“To me success is a matter of staying focused on writing my songs, about being as honest as I can as an artist,” says Corey. “I’ve never been worried about what the ‘popular’ musicians are doing.”

Be thankful for what you have and make the most of it. It’s a lesson Corey learned growing up in the same modest, rural Georgia community that he and his family live in today. And it’s also the theme behind the title track to his typically outstanding new album Keeping Up With the Joneses, which he co-produced with Russ-T Cobb (Butch Walker, Avril Lavigne). Like much of his previous work, Corey admits, the poignant title tune’s subject matter is autobiographical. “[The song] has a lot of literal truths in it and traces a story, so fans of my earlier stuff will find some common ground there,” Corey says. “But it also goes a long way toward explaining the values that made me who I am.” Keeping Up With the Joneses is the sixth release on Corey’s own Undertone Records label and has a more radio-ready sound than his earlier discs, most of which center on his foundation as a solo acoustic performer. “My typical fans might find [the bigger production] challenging at first,” says Corey. “But I just wanted to take advantage of the new [technological] resources we had and experiment in the studio.”

As always, however, job one is having honest songs with universal resonance. “‘Arc of a Rainbow’ is one of the best songs I’ve written,” says Corey of one of the record’s more introspective cuts. “It’s about hope, about not being afraid and having faith.” But yet as much as the 32-year-old father of two has matured in recent years, Keeping Up With the Joneses, which also features Corey’s road-tested rhythm section of bassist Rob Henson and drummer Marcus Petruska, still houses its share of the singer-songwriter’s trademark rebellious party and drinking songs, like the tell-tale “$8 Bottle of Wine” and the bawdy “Dirtier By the Year.”

Besides his music, though, a huge part of Corey’s success has been the wildfire-like viral chatter of his rabidly file-sharing fans—which flatters him to no end. “As a songwriter I want to be heard by as many people as possible,” he says. “If people hear a song and like it maybe they’ll come to a show, even buy a T-shirt or a record. I think it’s great.”

An ever-exploding fan base and a stunning new collection of songs? It all means one thing: Corey Smith about to make a few thousand more friends.

“I’ve been playing since I was 10, actually,” says Lucas, who learned to play guitar and sing while growing up in the Fort Worth area. “There was always music in my family, but what really got me was when my dad showed me a live Stevie Ray Vaughn DVD when I was 11. The way [Vaughn] wrangled that guitar was unlike anything I’d ever heard, just so unique.”

And so it was a short trip for Lucas from the rug in front of the DVD player to the stage. Before long he was leading his own bands, playing high-energy, virtuosic, blues-based rock and following the path of his hero, Stevie Ray, into legendary venues like Stubb’s and Antone’s. In 2004, at a mere 14, he recorded his first album, a self-titled, all-instrumental release that led to a feature article in Guitar Player magazine. “Lucas Martin has tone, chops, and passion for days,” raved Michael Molenda, the publication’s editor in chief. “He’s one of the young lions of the guitar community.” As Lucas continued to define himself as a must-hear guitar prodigy, the successes piled on at an ever-quickening pace. His 2005 sophomore disc, Cut Through the Chaos, landed a track in CNBC’s “American Made.” He racked up endorsements from guitar and equipment manufacturers, played the high-profile Austin Rockin’ Blues Festival and sold-out showcases at South by Southwest. He recorded with Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees the Soul Stirrers, and appeared in the British TV documentary “I Got the Blues” alongside Mick Jagger, Pinetop Perkins, Hubert Sumlin, and Jimmie Vaughn. Eventually, however, Lucas began to feel himself being pulled in another direction, away from rock and the blues.

“I’d always played a little country, even when I was playing rock,” Lucas says. “So [transitioning full-time to country] was a gradual thing.” In 2007 he got serious about the change, woodshedding for eight months—“playing nothing but country licks”—and honing his vocal skills. The transformation was dramatic: The young musician had remade himself as a hot-pickin’ roots guitarist and a singer of soulful, earthy power. “I grew up with country music all around me, so it’s like coming back home,” says Lucas. “It suits my lifestyle for who I am now.”

Currently Lucas is working on his first album as a country artist, and it looks to be a stunner, rich with warm cuts that play like radio-ready comfort food for the soul: the nostalgic, steel-laced “It All Comes Back”; the moody, late-night “Buzzes Like Neon.” “I like songs that tell stories,” Lucas explains. “Songs that make good driving music.”

Lucas Martin has only recently set out on modern country’s endless, open highway. And it’s leading him straight into the hearts of country music fans everywhere.

