The Beat is Dead, newly released solo album by Nina Diaz, lead singer of Girl In A Coma. Many albums capture the flood of introspection that comes after a life-changing experience. But The Beat Is Dead (out October 28 on Cosmica Records)—an expansive body of work that sonically references musicals, alt-metal, indie pop, new wave—powerfully chronicles Nina’s journey itself. “This album is the story of my addiction and my sobriety,” she says. Some songs were written while using, some in the infancy of going clean, some looking back months later with clarity. “It’s like I shed a lot of different layers of skin during this process.”

 
The Beat Is Dead, produced by both Nina and Manuel Calderon (who engineered Girl in a Coma’s Trio B.C.), didn’t start out that way. While working on new material for her band, Nina penned the rousing “Trick Candle.” As with any other Girl in a Coma song, she fleshed it out with her bandmates, drummer Phanie Diaz (Nina’s sister) and bassist Jenn Alva. “I’m the writer, but our songs really are group efforts,” Nina says. “We jammed it out, but it didn’t feel right. It wasn’t what I envisioned.” What followed were a few difficult, but ultimately supportive, conversations about Nina taking on solo projects between Girl in a Coma albums. “It was a little rough at first. People were scared—I was scared!” she says. “But I knew I just needed to do this.”

For nearly a decade, Bantum Rooster has been playing music and providing entertainment across the Carolinas. The band plays a blend of classic rock and beach, funk and dance mix, and top 40 hits! Excellent showmanship, tight vocal harmonies, a hot rhythm section and a sensational horn line create an unstoppable show that leaves the audience wanting more. Bantum Rooster is "YOUR Custom Music Experience.

Shane Morgan - Keyboards/Emcee


Jon Cheney - Rhythm Guitar/Vocals


Courtney Raynor - Vocals


Matt Hanson - Bass/Vocals


Christian Morgan - Drums/Lead Vocals


Terry Burrow - Lead Guitar


Jimmy Plater - Tenor Saxophone


Dave Beitzel - Trombone


Doug Woolard - Trumpet

http://bantumrooster.com/

Silo Road is a 4-piece Americana & Roots ("Ameripolitan") band headquartered out of Austin, Texas. Formed in late 2012, Silo Road evolved from an acoustic Roots act paying homage to classic Texas artists into the powerful live band they are  today. Their emphasis on well-crafted storylines, tight harmonies, and dynamic song elements, executed with precise musicianship, has helped them develop a unique sound:  Americana forged and hardened in the musical hearth of the great Republic of Texas.

BAND MEMBERS:?

Billy Broome - vocals and guitar

Chris Swindle - guitar

Brendan Smith - bass

Jarid Craig - drums

http://www.siloroadband.com/

Brett Dyer was born in Dallas, and grew up in East Texas. After high school, Brett attended Kilgore Junior College for two years under a full Presidential Merit Scholarship for his talent and creativity in art. He later was accepted at The University of Texas at Tyler. There, Brett received a Bachelors of Fine Arts degree in painting and printmaking.

Brett started graduate school at Texas Woman's University in Denton, Texas in January 2003. There he received his Masters of Fine Arts degree December 2005. His major was in painting, and his minor was in intermedia arts. 

Brett currently lives and works in the Dallas area, where he has been working as a full time art professor teaching courses at North Lake College since 2012. In addition to his full-time position, Brett also offers various art workshops at museums, galleries, art centers, and art events in the DFW area. Brett has been teaching in higher education since 2006 and has previously taught at El Centro College, Tarrant County College, and Collin College. Brett has won numerous awards for his teaching such as the 2015-16 Presidential Scholar of North Lake College, 2014-15 Faculty of the Year at North Lake College, the Excellence in Teaching for Adjunct Faculty Award at El Centro College in 2012, and the 2012 NISOD Excellence Award given by a national organization. 2015 was Brett's 10th year of teaching.

