaming success before going to radio. It has since amassed more than 160 million on-demand streams in the U.S. alone (with millions more overseas), and the track has been used more than 200,000 times in videos on TikTok.

The feel-good hit celebrating the beauty of being one’s authentic self was written by Nolan Sipe, Kevin Bard, and Parmalee’s Matt Thomas. The band asked longtime friend, Blanco Brown to be a part of the song, not only for his positivity but to help highlight the song’s message about embracing differences. The addition of Bryce Vine, best known for his multi-platinum hit, “Drew Barrymore,” echoes that sentiment and adds an exciting new layer to the mix.

“‘Just the Way’ going No. 1 at Country radio and connecting on so many other platforms is amazing—and doing it with a friend like Blanco, even more so,” said Thomas. “Bryce adds another element to the song, giving it a whole new feel—we’re thrilled to have him on it.”

Vine said, “I was psyched to get the call to jump on this already amazing song with Parmalee and Blanco Brown. I’ve always loved dipping into different genres and styles, so this gave me a great excuse to put my cowboy hat on.”

The Elliston Place property which is home to the Exit/In is under contract to be sold to a hotel developer. Exit/In owner Chris Cobb, a passionate advocate for independent clubs, is seeking to purchase the property from the company which has it under contract.

He has created a GoFundMe campaign to help with the cause and posted this message to fans:

The Exit/In property has gone under contract to a firm that’s purchasing independent venues. We’re very concerned for the future of the club and have asked the firm to sell us the property, so we can continue to operate Exit/In in a manner that serves Nashville’s creative working class. Contributions to our purchase fund can be made here. Should our bid fail, all money raised with be donated to NIVA and MVAN. We love you all so much and are filled with gratitude for your fierce ongoing support of Nashville’s Rock Block.

Cobb told the Tennessee Lookout that he and wife Telisha partnered with the development firm Grubb Properties and submitted an asking-price bid for the land but were rejected in favor of a bid from AJ Capital Partners, the developer behind the Graduate Hotel chain and Thompson Hotel in the Gulch.

The historic venue turns 50 this year.

Nashville-based singer-songwriter Emily Weisband finds authenticity paramount when making her own music. The Grammy winner has become a well-know songwriter, having written songs for other artists including Camila Cabello, Danny Gokey, Dan + Shay, BTS with Halsey, Jeremy Camp and Keith Urban. But when she is taking her own place in the spotlight as an artist, she says the things she can’t on country and Christian radio.

“Every genre has different rules. With pop, obviously, I can say more. I can be a little more point blank in pop music. A lot of it is about math and melody and that kind of thing, but as far as lyrics go, I can really say whatever I want to say,” she says. “In country music, obviously I’m not going to talk about sex in country music and if I am, it’s going to be PG. I can talk about God, I can talk about drinking and hometowns, I can tell a story. And then in Christian music—I’m not dissing on the Christian music industry at all, I’m so grateful to them for embracing me in a way that they have—but in my hard truth opinion, you can say you’re breaking but you’re not really allowed to say why, and you have to be fixed by the time you’re talking about it.

“We’re all inherently the same and that’s really the point of this EP,” Weisband says of her I Call It Being Human EP, out today (April 2) on Warner Records. “We all want to love, we want to be loved. We want to be fully known and fully accepted, and we shame ourselves for the things that we experience because of that. This EP is about embracing those things fully and completely, and allowing yourself to be all of those things.”

The 5-song project finds Weisband tackling lost love, interpersonal conflict, and emotional spirals. “Psychopath,” the lead-off track, was inspired by Weisband discovering her ex was newly engaged. “So did I get feelings seeing you with her? Did my heart start beating a little faster? Did it take me back? Well, yea… cause I’m not psychopath,” she sings.

Current single from the project, “New Salt,” finds Weisband revisiting a painful relationship in a vulnerable moment, and putting “new salt in an old wound.”

“I wrote the song about a hotel room experience. I was staying in New York and my ex called me at 2:00 in the morning. He was just saying everything that he should have said, he was just too late. I fell for it in the moment and I think that’s probably one of the reasons I was so pissed when I got off the phone. I really let it set in the next couple of days, the conversation we had, so when I got back to Nashville and I was actually writing with one of the guy’s best friends, which is such a Nashville, high school thing. I was just venting to them about it. My co-writer, Jimmy Robbins, he said, ‘Man, it’s kind of like you put new salt an old wound.’ We all looked at each other and we’re like, ‘Holy shit, we have to write that.'”

Christian artist Tauren Wells collaborates with Weisband on “Love 2 Hard,” a song about going all-in on new love.

“First of all, I love Tauren so much. I’ve worked with him a lot on his music, on his records. I’m just a huge fan of him as a person, of him as a voice,” Weisband says. “And I really wanted my first collab to be with a friend. I thought that was a really authentic thing for me.”

Weisband also wanted to include Wells to show that she can combine her Christian faith with music about intimately human experiences. “I did an interview probably three or four months ago, right after ‘Not Afraid To Say Goodbye,’ and this guy said to me, ‘I think it’s really interesting that you have strong church roots and yet your music is so revealing, and human and honest.’ I was like, ‘Thank you.’ And I knew he meant it as a compliment but I got off the phone with him [and it bothered me].

“I’m really frustrated with Christian culture. It bothered me that being a Christian and being revealing and honest through your art don’t go in the same sentence to a lot of the world. I know plenty of creators who have faith and are believers who want to be human in their music and they want to be real. All of us humans are the same, we might have different belief systems, but things that make us human are all the same. And so to not be human in your music, that does not work for me.

“My point is, it was kind of my response to that interview. I was like, ‘My first collab is going to be with one of my friends and I’m also going to put one of my Christian artist friends on it.’ The song is not a Christian song, it’s not a religious song. It’s just a human song, because at the end of the day, I’m a human and my Christian artist friend is a human and our art is going to reveal that.”

By the end of the EP, Weisband shows healing and acceptance on “Indie Movie Zoomout Moment.”

“I had this weird moment in my brain where I imagined myself in A Christmas Carol, walking down the street and peering into windows of houses, like the ghost of Christmas past, and just seeing all my exes having a fantastic Christmas morning with their new girls. It was this like movie moment where I zoomed out and saw it all and I was really okay with it.”

Weisband sums, “That kind of acceptance frees you up to be able to move forward and be happy yourself.”