The Mystery Spot releases on digital and Video On Demand on October 7 from Terror Films. Photo: Google
From director Mel House, and starring Graham Skipper (Re-Animator: The Musical), Lisa Wilcox (A Nightmare on Elm Street 4-5), and scream queen Debbie Rochon, experience the terror of The Mystery Spot this October. (Terror Films, 2022)
The Mystery Spot– A number of lost souls find refuge in a small motel in the middle of nowhere, its only distinguishing characteristic being the ruins of an old Mystery Spot—a long-dead roadside attraction with strange metaphysical powers. Nathan and Rachel find solace in one another, both attempting to escape dark pasts that seem to be using the Mystery Spot to go from being painful shadows of their lives to very real entities of the present. Everyone at the Mystery Spot will be affected by its unique properties, but only some will survive its reality-shattering implications.
The Mystery Spot releases on digital and VOD October 7 worldwide from Terror Films.
Chris Shiflett blends West Coast nostalgia and heartland hooks with brand new single “Born & Raised.” Courtesy photo, used with permission.
While Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductee Chris Shiflett gets recognition for his role in Foo Fighters, the modern-day guitar hero has seemingly always had one foot in the country music world—and, these days, he has been spending plenty of time making music in Nashville. Just last week, Shiflett played the Grand Ole Opry alongside a best-of-Nashville band—Sierra Hull (mandolin), Mike Bub (bass), and Michael Cleveland (fiddle). Now he has released his second of two singles recorded with legendary producer Vance Powell, “Born & Raised.” Shiflett began writing the tune while surfing his hometown Santa Barbara coastline but finished it in Music City where a group of Americana studio all-stars—bassist Jack Lawrence, drummer Julian Doro, keyboardist Mike Webb, and steel guitarist Luke Schneider—brought “Born & Raised” to life. (Chris Shiflett, 2022)
A swirl of West Coast nostalgia, heartland hooks, and Deluxe Reverb drive, the song unfolds like a love letter to one’s roots, delivered by a man who has spent most of his adulthood on the move. “Born & Raised” and Shiflett’s recently released “Long, Long Year” are both songs that find Shiflett in a reflective mood, looking at where he has been before heading toward whatever is next. Fans of Shiflett should certainly be keeping an eye out for even more new music over the next year. They can save “Born & Raised” hereand watch the lyric video now at this link. “Long, Long Year” is also available right here.
“My trip out to Nashville in March of 2021 was my first time recording any solo material since I made Hard Lessons. I hadn’t done much traveling post-covid lockdown so I was a little nervous heading out there to work with a producer and roomful of musicians I didn’t really know. In true Nashville style we made our introductions and got right down to work, hammering out the basic tracks in a few hours. Vance was great and made me feel right at home, and the group of players he put together were on point.” – Chris Shiflett
Catch Chris Shiflett on tour: September 17 – Redondo Beach, CA – BeachLife Ranch Festival 2022 December 3 – Tempe, AZ – Marquee Theatre December 8 – Anaheim, CA – House of Blues Anaheim December 17 – Las Vegas, NV – House of Blues Las Vegas December 28 – Los Angels, CA – The Belasco
A longtime member of Foo Fighters, Shiflett has already played an integral role in shaping the sound, swagger, and scope of rock music throughout the 21st century. He joined the band in 1999, after kicking off his career playing guitar for seminal pop-punk groups like No Use For a Name and Me First and the Gimme Gimmes. While flying the flag for modern rock & roll, he also made time to pursue projects outside of the band. Groups like Jackson United and Chris Shiflett and the Dead Peasants found him in the driver’s seat, establishing his credentials as a front man, while the long-running Americana podcast Walking the Floor found him shining a light on his heroes and contemporaries, its 200+ episodes highlighting the storytellers, songwriters, and road warriors of contemporary roots music. Two critically acclaimed solo albums, 2017’s West Coast Town and 2019’s Hard Lessons, marked Shiflett’s own entry into the Americana world, mixing classic Bakersfield influences with greasy guitar riffs, Marshall amplifiers, and country-rock crunch.
Ghost of Paul Revere signs to Americana Vibes for final album, Goodbye, and catalog deal. Photo: Nicole Wolf, used with permission.
