Mason Colby and Rebecca Rego

Mason Colby was born and raised in the musically rich Gulf Coast, splitting time between Lafayette, Louisiana and Houston, Texas. But it was in Kentucky that he picked up a banjo and started making music in earnest. A founding member of traditional stringband The Jarflies, Mason has been part of the old-time music scene in Kentucky for over a decade and is now writing songs that blend his love of Acadiana, the Bluegrass, and Texas songwriters like Guy Clark, Jolie Holland, Lyle Lovett, and banjo hero Danny Barnes.

For his first two EPs of original work, he collaborated with Lexington producer and multi-instrumentalist J. Tom Hnatow (Horse Feathers, These United States, Vandaveer), a natural fit in terms of sound and vision. Other important contributors include Don Rogers (Mason’s mentor as part of a Kentucky Arts Council Traditional Arts Apprenticeship grant), Robby Cosenza (Horse Feathers), Montana Hobbs (The Local Honeys), Zach Martin (Lylak), Abby Hamilton, Art Mize (KY Partisans, The Jarflies), and Cecilia Wright (Bear Medicine, Senora May).

Rebecca Rego has been a Midwest singer-songwriter, recording artist, and producer for over 15 years. She has written and recorded eight albums and toured the country many times over, solo and with her Chicago-based band The Trainmen.

In 2014, a mysterious package arrived on her doorstep. In it was Lucia Berlin’s short story collection, “A Manual For Cleaning Women.” The note simply said: “I think you’ll love this.” As Rego began picking through the dark, witty, romantic prose, the stories slowly began to seep into her consciousness and affect her songwriting. After a few years, she realized she had created a unique set of songs based on Berlin’s book.

In the fall of 2019, Rego traveled to Northern California, where a handful of Berlin’s stories take place, and recorded six of these songs at Panoramic Studio in Stinson Beach with engineer Beau Sorenson (Death Cab For Cutie, tUnE-yArDs,) backed by multi-instrumentalist J. Tom Hnatow (Horse Feathers, Ringo Starr,) and Alysia Kraft, Staci Foster, and Tobias Bank of Fort Collins, CO based band Whippoorwill. The resulting album “Songs For Cleaning Women Pt. 1” will be released November 11, 2020. The release will be celebrated with a livestreaming performance during Grammy Award-winning music ensemble Eighth Blackbird’s “Chicago Artists Workshop” series.

As an independent female artist, Rego is influenced by the unflinching, raw honesty found in Berlin’s art. Many of Berlin’s stories are semi-autobiographical accounts of her time working blue-collar jobs, raising four children as a single mother, and dealing with her own alcoholism. Berlin died in 2004, never receiving critical acclaim in her own lifetime. Rego’s goal with this release is to pay homage to Berlin’s stories and introduce new audiences to her work.