Alison plays a mix of honky tonk and old-time country on the guitar. Her influences range from The Louvin Brothers and Kitty Wells to Roger Miller and Bessie Smith. She has a strong stage presence and and her lyrics might make you cry, but you’ll definitely also be laughing.

Alison was born and raised in Petersburg, VA in a working-class family that was void of musical talent. Alison is an only child and isn’t aware of any musicians in her family, (she thinks her grandpa looked at a guitar once) but swears that she has been singing since she learned to talk. 

Sometime in 2006 Alison decided to buy a ukulele, by the next year she was playing small DIY gigs around Richmond VA and also spending a good amount of time busking on the street for tips.

Alison spent about 10 years based out of Richmond, Virginia where she was described as Richmond’s chanteuse “with a huge voice unlike any other female singer in Richmond” and until the end of her time living in the region (2015), became well-known not only for performing but also regularly booking other acts/events in town. If a country or old timey band was touring through, people said “Talk to Alison Self!” 

Alison traveled west in a ’96 Oldsmobile with no working windows for most of 2015, with a stint in Southwest VA then Nashville TN, until her car broke down outside of Denver. She played some shows and worked for a few months, decided it was time to go and drunkenly bought a $20 plane ticket to Austin TX. Figuring she had nothing to lose she sold her car for $200 and got rid of mostly everything she had carried with her and made the move. She didn’t even take her guitar. Austin was home for Alison for two years until she decided to uproot once again and make the move to Portland OR back in October 2018. She was experiencing some serious health issues and wasn’t able to get seen by a doctor while living in Austin. Things just seemed to fall into place so she moved her stuff into storage and headed West.

Unfortunately, Alison was diagnosed with colon cancer in the winter of 2018, went through surgery and chemotherapy and finished all that in June 2019. Alison has been cancer free since then!

Traveling and restlessness have been strong themes in Alison’s songs which are influenced strongly by her 20s spent hitch hiking and train hopping. Simply put, Alison writes from lived experiences. There are no airs to be put on with this one. Thematically her songs run along the same lines of most honky tonk singers, past and present: working class upbringing, death, trains, bad decisions and too much booze. 

Mac Cornish is an Americana musician currently based in Portland, Oregon. She grew up at the foot of the Santa Cruz mountains in California, spending her childhood daydreaming beneath redwood trees, listening to her parents favorite music of the 60s and 70s, and riding horses.

Her childhood fostered a love for all things old, specifically old folks ballads and old clothing, but also the music and aesthetics of 1960s Laurel Canyon. Buffalo Springfield, Gram Parsons, Jackson Browne, and Joni Mitchell all serve as major inspirations for her. Her daydreaming has been channeled into her songwriting where she tells the stories of her life and her family's. From longing for her coastal range home to ballads recounting her grandmother's traumas, Mac's writing is distinctly her own. ​

She now lives in Portland, OR, similarly surrounded by evergreens, where her and her backing band can found playing to her growing fanbase at local bars and venues.