E. Pruitt — Puyallup, WA

E. Pruitt is a Kansas City-bred, Pacific Northwest-based bass soloist, composer, and clinician whose resume reads like a highlight reel of the instrument's upper echelon. A graduate of the Charlie Parker School for the Performing Arts, he has shared stages with B.B. King, Gerald Albright, Brian Bromberg, Paul Stanley, Brett Michaels, and the Miles Davis Tribute Group "Miles & Miles" — and was one of two bassists contacted by Vernon Reid to fill the open seat in Living Colour. His 6 and 7-string Surine bass work blends contemporary jazz, funk, R&B, and neo-soul into a sound that places him in the company of Wayman Tisdale and George Benson.

Beyond performing, "E" has spent decades as a sought-after clinician and product specialist for KORG USA, Bartolini Pickups, Warwick, Spector, Ashdown, and DR Strings, and published a three-DVD instructional bass set through Next Level Guitar. His latest album, Bass Graffiti, landed three tracks in the Smooth Jazz Top 100 in 2025. The 2018 Seattle Sound Music Awards "Best Band" winner brings the full weight of that experience to every stage he steps on — which is exactly what Gigs4U is built to spotlight.

Tomo Nakayama — Seattle, WA

Born in Japan and raised in Seattle, Tomo Nakayama has spent two decades proving that KEXP wasn't exaggerating when they called him "probably the artist who fits the title of Seattle music fixture better than anyone right now." A crystalline high-tenor voice, intricate fingerpicking, and a willingness to reinvent — from chamber pop with Grand Hallway to intimate indie folk, a #1 KEXP synthpop detour with Melonday, and back to a lush organic full-band sound on his 2025 album Ocean — have earned him praise from NPR, the New York Times, and The Stranger, plus placements in Netflix's House of Ninjas and a Sundance Grand Jury nominated film.

Nakayama's live performances carry the same weight and care as his recordings. He has shared stages with Cornelius, Thao, Stella Donnelly, and Ben Gibbard, and collaborated with Dave Matthews, Jeremy Enigk, and Jherek Bischoff. Whether performing solo or with his band — which on Ocean includes Yuuki Matthews (The Shins), Abbey Blackwell (Alvvays), and Christopher Icasiano (Fleet Foxes) — he brings a rare combination of technical precision and genuine human warmth to every room. That is exactly what Gigs4U is built around.

Jillian Mixon — Olympia, WA

Jillian Mixon is a Pacific Northwest singer-songwriter whose voice draws inevitable comparisons to Norah Jones, Amy Winehouse, and Stevie Nicks — a lustrous, soulful tone that works equally well on jazz standards, blues covers, and her own original material. She performs solo and with her band Jill & the Jacks, and has built a reputation as a reliable, versatile presence across the region's live music circuit. Her residencies span everything from the Salish Lodge & Spa lounge to Sea-Tac Airport terminals, where she plays the Central and N concourses regularly.

Mixon brings warmth and genuine musicality to every setting she plays. Whether it's a winery patio, an art walk, a weekly club residency, or a lavender farm stage, she reads the room and delivers. That adaptability — paired with a voice that stops people in their tracks — is exactly what Gigs4U looks for in a working Pacific Northwest musician.

Ben Mish — Seattle, WA

Ben Mish is a Seattle pianist, singer, and songwriter who has spent decades doing the work that matters most to him: writing songs and playing them live, relentlessly. As the frontman and chief songwriter of Left Hand Smoke, he has released ten albums with the band, earned Seattle Weekly's "Best Band" honors, headlined Bumbershoot, opened for Maroon 5 and Eddie Vedder, and placed songs on network television including ER and Grey's Anatomy — the latter featuring "Shine on Everything" as the episode's featured song. On his own, he has released eight solo albums and plays close to 200 shows a year.

What drives Mish is the craft itself. His musical style is steeped in tradition — neo-soul, rock, blues — but never at the expense of originality, and his output is relentless in the best sense. He is also a longtime contributor to Bushwick Book Club Seattle, writing and performing original songs inspired by literature. That combination of soulful performance, genuine prolificacy, and deep community roots makes him exactly the kind of artist Gigs4U is built to spotlight.