Ghost of Paul Revere,a band with over a decade of accolades and friendship, offer their final collection of songs in the form of a record aptly titled Goodbye, which is available everywhere for streaming. Releasing via Americana Vibes, and featuring the band’s—Griffin Sherry [guitar, vocals], Max Davis [banjo, vocals], Sean McCarthy [bass, vocals], and Chuck Gagne [drums, vocals]—signature blend of folk, bluegrass, rock, country, and Americana rooted in ponderous lyricism and raucous energy, Goodbye is both an offering of gratitude to fans and a celebration. (Ghost of Paul Revere, 2022)
For this release and their back catalog, the band has signed with Americana Vibes, of which the label co-founder Ivory Daniel, says “Everything that we strive for here at Americana Vibes is embodied within the music, art, and humanity behind this album, Goodbye. We’re excited to welcome the Ghosts to our family, and even more so to release this body of work while amplifying the importance of the Ghosts catalog across the globe.”
The collection of songs on Goodbye feels a bit like a victory lap, one in which the band is enjoying the natural end to all good things and inviting fans to attend a rowdy, joyful curtain closing of sorts. The album’s origins are much like the band’s, beginning by decamping to a family cabin to reunite and write in late 2020. 48-hours of writing in ‘20 fueled the creativity to continue writing into ‘21. By the time they hit the studio with co-producer and engineer Dan Cardinal, they had decided the overall direction and opted to primarily record live.
“The record ebbs and flows between soft songs that are more akin to what we used to do and more rocking songs with pretty good grit to them,” says Sherry. The band’s final offering, Goodbye, plays homage to the more-than-a-decade of music-making with friends. “How does one write an obituary of a ghost?” the band asked on social media when announcing their departure from the scene. The answer, of course, is hidden in the 12 songs of Goodbye.
Goodbye track listing: At Least I Know It’s True In My Yard Gratefully Here In Deep JTE Letters From the War of Love and Loss Me and My Shadow Rider Vivid Dream Older Lately Knuckle Goodbye
Davi Mai is a short story writer focusing on fantasy, science fiction, and transgressive fiction. ProximaBound is Davi Mai’s latest YA science-fiction novella. (Davi Mai, 2022)
Proxima Bound – Humanity’s last hope rests with the colonists aboard the generational starship Attenborough bound for Proxima Centauri a thousand years away. Catastrophe strikes when a reactor meltdown cuts off those in the ship’s front from the rear. Two factions must now struggle to survive. With four hundred years still to travel, we join a plucky teenager, “Thief.” She has found a way through the ventilation system, around the radioactive core of the ship, and into the front sections. Thief brings back vital components that might help the rear-dwellers connect the ship’s computer. For the first time in hundreds of years, there is hope.
But people are disappearing without a trace, and the makeshift hospital is overflowing with cases of a new virus. It is up to Thief to embark on her toughest mission yet. To crawl through the bowels of the ship, the furthest she has ever been, and find some answers, before there is no-one left alive. What she finds at the front of the ship, however, is terrifying.
‘The Devil in Ohio’ is now a limited series on Netflix. Photo: Amazon
Daria Polatin is a TV writer/executive producer, award-winning playwright, and author. She wrote and directed her new play PALMYRA at Center Theatre Group’s Kirk Douglas Theatre, which ran on CTG’s Digital Stage. Her plays have been produced across the United States and internationally. She is a founding member of The Kilroys, the advocacy group for gender parity in the American theater. Under her 1001 Pictures banner, Daria continues to write and produce propulsive stories that challenge and entertain. “Devil in Ohio,” her debut novel, was adapted into a Netflix limited series consisting of eight episodes starring Emily Deschanel and Madeleine Arthur. Daria is the creator, showrunner, and executive producer. (Amazon, 2022)
“Devil in Ohio” – Based on a true story. When fifteen-year-old Jules Mathis comes home from school to find a strange girl sitting in her kitchen, her psychiatrist mother reveals that Mae is one of her patients at the hospital and will be staying with their family for a few days. But soon Mae is wearing Jules’s clothes, sleeping in her bedroom, edging her out of her position on the school paper, and flirting with Jules’s crush. And Mae has no intention of leaving. Then things get weird. Jules walks in on a half-dressed Mae, startled to see: a pentagram carved into Mae’s back. Jules pieces together clues and discovers that Mae is a survivor of the strange cult that’s embedded in a nearby town. And the cult will stop at nothing to get Mae back.
