NPR lists Champion in Top 10 Underheard Albums of the year

Nora Jane Struthers calls her music "Classic Americana". The 26-year-old vocalist - an NYU grad and a full-time teacher of high school English in Brooklyn, before making a professional leap into music with a move to Nashville in 2008 - has formulated a unique fusion of traditional styles. "It's not really bluegrass, it's not really old time, it's not folk - it's all of these things," Stuthers says. "In my last year of teaching, we were reading Jane Austen, Shakespeare, classic English literature. The themes in those works and in the music I was listening to - Doc Watson, the Louvin Brothers, Time O'Brien - came together for me. The universal themes that have been pervasive in storytelling started to develop in my writing. I turned to strory-songs." Struthers performs her material with a voice as pretty and home-spun as the vintage dresses she favors on stage. Her accompanists on the album include acclaimed singer/multi-instrumentalist Tim O'Brien, all-star fiddler Stuart Duncan, award-winning dobro player Rob Ickes, top bluegrass guitarist Bryan Sutton, banjo ace Scott Vestal, veteran bassist Denis Crouch, and, on backing vocals, do-anything performer Shawn Lane. Producer Brent Truitt contributes mandolin and octave mandolin.