Joseph Alton Miller

With a focus on American roots/folk music, singer-songwriter, Joseph Alton Miller, strives to bridge the gap separating the many genres that make up the American sound. He has been recording and touring for almost two decades as a solo artist, sharing stages with acts such as Brandi Carlile, Living Color, Railroad Earth, and Richard Shindell (Cry, Cry, Cry). Within that time period, Joseph has also toured and recorded as a member of hip-hop bands opening for acts like Bone Thugs N Harmony and Robert Randolph & The Family Band. In 2017, after releasing his critically acclaimed album “Songs of Travel for the Vagabond”, Joseph was nominated for the No Depression Magazine Singer/Songwriter Award. Joseph released a new book of poetry called “The Souls of These Boots” in January of 2020 and is currently working on new music for release in 2023!

Emily Grove

Emily Grove has had a varied and exciting musical journey, from high school choirs and coffeehouses to Berklee College of Music, to television appearances to tours in the UK and Europe. Being willing to jump into new adventures resulted in a two month tour of the UK, US, and Canada, opening up for and performing with British artist David Ford. She also had her own headlining tour in Germany, Bulgaria, and England. She sang backup for David Gray on the Today Show, and for Social Distortion at the Stone Post Summer Stage. She recently put on a sold out Joni Mitchell show, featuring some of Asbury Park’s most talented musicians. She’s performed regularly with Glen Burtnik in his many large productions, including “The Summer of Love” and his British Invasion, Beatles, and Last Waltz shows. She’s opened for a host of national artists, including Brett Michaels at the State Theater of NJ. She’s recorded with David Ford, Glen Burtnik ,UK artist Jack Henderson and Steve Forbert among many others. As a solo act, she’s won awards for “Best Female Acoustic Act” at the 2011, 2012, 2013, and 2014 Asbury Music Awards, and won three Jersey Acoustic Music Awards (best female singer [2011 and 2012]/female songwriter [2011]). She has recorded an EP, “Way Across the Sea” Produced by Jack Daley, and a full CD, “Life of A Commoner,” produced by Seventh Wave Studio, and is working on a new EP. She’s also painted herself gold for Tara Elliot’s performance of “Goldfinger”, danced next to Natalie Portman in a Bar Mitzvah scene on Saturday Night Live, and threw a girl out of a car for Darren Aronofsky’s Montana Meth commercial. Every day brings a new, unusual experience.

Hope Dunbar

Not much has changed at Hope Dunbar’s house out on the Nebraska plain. If you look out her window, you see the same thing you saw three years ago: the same infinite prairie and tantalizing horizon. Her husband still pastors at a nearby church; their teenage sons still live at home. But all of that is just one dimension in this singular artist’s world. Another one lives in her imagination, where through song she transforms the mundane into the magical. We witnessed this alchemy four years ago, when Dunbar released Three Black Crows. She conceived its music during the hours when her husband and kids were at work and school, without any nearby singer/songwriter rounds or club dates or supportive community. When released in 2017, Three Black Crows inspired positive comparisons to Springsteen’s Nebraska. One critic cited her references to “dusty roads, endless fields and massive starry skies,” to which she adds layers of meaning through her “visceral authenticity and raw honesty.” American Roots host Craig Havighurst extolled her “incredible language and truth-telling.” Dunbar’s emergence led to what she remembers now as “a frenzy of activity.” Her homebound days gave way to touring, interviews, radio appearances. Yet as this door opened, another one closed, much to her alarm. “I didn’t skyrocket to fame,” she says. “But I did rocket right into hitting a wall. Things got so overwhelming because the hustle became more important than the artistry. By the summer of 2018 I was thinking, ‘I’m not in love with music the way I was prior to my last record.’ I wasn’t expecting that and it was a little jarring.” Something had to change. So once the hoopla passed and she was able to come back home, Dunbar began looking hard at where she was and what had to be done. With help from a life coach, she found the right questions to ask and then looked for answers. “I wound up on a new path of taking ownership of my musical journey,” she says. “I’d been saying yes to every voice giving me advice on what I should do. So I learned not to listen to those voices. Now I’m not going to do anything anybody tells me to do …unless I know I really want to.” With this she kindled the dormant spark that had inspired her to write in the first place. With her sister-in-law Emily, Dunbar launched a weekly podcast they called “Prompt Queens.” Each week they would agree on a new “prompt” — a person, a band, a movie, even just a word. Then each would spend the week writing her own song based on that prompt, which they would premiere and discuss on the next episode. “We were trying to model for our listeners … and for ourselves … that you can always write a song,” Dunbar explains. “The well is never dry. You don’t need an a-ha moment to write something meaningful. You can mine an idea that’s outside of your inspiration zone, even if it doesn’t speak to you at the get-go, and still bring truth and integrity to what you write.”

Cranston Dean

Cranston Dean is a New Jersey native with an ancient New England soul. His music draws from Americana, folk, jazz, country, blues and pop to translate and transform the human condition into beautiful works of art. The singer / songwriter has been a featured artist in clubs throughout the Jersey Shore (and especially Asbury Park); including The Saint, The Wonder Bar, The Stone Pony, Langosta Lounge, Asbury Park Yacht Club, Danny Clinch Studio, Brighton Bar, The Chubby Pickle and others. He has shared stages with River City Extension, Simone Felice, David Ford, Rayland Baxter, Atlas Road Crew, Nicole Atkins, Nora Jane Struthers, Julie Rhodes, and more! Cranston's solo tours have taken him throughout the Mid-Atlantic to Nashville and north through New England to the coast of Maine. In the summer of 2017, with the release of his fourth studio album, High Beams, he toured the West Coast including dates in Chicago, Minnesota, Washington, Oregon, California, and Colorado. The album was named one of New Jersey music's 17 best albums of 2017 by New Jersey Advance Media (NJ.com) Educated at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia as a jazz pianist, Cranston is the 2017 & 2016 Asbury Park Music Award winner as Top Male Acoustic Act, and the winner of the 2015 Asbury Park Music Award as Top Multi-Instrumentalist.