Nashville’s Jess Kerber first picked up a guitar at the age of 12, and her precocious drive to experiment with different tunings and picking styles – influenced by kindred spirits like Joni Mitchell and Susan Tedeschi – led to the development of a unique sonic palette and authentic, personal approach to songwriting. Inspired equally by her upbringing in Louisiana and studies at Boston’s Berklee College of Music, debut album From Way Down Here highlights the dynamism and depth of her gorgeous voice and thoughtful, humanistic lyrics, as well as the refined intricacy of her guitar playing. While developing many of these compositions at early live performances in and around Boston and Cambridge, Kerber encountered fellow songwriter Will Orchard, who quickly became a partner and collaborator in the genesis of their recording. Orchard’s production prowess and multi-instrumental talents push Kerber’s arrangements to a new level of fullness, while retaining the disarming purity and emotion of the main elements, in a dynamic akin to that of renowned contemporaries Gillian Welch and David Rawlings. Nodding to the traditions of Americana, the two artists – along with mixing engineer Charlie Dahlke of The Brazen Youth – have created their own subgenre that is at once intimate and universal, comforting and raw. For fans of Neko Case, Gillian Welch/David Rawlings, Lomelda, Adrienne Lenker, Julie Bryne, Six Organs of Admittance, Waxahatchee.