There’s music you hear and there’s music you see, the best kind achieves both. ISMAY creates intimate folk/Americana songs that transport you straight to the land where they were  written - deeply rooted in the heart of Sonoma Mountain. Melding the experience of taming wild horses, escaping wildfires, and birthing lambs with warm guitars and delicately graceful vocals, it is an original soundscape that is a delight to the ears as well as the imagination.

Driven by singer/songwriter Avery Hellman, ISMAY released their debut full length album Songs Of Sonoma Mountain in 2020, to widespread acclaim. It was named one of the 10 best Albums in the Bay Area and garnered features in American Songwriter, No Depression, Sonoma Magazine, and more. Blending field recordings and intricate melodies with live, guitar-based inventive composition, it is a proper introduction to the old-world charm of ISMAY. 

In March of 2023, Ismay was featured as one of a select group of artists from around the world participating in the Apple TV+ Show My Kind of Country, produced by Kacey Musgraves and Reese Witherspoon.

Hellman’s musical talent is no surprise, growing up backstage at their grandfather’s Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival, where they were inspired early on by artists such as Emmylou Harris, Gillian Welch, and Hazel Dickens. Since then, ISMAY has appeared throughout the West Coast at music festivals such as Hardly Strictly Bluegrass, Strawberry Music Festival, The National Cowboy Poetry Gathering, The Lantern Tour, and at renowned venues such as the Great American Music Hall, Slim’s, the Golden State Theater, and the Mystic Theater. They have opened for acclaimed artists including Steve Earle, Watchhouse (fka Mandolin Orange), Justin Townes Earle, Robert Earl Keen, John Doe, and Chuck Prophet.


"Oddjob Ensemble is Kalei Yamanoha's strange and wonderful brainchild, a consortium of multi-instrumentalists and specialists, based in the San Francisco Bay Area. With powerful ancient melodies and sounds that twist the ear into a delicious musical pretzel, they touch upon many different cultural influences and find unusual but fascinating combinations of traditional styles, jazz, and progressive music. Largely instrumental, an evening with the Oddjob Ensemble is a showcase of stunning musicianship, exotic tonalities and of course shenanigans."


SW* is following