Cami Voss — West Seattle, WA

Cami Voss is a retro-country singer, pianist, bandleader, and songwriter whose roots run deep in the classic American country tradition — Patsy Cline, Hank Williams, Emmylou Harris, Bob Wills, and Lefty Frizzell are the touchstones. She fronts multiple active projects including Cami Voss & the Acme Roundup, Fricken Chickasee, and The Loose Heels, and has curated celebrated tribute productions honoring Hank Williams, Loretta Lynn, and Tammy Wynette at venues including the Triple Door and Tractor Tavern. Her performances have drawn reviews praising their authenticity, charm, and deep respect for the source material.

Beyond the stage, Voss is a cornerstone of the West Seattle music community — founder of West Side Music Academy (est. 1999), board member at Kenyon Hall, and music teacher at Tilden School. She brings a warm, genuine presence to every room she plays, from wineries and art walks to full band productions with a crackerjack rhythm section and twin guitars. That combination of deep roots, live versatility, and community investment is exactly what Gigs4U is built to celebrate.

Weekly Volcano Caught Polybanderous Looping at a Farmers Market

A writer for Weekly Volcano found me doing my usual thing at the Tacoma Farmers Market: guitar, loop pedal, and my on the spot solos. She signed up for my email list before introducing herself, which lead to an interview request.

The resulting piece covers the saxophone-in-a-London-tunnel origin story, the singing gondolier chapter (yes, that's real), and how a Navy brat ends up running a patchwork production company with a name nobody can pronounce.

She was kind enough to call the live looping "transformative." I'll take it. Read the full feature and decide for yourself.

G.Y.S.S.

Hans Pucket

Wellington indie-rock four-piece Hans Pucket return with their first new material since the Taite Prize-nominated No Drama (2022). G.Y.S.S. is described as "a pop-rock anthem written out of post-lockdown desperation," and it lands like one: nervy, hook-laden, and effortlessly danceable. The band recently opened for Split Enz on their reunion tour across Aotearoa, and this track suggests the next record is going to be worth the wait.

Michael Compton — Seattle, WA

Michael Compton has been making records in Seattle since before most of the city's current generation of musicians started playing. Twenty independent releases on his own label missingrecords, including the 2022 full-length Wooden Spoon — a bedroom-to-studio collaboration with legendary PNW producer Steve Fisk (Nirvana, Car Seat Headrest), bassist Yuuki Matthews (The Shins), and drummer Michael Musburger (The Posies) — that stands as some of the most confident indie rock to come out of this city in years. He performs as a solo artist and with his band Good Evening, and has also served as head of the Pacific Northwest Recording Chapter for the Grammys.

Compton's live presence reflects the depth of someone who has built a career on passion over profile. His songs carry the hallmark of Seattle's underground pop spirit — open-hearted, groove-oriented, and driven by a deep love for the craft. Whether solo or with a full band, he brings a commitment to the room that audiences feel immediately. That kind of long-game authenticity is exactly what Gigs4U looks for.

Bonita Fishwife

Bonita Fishwife is throwing a release party for their new album at the Belltown Yacht Club on Saturday, August 1. Accendino and Sweet Marilyn open the night. Come hear the new record the way it was meant to be heard, loud and in a room full of people.

Belltown Yacht Club, Seattle
Saturday, August 1, 2026
Advance $15 ($18.85 w/ fees) · Day of $17 ($21.37 w/ fees)

"Hallelujah" is one of the new singles from Burden of Excess, the album I just released and have been selling at live shows around Seattle. I ran it through SubmitHub to see who outside the Pacific Northwest might bite. Two curators said yes, and they were not the ones I expected.

The two that landed

EXTRAVAFRENCH, a French rock blog, wrote a full review and added the track to their EXTRAVAROCK Spotify playlist. They framed the song as a psychedelic trance where faith, doubt, and electric vertigo end up singing in the same language, and described light arriving not from the sky but through an effects pedal. My favorite line, loosely translated, is that the song manages to "make vertigo resemble grace." I will take it.

Over in Mexico, Expansión Radial shared it as a blog review and across Instagram, TikTok, and their other channels. Two placements, two countries, neither of them down the street from me.

The honest numbers

I used Easy Mode under Promote A Song. Twelve curators heard the track. Two approved it. That works out to roughly a 17 percent acceptance rate, which sits under SubmitHub's 28 percent site average for the month. I spent 34 premium credits getting there. Not a blowout by any measure.

What Easy Mode did do was save me a serious amount of time. It summarized each response as I burned down the spend, so I was not babysitting submissions one at a time. For a busy run, that alone earned its keep, even though the campaign was not hugely successful on paper.