Formed by veteran Lower East Side guitarist and songwriter Charles Kibel and drummer Nick Raisz, Crazy Mary has been conjuring its refreshingly oddball avant-garage rock since 1998. A bubbling cauldron of chiming and scraping guitars, creepy organ, spacey, experimental sounds, Dada-ish pranksterism, and absurdly danceable rhythms, the band distills it all into a surreal cocktail of post-punk/psychedelic weirdness. And now, with the recent additions of legendary underground violinist Walter Steding and expatriate Australian vocalist Em Z, things have gotten even weirder. In a good way, of course.

Over its six studio and two dub/remix albums, the group has racked up rabid praise from such disparate sources as the Village Voice and NBC newsman Brian Williams—who namechecked the band in his online blog—showing that while the intrepid spirit would seem to have vanished from the New York scene, it’s alive and well in Crazy Mary. And for evidence one need look no farther than the outfit’s newest release, Water on the Moon. Oozing with alternately rocking and trippy gems like the outsider anthem “Eyes Above the Clouds,” the strangely loping “Gravity,” and the angular, organ-drenched “Way Too Freaky,” the disc furthers Crazy Mary’s longstanding reputation as one of Gotham’s most adventurous acts.

“Being a working band here nowadays is a lot different than when we started,” says Kibel. “Most of our fans and the clubs we play at are in Brooklyn, rather than downtown [Manhattan]. But we’ve been able to build up a good core following, and our shows are always fun. And New York’s still the best market in the world.”

“Psychology is about talking about the good times and the bad times, about dealing with it and getting it out there,” says Marshall, who recently retired after 10 years of counseling troubled teenagers to devote himself full time to playing the blues. “And that’s also what the blues are about—singing about the good and the bad. So there’s always been a parallel there for me.”

As festival, theater, and club audiences have been finding out, the best place to get a dose of Marshall’s medicine is right in front of the stage. Thanks to his jaw-dropping technique, moving delivery, and engaging persona, crowds of all walks and ages have been blown away. Of course while nothing can take the place of one of Marshall’s amazing live shows, his excellent studio albums are riveting calling cards, each one a shot of rough-edged, high-energy, Delta-style sounds with a raw twist sure to delight long-time traditionalists as well as newer, perhaps less-reverent converts.

Marshall’s newest release, Blues Intervention, is another stunning all-acoustic offering, following his 2008 Roots Music Report chart-topping The Morning After. A deep, soul-baring set of his self-described “acid blues”—a reference to the music’s alchemical mix of blues and Marshall’s background of playing everything from rock to soul, funk, bluegrass, and even punk—Blues Intervention is stacked high with one searing nugget after another: the dark, tell-it-like-it-is social commentary “Lay Down My Sorrow”; the truckin’ rip through Tommy Johnson’s “Travelin’ Blues”; the sage, slide-lashed “You’re Gonna Find the Blues”; and 10 other down-home tracks fueled only by Marshall’s voice and guitar, Sherman Doucette’s wheezing harmonica, and bassist Russell Jackson’s acoustic upright. “Marshall plays the best acoustic blues in the Great White North,” raves Jackson, who’s toured and recorded with such legends as B.B. King, Charlie Musselwhite, Katie Webster, Kenny Neal, and Matt “Guitar” Murphy.

Born in a cabin in the woods, Marshall discovered the blues like many others of his generation did: through Jimi Hendrix. “I loved his freedom and expression,” he recalls. “When I heard him I knew I had found my direction and there was no turning back.” Marshall performed his first show in 1969 and continued playing with several other groups in the 1970s and ’80s. After studying birdsong and earning his Ph.D. in psychology he spent some time in California before returning to settle in Edmonton, Alberta. When Marshall came back to Canada he also came back to the blues, putting together an R&B outfit that eventually morphed into the electric blues-oriented Marshall Lawrence Band. Although Marshall’s taken more of a pure acoustic road since debuting with that band’s acclaimed 2003 disc Where’s the Party?, he hasn’t left an ounce of his inner electricity behind.

“For me, playing solo acoustic is the real deal,” says Marshall, who has his own signature-model guitar slide available from Rock Mountain Slide Company and has a signature-model amplifier being developed by Pascal Vinot Custom Amps. “It’s just me, my guitar, maybe a harmonica or a stand-up bass, and the audience—that’s it. So it’s my job to entertain the audience and try to give them an escape from the bad patches in life. The blues are a healing music.”

