Chris Cotta is a bit of a Renaissance Cowboy; growing up on the family farm in Galt, California (kind of between Sacramento and Stockton and best known for its Winter Bird Festival); Chris rode horses, chased after chickens, ran machinery, played guitar, and sang and whistled in harmony with his family's sustainable stewardship of their land. It was a lot of hard work but the dividends of being close to the earth have paid off in his artistic endeavours as Chris prepares for the release of his first album on the BBAM! Gallery label.

"The wild west kind of way of life, well that's where I'm from," says Chris. "I still go back and work on the farm every harvest. You need to be connected to that energy."

Embracing a genre caught somewhere between Spaghetti Western, Americana, and folk, mixed in with some vintage campfire whistling and cowboy poetry/storytelling; Chris Cotta approaches it all with a positive disposition and engaging manner, not unlike his 1940s movie matinee cowboy heroes of old. "I'd love to ride a horse to the gigs, but that's not really practical in the city."

From opener "Say Good morning" to mood-setters "Dive Down Deeper" and "Honey" - to name a few - Chris Cotta sets the tone very clearly: This is the real deal. These are well- crafted songs; inseparable from your eardrums once they cozy up in there. It's an unassuming earnestness that is straight from the heart, and the listener knows that.

Chris Cotta has created an unconventional yet warmly familiar musical form that is at once all his own and yet so much a part of us as well.