The rejections were the useful part

Here is the thing nobody tells you about a middling SubmitHub run: the no's were remarkably consistent, and consistency is signal. Several curators praised the instrumentation and called the production professional, then said the vocal or the hook did not fully land for them, or that they wanted something punchier and heavier. One heard glam-rock and confident vocals but wanted more punch from the production. Another caught a raw grunge and goth crossover and figured it would hit hard live. (That curator literally bet it would go down well in a room, which, given that I have been moving this album at shows, tracks.)

When ten strangers across six countries circle the same couple of notes, that is not rejection. That is a free production memo I did not have to ask for.

What I would tell another independent artist

• Run the math before you feel anything. 2 of 12 sounds rough until you remember that two of them were real placements in two different countries.
• Easy Mode is worth it for the time savings alone. It still costs credits and guarantees nothing, but it kept a wide campaign from eating my week.
• A thoughtful no can be worth the credit. Several curators wrote full paragraphs about exactly what was and was not working.
• Match the genre carefully. The psych-rock and metal curators clearly heard very different songs, and that mismatch shows up in the feedback.
• International curators are absolutely reachable. Both of my yeses came from outside the US blogs entirely.

Big thanks to SubmitHub for the platform and for Easy Mode, to EXTRAVAFRENCH and Expansión Radial for the coverage, and to every curator who took the time to write real notes.

If you want to hear the track this is based on, "Hallelujah" and the rest of Burden of Excess are streaming now, and I am selling the album at live shows around Seattle.

Acoustic Electronica

The Court at Versailles

What would happen if a jazz trio reimagined the seminal works of electronic dance music? That's the premise of Acoustic Electronica, and The Court at Versailles pull it off without a hint of novelty-act energy. Tracks like Rez / Cowgirl and Strobe, Part 1 & 2 treat the source material as real compositional territory, not a parlor trick.

Tracklist

Bad Honey, Güero Brown & OK Tiger

Belltown Yacht Club · Seattle, WA

Three of Seattle's own share a stage at one of the city's best basement venues. Blues-drenched hard rock, alt-rock influenced by Bowie and Tom Petty, and cinematic indie folk-pop, all under one roof for a Saturday night worth showing up for.

Kristin Chambers — Seattle, WA

Kristin Chambers is one of the few piano-based singer-songwriters anchoring the Seattle scene, and her resume is hard to argue with. Classically trained, Broadway-adjacent, and prolific beyond most — she has over 200 songwriting credits and has released four full-length albums plus two EPs, most recently a curated compilation called Select Songs Vol. 1. Her song "Everything Woman" appeared on Better Call Saul in 2022; other placements have landed on CBS, Netflix, Lifetime, Hallmark, and The Young and the Restless.

Chambers performs with a warmth and directness that carries across genres. Jazz, pop, folk, adult contemporary — she moves between them naturally, always led by melody and an instinct for the emotional core of a lyric. Her ability to write with honesty and accessibility, and to deliver those songs live with genuine conviction, makes her exactly the kind of artist Gigs4U exists to connect with audiences.

Byland, Zander Hawley & Abby Gundersen

The Rabbit Box Theatre · Seattle, WA

Byland is the project of Seattle-based singer-songwriter Alie Renee, whose cinematic indie-rock sound has earned recognition from KEXP, American Songwriter, and Under The Radar. Her latest record Heavy For A While was produced by Nathan Yaccino and mixed by Brandon Bell, the team behind records from Brandi Carlile and Norah Jones. Joining her is LA-based songwriter Zander Hawley, whose touring credits include The Naked and Famous and Noah Gundersen, with music placed on Netflix and Fox. Abby Gundersen, a contributor to Byland's record, rounds out an intimate evening at one of Seattle's most personal performance spaces.

Sarah Brunner — Seattle, WA

Sarah Brunner is a full-time Americana singer-songwriter who came up busking through European hostels, playing 1,000-plus live shows, and eventually landing in Seattle where she has made herself a fixture of the Pacific Northwest music community. Her debut single "Caravan" led to the formation of touring duo The Hipocrats alongside Tyler McGinnis, whose album Friend Ship Joyride — produced by Grammy Award-winner Chance McCoy — surpassed 60,000 Spotify streams and earned comparisons to the Civil Wars and Simon & Garfunkel. Her sound blends Brandi Carlile's emotive intensity with The Lumineers' warm acoustic drive.

