Pete Molinari’s recommendation: “Billy Childish is everything that an artist should be. In a world of pretenders and people that are making more money from art, music, politics religion you name it! Its all business and its all fashion it is rare to witness something that is done so passionately out of the spirit of creativity and is a triumph of content over style and form. I have known him as a friend since I was a kid and had the pleasure and the displeasure of working with him and since then I have pretty much met and witnessed them all and in my opinion no one comes close. Not even in the same vicinity as close.”

If you are new to Billy Childish, Pete recommends you start with Steady The Buffs

About our guest author, Pete Molinari: If you followed the hyped build up to the release of Bruce Springsteen’s The Promise, then you must have caught some of The Boss’ interview with Ed Norton. Norton asked Bruce the very Rock Torch-ish question of who he has been listening to lately and Bruce mentioned Gaslight Anthem and Against Me!, but he also said this about UK folk/blues artist, Pete Molinari: “…if you don’t know anything about him, he’s great.” Short and sweet, but enough to inevitably send droves of Springsteen fanatics scrambling for the Google search bar. The skinny on Pete is that he is of Maltese/Italian/Egyptian heritage and immersed himself in American roots music at a very age. He paid his dues by playing the Greenwich Village music scene and made believers out of the likes of Vincent Gallo, Ray Davies and photographer Louis Stettner. Pete learned from his heroes, soaked up the rich music history of great American cities, collected glowing reviews from Mojo and Uncut and opened for heavy hitters like Dan Auerbach of The Black Keys. Pete’s third album, A Train Bound for Glory is out and ready to make your digital music collection a whole lot better.

MP3: For Eliza by Pete Molinari from A Train Bound For Glory

About our guest author, Jace Everett: Jace is a former preacher, traveling musician, and truck driver who hit the big time when music supervisor Gary Calamar picked his Bad Things cut from his first album to back the opening montage of HBO’s vampire show, True Blood (see the credit sequence here). Jace took his newly found fame and enlisted Chuck Prophet to produce and co-write his latest album, Red Revelations, a wonderful modern mix of folk, pop, and roots based music. Be sure to visit Jace’s site to sign up for his newsletter updates and check the clip below about the new song he recorded for True Blood.