Devon Gilfillian (2023)

One Liner:  Soulful dude with good guitar-based grooves

Wikipedia Genre: Soul, gospel blues

Home: Nashville

Poster Position: 3 (16) 
Both Weekends.
Weekend One - Friday; Weekend Two - Saturday.

Thoughts:  I mean, you look at that artist name and the dude sounds like he's going to be an Irish bloke singing about his time on the potato farm.  Instead, this is a super bad ass black dude from Nashville making lovely soul music.  I really like this a lot.  If you listen to the Austin radio, you've already heard a few of these tunes, even if (like me) you had no clue who sang them.

He was also here in 2017, although I don't recall him at all.  Which is too bad because this is fine stuff.

He's originally from Pennsylvania, and started playing guitar as a teenager.  His dad was a singer and percussionist in a local band as well, so he came by his action as part of a family thing.  After graduating from college, he moved to Nashville to give the music thing a go, joining a local blues cover band.  Three albums - 2020's Black Hole Rainbow, 2020's What's Going On (strangely, this is actually a song-for-song remake of Marvin Gaye's classic, which is really weird), and then 2023's Love You Anyway.  Almost all of his top tunes are from that debut album, it had a few that hit the charts and the radio.  Like, "Here and Now" I definitely recognize.  In the vein of new throwback troubadour guys like Leon Bridges, this is truly fine sounding blues guitar soul that makes me want to just wrap myself up in it and take a long nap.  Got some Al Green stuff going on here, with the most popular song sounding like some "Love and Happiness" loving smooth soul.  That track, "Here and Now," has 3.5 million streams.

Mmmmm.  Come back baby.  That feels good, right there, man.  His top overall streamer is from that disc, this is "Troublemaker" with 9.8 million streams.

Got that swampy blues guitar and vocals to start, before it kicks in with the chorus.  Sounds kind of like an old Arc Angels tune to my ears, or something they'd use to soundtrack a Justified episode.  That show freaking ruled.  I want to watch it all over again.  Really good song though, I dig the vibe.

And for an even better vibe - peep his newest single from the new album - this song is ALL VIBE.  "All I Really Wanna Do."  Only 976k streams right now, but this should be the JAM.

Come ON!  I wanna sink down into that groove like it's a warm bubble bath made of creamy hot cocoa and marshmallow fluff.  Just smoooooooooooth.  I have just let this guy play for two straight days and I'm all about it.  Really good stuff.  Yeah buddy.  That is the real deal right there.  Not so sure about how he's going to sound on a huge stage in a festival setting, but I'd bet he figures it out.  Oh, look, here he is at SXSW playing on stage and it looks like he knows how to make it happen.

Love it.  Weird how much this is connecting with me, but I'm in on this guy for sure.