Brunner's live sets are centered on rhythm guitar and voice, and she has an instinct for setting the right mood in any room — from intimate songwriter rounds to festival stages. Her 90-show national Road to Joy Tour in 2022 included Nashville's Saxon Pub and an opening slot for Grammy-nominated Will Hoge at Tractor Tavern in Seattle. With a solo EP on the way in 2026, she brings exactly the kind of committed, road-tested presence that Gigs4U is built to spotlight.

Orville Johnson — Seattle, WA

Orville Johnson grew up in a small Illinois farming town not far from the Mississippi River and has spent decades becoming one of the most versatile and in-demand roots musicians in the Pacific Northwest. A master of dobro, lap steel, guitar, mandolin, and banjo, he has appeared on well over 500 recordings — CDs, film soundtracks, commercials, and game audio — and produced more than 30 albums for other artists. His credentials include the Prairie Home Companion radio show, Jay Leno's Tonight Show, and film credits on Georgia and Georgia Rule.

As a live performer, Johnson brings a deep, easy authority to every stage he touches. His roots run through blues, bluegrass, rockabilly, New Orleans jazz, and American folk, and he moves between all of them as naturally as breathing. Whether fronting his own band or sitting in as a sideman, his playing is expressive, unhurried, and completely self-assured — the kind of musicianship that makes every room feel like the right room. That depth of craft and genuine presence is exactly what Gigs4U is looking for.

Scott Concinnity — Seattle, WA

Scott Concinnity is the frontman and driving force behind Letters From Traffic, a seven-piece Seattle rock and soul outfit he has been building since 2006. The band layers trumpet, trombone, saxophone, vocal harmonies, guitars, bass, and drums into what they call New Vintage Soul — a sound that draws on Van Morrison, Al Green, and Blood Sweat & Tears while staying firmly rooted in original songwriting. Their 2013 full-length Icarus Iterations earned a NW Music Experience Awards nomination for Blues Song of the Year and drew performances at venues including the Showbox, Triple Door, the Crocodile, and the King Cat Theatre.

As a performer, Concinnity brings a philosophical intensity to the stage that sets Letters From Traffic apart from your average horn band. The mission, as he has described it, is to awaken people to the radical opportunity of being alive — and the band delivers on that every night through kick-ass grooves, life-shaking lyrics, and the kind of full-room energy that only a seven-piece can generate. That commitment to meaning and movement is exactly what Gigs4U is built around.

Lyle Ronglien — Mill Creek, WA

Lyle Ronglien has been playing guitar since age 10 and, by any measure, has never slowed down. Based in the Pacific Northwest, he moves fluidly between classical, bluegrass, rock, and country — both as a solo performer and as the frontman of several working groups, including the three-piece country rock outfit Highway 9, a Cars tribute band, a One-Hit Wonders tribute project, and a 17-piece swing band tribute to the Brian Setzer Orchestra where he steps into the role of Setzer himself. He also records as one half of Americana duo Hangtown Marshals.

Ronglien's live shows are high-energy and crowd-focused, shaped by decades of performing for audiences who want to have a good time. His latest original album, How Many Miles, released in fall 2024 and gives his solo sets a fresh core to build from. Whether playing an intimate venue or a full tribute production, he brings the same enthusiasm and commitment to the room — which is exactly the spirit Gigs4U is built on.

Judd Wasserman — Seattle, WA

Judd Wasserman writes songs that sit quietly in the tradition of Nick Drake, Elliott Smith, Jim Croce, and Cat Stevens — intimate, well-crafted, and built to last. What sets him apart from a traditional solo acoustic act is his use of live looping: he layers tracks in real time to build a richer, more layered sonic landscape than most one-person shows can deliver. The result is something that feels like a full band even when it's just Judd on stage. He has self-released several albums and studied composition and performance at Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle.

Wasserman performs regularly across the Pacific Northwest and has opened for international acts at venues including Seattle's Neptune Theater and Portland's Aladdin Theater. His sets have a lived-in quality — the kind of show where you settle in quickly and don't want it to end. That combination of careful songwriting and genuinely engaging live performance makes him a natural fit for the Gigs4U community.

From fried chicken and greens to peach cobbler and sweet potato pie, this is food as family history. Whether you're in it for the recipes, the stories, or both, this one's worth pulling up a chair for. Grab a copy on Amazon and show some love to one of our own.