THE BANDIT QUEEN OF SORROWS photo by Ericka Poore
SQUEAKY BONES photo by Zachariah Orbin
Continuing their beloved The Magnolia Sessions series, Anti-Corp Music will release new albums from THE BANDIT QUEEN OF SORROWS and SQUEAKY BONES in March.
The Magnolia Sessions showcases bluegrass, dark country, and folk singer/songwriter acts, recorded live in an intimate outdoor setting by a large magnolia tree at the Anti-Corp/Black Matter Mastering headquarters in Nashville, Tennessee, by owner Dan Emery. The series has delivered albums from the likes of Lost Dog Street Band, The Hill Country Devil, Joe Wunderle, Cooper McBean, The Resonant Rogues, Matt Heckler, Jason Dea West, Johno Leeroy, Cristina Vane, Nick Hans, Casper Allen, Jeff Loops, Angela Autumn, Tyler Hood, Jade Brodie, Douglas Francisco, Ivan McLeod, Austin Stambaugh, Willi Carlisle, Coleman Williams, Joe’s Truck Stop, Aurelia Anne Cohen, and Chris Emmert, many of which have debuted on the Billboard Bluegrass Charts.
THE BANDIT QUEEN OF SORROWS is the dark folk output of storyteller, singer/songwriter, poet, and multi-instrumentalist Leslie Fox-Humphreys, featuring cello, guitar, piano, banjo, harmonica, percussion, and the Shruti Box, and blending the back-alley bar rasp with a velvet falsetto. Starting her musical journey at five years old, playing violin and cello, she hit the road at the age of nineteen and has been wandering nomadically for the fourteen years since, occasionally setting short-term roots in the Northeast.
With her installment of The Magnolia Sessions set for release, Fox-Humphreys reveals, “It’s a mix of ballads, from originals to old folk songs. In different themes and phases of grief, wandering, and seafaring folklore, a little bit of my own bitter realism, and an old Irish rebel song, it’s mostly blending the heartbroken widow on the shore with the femme fatale. There’s a strength in the grief of these songs, at least to me in writing and performing them. Forlorn, proud, and a little bitter.”
Dan Emery adds, “I had been trying to get Leslie to come down and record for The Magnolia Sessions for a few years. Having worked with her on her album and some other recordings, I knew that she would be an easy session and stylistically fit in perfectly. She drove down from the Northeast, straight. About halfway through her trip down I got a text from her that she was on the side of the road, violently ill. I thought she was going to have to turn back, but she pulled through and came down and absolutely killed it. You would never know that she was dying on the side of the interstate just a night prior. Absolute pro!”
SQUEAKY BONES is the creation of Caleb Nunez, who entered this life through the same Southeast Texas swamp that produced Janis Joplin, Johnny and Edgar Winter, and ZZ Top. At sixteen years old he was given a cheap guitar, and his life was forever changed. With the help of three starter chords drawn out and mailed to him by an older cousin, he would practice his music in the barn, alone, as he was forbidden from practicing in the house. He watched the fingers of the musicians in the various churches his mother dragged him to, before returning to the barn to replicate what he saw.
For the next twenty years, he found his peace in writing songs intended to heal and spread love. On the night of Thanksgiving 2020, SQUEAKY BONES’ life was forever changed, again, when he was shot in the head by a random attacker in Asheville, North Carolina. For the next five years, he wandered Tennessee on his motorcycle, confused, and learning anew how to survive. Once his decision to get sober was made in early 2025, life began to make a bit more sense. Through the course of that journey, he was able to record and share these select songs. Now living on a small houseboat outside Nashville, he wants to inspire people of all stripes toward kindness and hope, reminding people to smile at your brother and be kind.
Nunez writes, “Recording for The Magnolia Sessions was a truly unique experience! With a fancy can mic in front of my face, and a mic’ed guitar, I enjoyed singing under the magnolia tree while being treated organically as crickets and cicadas sang along with… a blazing-hot July night under the stars, for a true live field recording. Truly unique, especially the microphone-eared mannequin head in the middle of the yard, grabbing all the night’s sounds!”
Emery adds, “I met SQUEAKY BONES through my friend and frequent photographer for The Magnolia Sessions, Zach Orbin. We were to meet up at a local coffee shop to discuss the prospects of doing this recording. I had never met him before. As I sat at my table drinking coffee, a guy pulled up on a motorcycle wearing a tattered vest, an eye patch, and no shoes. I knew at that point that this was my guy. When he came out to record his session, I couldn’t get past the irony of it all, beneath the rough exterior, his songs were some of the more emotionally driven. He breezed through his recordings with only a couple that needed a second take. Here is the kicker: These are the first recordings he’s ever done!”
Stream THE BANDIT QUEEN OF SORROWS’ “That Perfect Storm” HERE and SQUEAKY BONES’ “Goin Crazy” HERE.
Anti-Corp Music will release both new installments of The Magnolia Sessions on March 6th. Presave THE BANDIT QUEEN OF SORROWS’ record HERE and SQUEAKY BONES’ album HERE.
THE BANDIT QUEEN OF SORROWS’ The Magnolia Sessions Track Listing:
1. The Ways Of Man
2. That Perfect Storm
3. Come Wander With Me
4. The Lockman
5. Fear A Bhata
6. Soil Serpentine
7. Down By The Glenside
SQUEAKY BONES’ The Magnolia Sessions Track Listing:
1. Homes And Nests
2. Found My Way Appalachy
3. Snowflakes
4. Sneaky Beans
5. My Promise
6. Every Step
7. For Dave
8. Hourglass Squeezed
9. Going Crazy
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