Brett Dyer continues to work as an artist and favors working with acrylic and encaustic paint, printmaking, photography, and collage. Brett has exhibited all around Texas; has won awards and scholarships for his artwork; and consistently exhibits in local galleries and museums. His work can also be found as part of permanent collections at multiple universities and colleges in Texas.  Brett continues to create art and vows to never stop. His work is his life, and his life is his work. They would not exist without each other.

John Sheppard began his love of fiction at the age of four when he bought his first comic. The youngest of four children, his parents John and Josephine raised a happy family all of whom took on different challenges but stayed close. John has been a hockey blogger for website Around the Rink taking on subjects from a unique point of view. John loves fiction, building a story and coming back and proving something. It was why John excelled in literature. As John matured he wrote for fun, he also found an appreciation for writers like Robert Ludlum. A Graduate of the College of the North Atlantic, this is John's first book but it will not be his last.

Cedric Thomas Smith is an award-winning filmmaker from San Antonio, Texas whose journey began in 2010 with a short film on LGBT domestic violence, “Unimaginable”.  Smith continued with “The Symphony of Silence”, a heartbreaking look at the epidemic of teen bullying in a case where the bullied and the bully are brothers, “She Waits”, a haunting tale of a love that has been broken, and the feature film version of “Unimaginable”.  Other short films that Cedric has written include “Nana’s Brunch”, which tells the tale of a sisterhood of breast cancer survivors and  “The Game of Life”, a story of a dying man coming to terms with his pending death.  Cedric’s goal is to continue to write, direct, and produce stories that entertain yet are able to give voice to those that feel voiceless.

Jason Tostevin is an American filmmaker and founder of Hands Off Productions, a boutique production company with a worldwide reputation for its short films.

Jason has written and directed commercials for TV and radio, brand positioning videos, a broadcast series and more. His genre shorts have screened from Peoria to Paris, including being translated into Spanish, German, Portuguese and French.

Hands Off's last festival short, A Way Out, starred Hollywood icon Robert Costanzo and played more than 100 festivals. The short before that, I Owe You, was named indie short of the year by movie blog Cinema Constant. And the ’Til Death, their first fest short, was included in the horror anthology Seven Hells.

Jason lives in New Albany, Ohio with his wife Christy, their daughters Avery and Lily, and their new mutt, Milo.

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Hoyt Richards – Actor/Writer/Filmmaker/Co-founder and Executive of Tortoise Entertainment

Originally from the Main Line area outside Philadelphia, Hoyt was a scholar-athlete who graduated from Princeton with a BA in Economics where he also played football. In his early career, Hoyt worked as a fashion model for Ford and Wihelmina Models and is considered by many to be the world’s first male supermodel. Over his fifteen-year career, Hoyt was the face of numerous campaigns for the industry’s top designers and he appeared in over three hundred commercials. In 2000, he moved to Los Angeles, where he began working as an actor and now has over twenty-five films to his credit. Expanding his skill set to include directing, screenwriting, editing and producing, Hoyt created his own production company, Tortoise Entertainment in 2010. With Tortoise, Hoyt has produced two feature films: Dumbbells, a buddy comedy set in a gym, and Intersection, a romantic thriller. So far, these films have won over a hundred and twenty-five awards combined on the festival circuit over the last year. Hoyt has won multiple awards for Best Picture, Best Actor and Best Screenplay. In 2015, Hoyt co-founded a theatrical servicing & distribution company that caters to independent filmmakers. Currently, he is working on a documentary that chronicles his twenty-year journey into the Eternal Values religious cult and his subsequent escape and recovery. Hoyt speaks publicly about the dangers and lessons learned from his experience with cultic and abusive environments. He also assists families and individuals who have loved ones caught in cultic situations.

Here are some stills:

James Christopher has been making indie films in Austin, Texas for over 10 years. In that time, he's directed 14 feature films and played hundreds of festivals. His current festival film, DisAssociationVille, has been played well over fifty festivals. He's currently in preproduction on his new film, A Chance of Snow. James is also the programmer of the Austin Revolution Film Festival. in 2016, they've received over 1200 submissions and programmed 130 films from all around the world.