Grace Pettis and Zach Willdee
About Grace Pettis
"Grace has a melodic way of writing that not only stays in your head but reads what's sitting in your soul. She writes what I've always wanted to say."- Ruthie Foster (Grammy®-nominated blues artist)
Grace Pettis' much-anticipated sophomore MPress Records release, Down To The Letter, captures the Nashville-based (formerly Austin-based) singer-songwriter at the peak of her songwriting powers. Chronicling the end of a marriage and the reclamation of self after betrayal, codependency, and loss with heartbreaking detail, the lyrics deftly toe the line between personal pain and universal catharsis.
Mary Bragg - who also produced Pettis' debut album on MPress, 2021's Working Woman - was Pettis' first choice for Down to the Letter as well, in spite of their second album calling for a markedly di?erent approach. "I knew this album would be challenging," says Pettis. "I was too close to these songs and the subject matter to be all that objective with things like song and production choices. But I was in good hands with Mary."
Bragg and Pettis, along with good friend Josh Kaler (Frances Cone, Heather Nova), who contributes the majority of the electric and acoustic guitars on the album as well as pedal steel, make up the musical heart of the project. The three of them tracked much of the album in five days while holed up at musician/producer Jon Estes' home studio in Nashville, when Jon and his family were out of town. While Grace played and sang and Mary contributed back-up vocals and acoustic guitar, Josh did the engineering until it was his turn to play something. Then Mary took over the engineering while he laid down his guitar parts.
About Zach Willdee
Outlaw Country singer Zach Willdee combines energetic performances with his raw talent to bear a voice bigger than his body and stories older than his boots. Growing up in Massachusetts, writing beneath the shade of the New England pines, Zach Willdee began his musical career busking on the street corners of Provincetown, Massachusetts at 14 years old. By age 16, he earned the name "The Barefoot Brother." Lifeguarding on the Atlantic coast during the day and street performing at night he reflects, "They called me that because I didn't wear any shoes when I performed on the tarmac. They thought it was the funniest thing that this barefoot lifeguard was playing music." It wasn't long before Willdee moved from playing on the tarmac to playing local bars, with lines of people wrapping around the block, waiting to get in.
But long before that, Willdee would attend the annual Grey Fox and Joe Val Bluegrass Festivals in New England with his father. He fondly remembers jumping in on a picking circle at age 12, and then realizing he was playing with the Steel Drivers and Chris Stapelton. "They were all so welcoming it really sparked something in me and spurred me on," Willdee laughs.
Inspired by writers like Steve Earle, John Prine, and Merle Haggard, he began writing his own songs at the age of 16. Willdee later apprenticed under Darrell Scott (songwriter for The Dixie Chicks, Travis Tritt, Beyoncé, Zac Brown Band, and others) in 2016, which ultimately sparked him to move to Nashville to pursue his own career singing and writing country music.
Influenced heavily by the depth and honesty of the greats, Willdee conveys simple truths through dynamics in his music and writing. His voice and lyrics, echoing from the golden age of country music, are often compared to Johnny Paycheck and Waylon Jennings, writing from the depths of his soul about life's trials and tribulations--bearing the good, bad, and ugly through stories and songs that gain deeper meaning with each listen.