And blues lovers will definitely agree: Dispensing those same healing blues is exactly what Marshall Lawrence was put on Earth to do. The doctor will see you now…

“Music for us is a way to put dreaming on another level,” says singer-guitarist Lonny Roth, who with bassist-vocalist Deb Zazzo began Strange Lights in 2000. “It’s a way to tune into what all of us, as humans, are experiencing now; to find a common thread that takes listeners to a more evolved place. Somewhere closer to where we can unlock the incredible capacity for understanding we hardly know we have.”

And perhaps the most direct door this higher plane is Light Bright, the band’s third self-released album, which features engineering by musician Jono Manson (Pete Seeger, John Popper, Joey Miserable and the Worms). Another mind-melting dose of the group’s patented modern psychedelic folk, the revelatory 65-minute disc brims with evocative and trippy tracks—the cascading, sweetly mournful “Fly Home”; “Poe,” the appropriately hushed and haunting ode to a true literary visionary; and the soaring, searching “Wander.” “We try to make each song have at least three meanings,” says Lonny. “So that we can reach more people.” It all falls under the multi-colored pinwheel-umbrella that Deb and Lonny call “short bus pop.”

“When you’re a kid in school, the students who ride the ‘short bus’ are the freaky, ‘different’ people,” explains Deb, who holds a degree in plastic surgery and initially took up bass as a way to maintain her dexterity upon being diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. Lonny has his own rock-as-medicine story: After being briefly institutionalized as a teenager for “hearing voices,” he eschewed the state-imposed pharmaceuticals for music, learning guitar and finding solace in Strange Lights’ shared influences of Pink Floyd, the Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, and the Grateful Dead. “As health-challenged outsiders ourselves, we really relate to those ‘weird’ people,” continues Deb. “And some of them go on to change the world.”

Based in the tiny (population: 80) spiritual-leaning community of Crestone, Colorado, Strange Lights started as the core duo of Lonny and Deb, recording and playing live over the years with a changeable lineup of guest musicians; permanent drummer Robert Edsel joined the fold after the making of Light Bright. While Lonny grew up in the Denver/Boulder area, Deb hails from New York, where she studied classical flute as a child and played in punk bands in her twenties. The two met when Lonny was looking for a bassist to jam with and right away bonded deeply on both personal and musical levels. Already a formidable success online—with over 15,000 songs downloaded so far—the band is currently gearing up for touring in support of Light Bright and planning the release of a new six-song EP in 2010.

“We really feel like there’s no ceiling with our music,” says Lonny. “It’ just infinite, all the possibilities that can be reached for.” A beacon illuminating the path to new realms of musical enlightenment—for Strange Lights the future looks bright, indeed.

“The Catskills is one of the most beautiful spots on Earth,” says drummer, vocalist, and lyricist Roland Hasbrouck, whose French and Native American ancestors were among the first to inhabit the area. “It hasn’t been completely spoiled by big-city development yet, and there’s a certain raw innocence here that we draw from as musicians.” Indeed, one has only to scan the titles on Verdes’s eponymous five-track debut (released April 2008) to get a sense of how deeply the territory has woven itself into the group’s collective psyche. But while the names of songs like “Esopus Creek” and “Thruway North” reference landmarks most familiar to locals, they also serve as image-laden jumping-off points for universal themes of anguish and redemption. This is music that speaks to anyone with a heart and a soul.

And it’s music written mostly by band founders Hasbrouck and lead guitarist Tim Curtis-Verderosa; an organic and modern mélange of classic touchstones like Tom Petty, Wilco, Led Zeppelin, Bob Dylan, the Rolling Stones, Neil Young, and, of course, local legends The Band (it’s no surprise that another singing drummer, the great Levon Helm, is Hasbrouck’s biggest hero and the chief influence on his fluid, economic style). The versatile and warm-toned Curtis-Verderosa, whose curious resume includes a stint as a side man and music director to rock ’n’ roll pioneer Chubby Checker, is Verdes’s other master of understatement, a player who truly understands the concept of playing for the song—not just the other guitarists in the room. “That’s what great rock ’n’ roll is all about, the songs,” says Curtis-Verderosa. “It’s not about playing 10-minute solos.”

The most recent addition to Verdes is guitarist and vocalist Mike Chapman, a singer-songwriter in his own right outside of the band. Chapman’s rootsy playing style gives the music much of its earthy texture, and the way he harmonizes with Hasbrouck on the pleading choruses of bursting-heart anthems like “Back Again” is a key element of the group’s sound. Recently, the outfit became a quintet by adding bassist Mark Ormerod (“He was in his momma’s belly at an Elvis concert in 1973,” says Curtis-Verderosa) and esteemed jazz guitarist Mark Dziuba, who plays lap steel in Verdes and gives the band a sound best described as ambient Americana.