‘The Spark’ is book one in the Beyond the Light Universe series. Photo: Amazon
William Steele is an artist and writer from the Rio Grand Valley in Texas. He is the creator of the Beyond the Light Universe. His debut novel “The Spark” is book one of four in the Beyond the Light series. (Amazon, 2022)
“The Spark”– Art and Science… Magic and Logic… Creation and Destruction…Choice and Inevitability…All are constructs born of an apex sentience, and somewhere out beyond the boundary of our known universe, there exists another apex species that has long since eclipsed us in experience. Their faith in magic has dwindled, and the Era of Egal has passed. By marching forward into the Era of Capitol, and abandoning the magical tether to their planet, the Thearians have decided to meet the trials of evolution head on. They have sealed their embrace of the New Way within the immortal city of Key-Rown, and choose the shelter provided by the great depths of the crystal flower. All have sealed their fate. All but one. This is his message.
‘Overkill’ is Sandra Brown’s new novel. Photo: Amazon
Sandra Brown is the author of seventy-four New York Times bestsellers. There are more than eighty million copies of her books in print worldwide, and her work has been translated into thirty-four languages. Four of her books have been made into films. In 2008, the International Thriller Writers named Brown its Thriller Master, the organization’s highest honor. In her new book “Overkill” she delivers a riveting thriller in which a conflict of conscience for a former football star and an ambitious state prosecutor swiftly intensifies into a fight for their lives. (Amazon, 2022)
“Overkill” – Former Super Bowl MVP quarterback Zach Bridger has not seen his ex-wife, Rebecca Pratt, for some time—not since their volatile marriage imploded—so he is shocked to receive a life-altering call about her. Rebecca has been placed on life support after a violent assault, and he—despite their divorce—has medical power-of-attorney. Zach is asked to make an impossible choice: keep her on life support or take her off of it. Buckling under the weight of the responsibility and the glare of public scrutiny, Zach ultimately walks away, letting Rebecca’s parents have the final say.
Four years later, Rebecca’s attacker, Eban—the heir of a wealthy family in Atlanta—gets an early release from prison. The ludicrous miscarriage of justice reeks of favoritism, and Kate Lennon, a brilliant state prosecutor, is determined to put him back behind bars. Rebecca’s parents have kept her alive all these years, but if her condition were to change—if she were to die—Eban could be retried on a new charge: murder. It is not lost on Zach that in order for Eban to be charged with Rebecca’s murder, Zach must actually be the one to kill her. He rejects Kate’s legal standpoint but cannot resist their ill-timed attraction to each other. Eban, having realized the jeopardy he is in, plots to make certain that neither Zach nor Kate lives to see the death of Rebecca—and the end of his freedom.
The Bigfoot horror movie will have a digital release on September 30, 2022. Photo: Google
Terror Films will release the Michael Pare-starring Bigfoot horror movie The Wild Man this September. Developed during the pandemic, the film stars Michael Pare, and is directed by Tampa Bay native Ryan Justice (Followers). Lauren Crandall, Julian Green, and Mike Reed also help make up the cast. (Terror Films, 2022)
“We used our downtime to create and develop projects. The Wild Man happened to be the perfect project to make at the time. As a Florida Native the Legend of the Skunk Ape (Florida Bigfoot) always had our interest. We wanted to do a fun movie around the legend and do something different with the bigfoot movie genre.”
The Wild Man – Young women have been going missing in Ochopee, FL, without a single suspect in custody. A young journalist, Sara, convinces her crew to join her investigation as she travels to Ochopee to document her discoveries, but they soon realize their presence in this town is not welcome. Determined to find her story, Sara convinces her friends to stick with her, because they are onto something big. Upon meeting Dale, the town’s notorious conspiracy theorist, she is convinced he knows more than he is willing to share. The crew humors Dale’s ridiculous theories, even accompanying him into the Florida swamps on his quest to show them “The Wild Man,” hoping he will somehow reveal his guilt. But what the crew discovers is a secret much deeper than fairy tales and legends. What they discover is much darker and more sinister than they bargained for.
The Wild Man will first premiere on digital platforms September 30 ahead of plays on the Terror Films and Kings of Horror YouTube Channels.
