A great night with 2 emerging songwriters.

“Dark and pretty songs. Ernie Hendrickson is finding a niche in the indie folkAmericana segment. He is a storyteller like Harry Nilsson in a country mood.”
– Hans Werksman 
Here Comes The Flood
In 2007 Ernie self-produced and released a highly acclaimed solo record, Down the Road, of which the Illinois Entertainer deemed “Groundbreaking” and pushed him straight onto the Midwest’s radar as an emerging singer-songwriter. Hendrickson set the talent bar high in the studio for this album with a cast of players that included the subtle and angelic backing vocals of his sister, Kelly Hendrickson, and the legendary harmonica player, Howard Levy (Bela Fleck & The Flecktones, Paul Simon), aligned with an all-star group of Chicago musicians.
Hendrickson’s new record, Walking with Angels, began with a chance meeting between Ernie and veteran producer Bo Ramsey (Greg Brown, Lucinda Williams, Jeffrey Foucault) in the spring of ’08 in Iowa City, where Ernie was opening a show for an old friend of Bo’s, Kevin Gordon. Even in early conversation, the two agreed that there was a chemistry evolving that would only deepen once the sessions began. At Bo’s urging, Ernie sang and played nearly all of the songs on the record with a live band which consisted of Bo, Jon Penner on bass (Junior Brown, Bo Ramsey), and Steve Hayes on drums (Greg Brown, Bo Ramsey). This call was made by Bo to try and capture the energy of a great performance and the result could not have been better. All twelve songs on the record feel as though these four guys had been playing together for years. After adding legendary Chicago pedal steel player Brian Wilkie (Alison Krauss, Pam Tillis) on several tracks, Bob Black’s banjo (Bill Monroe), and taking a trip to Nashville to record keyboardist Kevin McKendree (Delbert McClinton), the record shines as a true testament to Hendrickson’s ripening powers as a songwriter. Radio promotion has taken the sophomore album’s success to a higher level on both AAA and Americana stations, having spent over 25 weeks in the Top 20 on Roots Music Report’s Folk charts and in regular rotation at nearly 100 different stations across the country including Nashville’s award-winning WSM-AM The Legend.

Of opener MJ Bishop: “A modern-day Patsy Cline whose voice has been seasoned to Americana perfection. Folk Americana with attitude; lyric-driven melancholy that’s gutsy, introspective, organic, emotive, acoustic, and laced with twang.” Her music is described as open-road longing folk Americana.  She has been compared to Patsy Cline, Emmylou Harris and Gillian Welch.  Combining deep roots in acoustic music with a maturing country sensibility, MJ creates a genre that is, in many ways, her own.  Her influences include Patsy Cline, Hank Williams, k.d. lang, Patty Griffin, Emmylou Harris, Lucinda Williams,