In addition to the above-mentioned tracks, Verdes is rounded out by the earnest, mid-tempo “Outbound” and the warming ballad “Slow Burn.”

“There’s still plenty of life left in that archetypal rock ’n’ roll 1-4-5 progression,” says Curtis-Verderosa. “We’re trying to write songs that won’t go away.”

Not an easy task, making songs that won’t go away. But one that Verdes somehow does over and over again, as the timeless gems found on the band’s debut so clearly show.

“My music was definitely shaped by the landscape I grew up in,” says Sikora, who doubles on soprano and flute. “I was very isolated as a child, and I spent a lot of time walking by myself along the quiet country roads and the beautiful cliffs by the coastline.” She also cites her lifelong love of poetry as having a deep affect on her music, counting T.S. Eliot and W.B. Yeats among her chief inspirations. “Besides the imagery that certain poems suggest to me, the forms of poems—their meters, structures, rhythms—offer ways to develop lines and phrasing,” she explains. “I find I use the same mental space reading poetry as I do when I’m playing.”

Sikora took flute lessons early on, but after she’d pestered her parents enough they gave her an alto saxophone when she was 16 and she taught herself to play. After first performing with local rock and R&B bands, she eventually enrolled at Leeds College of Music in England—though it soon turned out she wasn’t happy there. “The program was too straight-ahead, too constraining,” she recalls. “I was searching for something, but I wasn’t sure what it was.”

Sikora’s searching next led her to Berlin, and finally in 2000 to New York, where she put aside performing for several years to study under acclaimed saxophonist and educator George Garzone. “[Garzone] literally opened my playing right up,” says Sikora. “His approach let me find my own way, it’s what really steered me toward free playing.”

Before taking the plunge into total freedom, however, Sikora played standards gigs and joined the Astoria Big Band and urban-noir octet the Poma-Swank. But soon after she formed the improvising units RX Trio (now defunct) with pianist Jeremy Bacon and drummer Tim McLafferty, and Beasts At Play (ongoing) with drummer Ziv Ravitz. It’s the heated sparring of the latter that Sikora likens most to another of her passions—boxing. Both groups made strong waves on the downtown scene, where Sikora further developed her gutsy, probing sound and for a time performed with the renowned collective Burnt Sugar.

Currently Sikora is involved with several exciting projects. She leads her own exemplary trio with bassist Francois Grillot and drummer Bob Hubbard, which she maintains is rooted in free playing but more reliant on structure, groove, and melodic awareness. The saxophonist also performs in several duos, including the twosome known as 22, which is comprised of Sikora and trumpeter and bass clarinetist Matt LaValle, and an unnamed pairing with her old cohort Jeremy Bacon on piano. But perhaps foremost among her contemporary twosomes is Clockwork Mercury, a group consisting of Sikora and her life partner, the bassist, vocalist, and poet (and fellow boxer) Eric Mingus. “Playing with Eric is the purest, most focused concentration of sound and melody,” says Sikora. “I always feel like I’m all ears when we play together. Which is the pinnacle of playing, really.”

The pinnacle of playing is exactly what Catherine Sikora has been striving for—and attaining—since the day she first picked up her instrument. Each of her performances and recordings resonates with the vibrant, beautiful, and life-affirming proof.

“I love rock ’n’ roll, the passion and rebelliousness of it,” says Lauren. “But I want to be part of it in my own way—I want to take poetry and rock it out.”

Which is exactly what Lauren does—and then some—on Inconsequential Dream, her astonishing debut album. Take “Color Code,” a menacing, tension-rich rumination on love’s blurred lines of communication (“The colors in our code system / seem to keep switching on me”). Or the hard-hitting title track, which was inspired by the numerous mystic predictions about the year 2012 and the letting go of old ideas in order to live more fully in the new age (“Try to survive / it’s time / the quickening / the great purifying”). And then there’s “To Let Someone,” an acoustic guitar-laced allegory likening newfound spiritual energy to the acceptance of a former lover’s new mate (“To let someone / who is loved / by the one who used to love you / into your home / Well that is the thing/ that takes / the most courage”). Much like Lauren’s riveting live performances, Inconsequential Dream is a cathartic, emotionally cleansing experience that keeps the listener on the edge of their seat throughout—only to find them back in line when the last track stops, eager to sign up for another wild ride.

Lauren’s own ride began in her suburban hometown of East Meadow, Long Island, where she found herself drawn to the arts and political activism. “I organized a protest against fur at the mall when I was in fifth grade,” she says with a laugh. There was music and culture in the house; her father played guitar and her mother, a teacher, played piano and exposed her to literature and theater. Inspired by the beat writers, Lauren took to poetry early on.