TERRITORY: NORTH AMERICA RELEASE DATE 1: 9/30/22 – DIGITAL RELEASE DATE 2: 10/7/22 – TERROR FILMS CHANNEL RELEASE DATE 2: 10/14/22 – KOH CHANNEL
Jeremy Squires’ new album Hymnal will be out October 14, 2022 via Blackbird Record Label. Photo: Jeremy Squires
North Carolina songwriter Jeremy Squires’ new upcoming full length album Hymnal will be out October 14 via Blackbird Record Label. The music video for the single “Into The Fog” is out now. Hymnal is an album with a tender and life-affirming quality, where Squires’ warm singing voice, shimmery guitars, sparkling ukulele voicings, and Brand’s vocal harmonies and heartfelt violin melodies stand out just as much as the poignant lyrics. Squires handled almost all the aspects of the album’s making, including the recording of his vocals and string instrument parts, production, and mixing. (Jeremy Squires, 2022)
“These songs are true stories that I wanted to tell without any clutter. I didn’t add any overdubs of instruments. I recorded my parts here at my house live and then sent the album to Autumn Rose Brand, a fantastic violinist and singer who lives here in North Carolina, who played and sang her parts and sent them back to me.” – Jeremy Squires
What sounds like a simple process, though, is anything but. The events, trials, and tribulations that led up to Hymnal center around his dissolving marriage, and the music, reflecting the subject matter, is scaled back compared to his previous full-length efforts. The Alternative shared the music video for “Into the Fog” off of Hymnal, a tenderly strummed song about, in Jeremy’s words, “realizing that you can’t save someone—no matter how hard you try—if they won’t put forth the effort to truly help themselves. It’s about delusions, dreams, and eventually, reality shining through like rays of light at the end.” Brand’s violin highlights the song’s ending refrain: “Oh, I won’t see you in the morning.”
Hymnal track list: 1. Don’t You Cry 2. Lament 3. Moon Coin 4. Hymnal 5. Juniper 6. To the Moon and Back 7. Balancing 8. Into the Fog 9. Echo Roads 10. Nightingale
Catch Jeremy Squires on tour: September 15 – Nashville, TN – ACME Feed & Seed September 16 – Nashville, TN – Brown’s Diner
Hymnal, due out October 14, 2022. Courtesy photo, used with permission.
Our American Family opens in theaters in New York and Los Angeles and Video on Demand. Photo: Giant Pictures, used with permission.
Our American Family will be released in the United States theatrically in New York (Cinema Village), Los Angeles (Laemmle Monica) on September 2 and on Video On Demand in the United States, Canada, UK, and major territories on September 6, both timed to National Recovery Month. Video on Demand platforms include US – Apple TV/iTunes, Amazon, Google Play, Vudu, Canada- Apple TV/iTunes, Google Play, and UK- Apple TV/iTunes. (Giant Pictures, 2022)
Winner of the Woodstock Film Festival 2021- Audience Award for Best Documentary Feature Addiction is an all-encompassing force, in not only of the lives of the afflicted, but also those around them. Our American Family provides an honest, unfiltered look at a close-knit Philadelphia family dealing with generational substance abuse. Captured at a pivotal “nothing to lose” moment, for over the course of a year, five family members tired of life with addiction on center stage, each struggle to transcend their crippling histories.
What will it take to shift this entrenched, wrenching pattern in their lives? Will they be able to make significant shifts to help their next generation? The members of Our American Family invite us into their lives to find hope and to explore what is possible. Though they often falter, their familial loyalty is powerful, demonstrating how through love and dedication people can rise out of the deepest depths. For a touching, eye-opening look into one of America’s most pressing crises, look no further.
Our American Family opens in September timed to National Recovery Month, a national observance held every September to promote and support new evidence-based treatment and recovery practices, the emergence of a strong and proud recovery community, and the dedication of service providers and community members across the nation who make recovery in all its forms possible.
Hallee Adelman is a writer, filmmaker, and co-founder of World of HA Productions. She is an executive producer on the Emmy-winning documentary “The Social Dilemma,” and the Oscar-nominated international film “Writing with Fire.” Other titles include the Academy shortlisted, “The Truffle Hunters,” the Sundance premiere “UsKids,” and the soon to be released, “Art & Krimes by Krimes.” Recent festival premieres, “Aisha,” “Broadway Rising,” and “Your Friend, Memphis.” Adelman is a Board Member of the International Documentary Association. Adelman co-directed and produced Our American Family after a writing project deepened her connection with the brave participants featured in the film.
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