Joan Shelley
The New York Times’ Jon Pareles, in his best songs of 2017, describes Joan Shelley’s “If the Storms Never Came” as “intertwined acoustic and electric guitars, harking back to Pentangle, [that] carry a serene modal melody and thoughts about how disruption is essential.” The description aptly captures Shelley’s work and her evocative songwriting as one the strongest voices to emerge from an Appalachian roots folk community that is as deep today as it ever was.