Kendl Winter

Olympia, Washington-based singer/songwriter Kendl Winter honed her distinctive of blend of country, bluegrass, and indie folk as a member of folk-punk band the Pasties, bluegrass quartet Blackberry Bushes, Americana duo Southern Skies, and indie rock outfit It's All Gotta Go. The Arkansas native started releasing solo work in 2006 with the homespun album Still Life on French Road Records. Putting to use her proficient banjo, Dobro, and guitar skills, Winter reworked several of her tunes from the Pasties for her solo debut, as well as recording some new compositions. A second album of new material followed in 2007 in the form of the loop-based A Walk in the Shadows, and a third the next year with the self-released Kite (also known as Story My). In 2009, Winter set about working on material for a new album, recording in part at her Olympia home and in part on a boat in Puget Sound. The resultant record was the haunted and elegant Apple Core, which Winter self-released in a small batch of block-printed CD-Rs before the record found wider re-release on K Records in 2010. Winter's relationship with K continued, and 2012 found the release of The Mechanics of Hovering Flight. This marked the first album the artist did not self-record, opting instead to work with K founder Calvin Johnson at the engineer's helm. 2013 saw the release of the optimistic It Can Be Done! featuring a loosely collected backing band called the Summer Gold.