Mt. Joy started off as a rekindling of shared musical ambitions between Philadelphia high school friends Matt Quinn (vocals, guitar) and Sam Cooper (guitar). Reunited in Los Angeles thanks to the ebbs and flows of adult life, the pair met multi-instrumentalist Michael Byrnes through a Craigslist ad. They named themselves Mt. Joy as an ode to a mountain in Valley Forge National Park near Sam’s childhood home, and together, with Byrnes’ roommate Caleb Nelson producing, they recorded three songs and sent them out into the world, hoping for the best. “I knew I still wanted to write songs, but the realities of life made that dream seem pretty impossible,” Quinn says.
Mt. Joy
Basia Bulat
Basia Bulat is a singer-songwriter who lives in Montreal, Canada. Over the course of five albums, she has brought together an intrinsic contemporary sound with a love of classic folk, country and R&B songwriting. Her first two albums, the folk-music-tinted Oh, My Darling (2007) and Heart of My Own (2010) were recorded in analogue with punk-rock producer Howard Bilerman 2004’s Tall Tall Shadow, exploring friendship and grief, was made with Mark Lawson and Arcade Fire’s Tim Kingsbury 2016’s Good Advice—a break-up album—and 2019’s Are You in Love? were produced in Kentucky and Joshua Tree (respectively) with My Morning Jacket frontman Jim James. In addition to her powerhouse voice, Bulat is an accomplished multi-instrumentalist, recording and performing on electric guitar, piano, autoharp, ukulele, bass and charango.
