Bands & Events

Singer-Songwriter, John Gay’s, gritty contemplative sound ripened in prison while he served a nine year sentence for marijuana that started in 2011. During his initial confinement of over five years when he wasn’t on his bunk with his bible, John was in a storage closet at Fox Lake Correctional Institution with his guitar writing music, singing and praying.

After his release from initial confinement in 2017 John started performing his solo acoustic set at various venues around southeastern Wisconsin playing original music he wrote in prison along with covers of his favorite artists such as Jason Isbell, The Lumineers, Chris Stapleton and Zach Williams.
John released his first two singles in 2019, Death Row and Concrete Floor. Grappling with loss and redemption these songs typify much of the music he wrote in that time period. John is raising money to record an album.

With a career spanning back to the 1970's, Billy Don Burns has penned songs and produced albums for timeless country artists like Willie Nelson, Connie Smith, Johnny Paycheck, Merle Haggard, and, more recently, Cody Jinks and Colter Wall. As reported in Outlaw Magazine, “He wears his battle scars with honor, depicting the stories of his life in his songs with brutal and beautiful honesty...Billy Don Burns started out in this business working with legends, and somewhere along the way he became one himself”.
Since 2011, Liar's Trial has blazed a trail across the Midwest, playing its own version of roots-driven country music. The band has had the opportunity to share the stage with some of the most prominent names in country music: David Allan Coe, Billy Joe Shaver, Ben and Noel Haggard, Billy Don Burns, Doug Stone, Elizabeth Cook, The Steel Woods, Split Lip Rayfield and The Waco Brothers, to name a few. Liar’s Trial’s latest full length release, 2019’s “Friends in No Places," is a showcase of the group’s deep appreciation for outlaw country. Billy Don Burns himself has given his blessing to the group’s cover of his own “Diablo’s Highway,” a tune that manages to be both harrowing and captivating. As one fan said of the hardworking and heartfelt band after a show, “Y’all are going to save country music.”