Following violin and piano lessons she went on to study acting, met groundbreaking director Polina Klimovitskaya, and spent three years with the professor’s avant-garde troupe, Terra Incognita Theater. Lauren credits Klimovitskaya’s “psycho-physical” method as a strong influence on her own approach to performing, and began to utilize it when she started participating in poetry readings.

At an artist conference in Florida, she met producer Marc Godwin, with whom she wrote and performed a piece especially for the event. Impressed, Godwin invited Lauren to join him and lead singer Janice Robinson (ex-Livin’ Joy) in the band P.A.O. as its poet and lyricist. It wasn’t long, however, before Lauren decided to assemble her own rock-poetry outfit. Together with guitarist Thaddeus Wellenc Jr., engineer and synthesizer/drum programmer Sal Chisari, multi-instrumentalist and musical director Gary Pickard, and others, she began playing New York clubs and developed the material for Inconsequential Dream.

“The musicians I work with are really great at sculpting the ‘feels’ that go with the words I write—they know how to how to make it melodramatic but also keep it fun. I want my music to really resonate with people,” says Lauren, a practicing Buddhist. “To be a coming together, a connecting of universal with personal truths.”

Striking a balance between intense drama, evocative imagery, profound social commentary, and, yes, fun is no simple task. But it’s one that Lauren O’Brien pulls off with graceful ease.

“I believe the song ‘The Wake’ was written by ghosts using me as a medium,” says Kenny. The 36-year-old singer-songwriter and producer composed and recorded the album in his own Old Soul Studios, a facility that’s well named, to say the least: The converted Victorian house dates from the 1850s and is reportedly haunted. “The lyrics [of “The Wake”] are from the perspective of someone that’s already dead,” he explains. “The song even creeps me out.”

But creepiness is just one stripe on the colorful, endlessly spinning pinwheel of Eleccentricity, a disc with as many dazzling sonic surprises as the rich New York music scene that spawned Kenny’s band Johnny Society. The album is also home to mini pop epics like “Well Well Well,” a track that oozes bittersweet romantic redemption and brims with hooks big enough to snag a whale, and “Shamaness,” a bewitching bite of bent exotica with swirling strings and watery vocals; and then there’s “Love Alive,” a chest-swelling slab of Zepp-ish swagger with pounding beats and short-circuit fuzz guitar. The styles are all over the place but somehow complement each other perfectly. Thanks to this sense of alchemical, wide-eyed experimentation it’s not surprising that Eleccentricity was recently nominated for an Independent Music Award for most eclectic album. “Eclectic is what people call your music when they can’t categorize it—which is a great category unto itself,” says Kenny, who plays acoustic and electric guitars, analog keyboards, vibraphone, programmed drums, and bass on the record. “Music transcends labels and categories. It transcends words. It exists beyond the mind.” Eleccentricity also features such guests as Kenny’s wife, singer-songwriter Blueberry, Joseph Arthur, Trixie Whitley, Nina Violet, and others.

A blood relative of the legendary songsmith Ralph Rainger, Kenny grew up in Island Park, New York (“between the Oceanside dump and the Atlantic Ocean”), where the rock ’n’ roll bug took hold after his dad brought him to a Kiss concert. Guitar lessons started at age 11, followed by his learning piano, bass, and drums; discovering his hero Prince opened him to new levels of songwriting and arranging and the limitless possibilities of the studio. In 1995 he started Johnny Society, and the group fast became one of New York’s most popular indie acts, garnering praise from Ray Davies, Cheap Trick’s Robin Zander, and producer Rick Rubin, and winning an IMA for 2000’s Clairvoyance. In 2001 Kenny opened Old Soul, where he creates his music and has produced and worked with the late Chris Whitley, Garth Hudson, Tears for Fears, the New Pornographers, and others.

While Johnny Society remains an ongoing concern (the outfit is currently working on its sixth release), with Eleccentricity Kenny felt the time was right to put his own name on an album—one that comes directly from his innermost core, rather than through the prism of a “band” image. “I finally had enough self-respect,” he jokes. “Sometimes there needs to be a distinction between the ‘artist’ and the man.”

“[The album] is an example of me living my philosophy through work,” Kenny adds. “Which is that playing music is a direct path to spiritual, psychological, and literal freedom.” Indeed, Eleccentricity is a path that listeners will find themselves walking again and again—maybe even meeting a few friendly ghosts along the way.