Biography

Asheville-based Americana music storytellers Amanda Anne Platt & The Honeycutters are releasing Christmas On A Greyhound Bus, an EP for the 2019 holidays.

Known for critically acclaimed songwriting that is at once incisive, insightful and witty, Platt includes 5 selections — originals and covers alike — that are pleasantly outside the norm for a holiday release, packaged in a quintessentially New Traditional Country Music style.

Original songs from Platt include the old school country title track and a nostalgic “One for the Ages.” Both are filled with the interwoven imagery that has brought Platt national praise, married to arrangements that amplify the lyrics’ emotional effects. On a lighter note, Platt and her band dish up a playful “Santa Looked A Lot Like Daddy,” borrowed from country legend Buck Owens.

The EP is bookended with a powerful choice of cover songs. Opening with a cover of Willie Nelson’s forlorn “Pretty Paper,” about a forgotten soul on Christmas, it concludes with the optimism of Nick Lowe’s classic, “(What’s So Funny About) Peace, Love and Understanding” — the pair underlining, between the very sad and the very hopeful, Amanda Anne Platt & The Honeycutters’ dramatic musical range.

Backed by her touring band that includes Matt Smith on guitar and pedal steel, Rick Cooper on bass, acoustic guitar and vocals, and Evan Martin on drums, piano, organ and vocals, Platt and The Honeycutters bring a Roots Country sound to the season.

Pre-order Christmas On A Greyhound Bus HERE.

About Amanda Anne Platt and the Honeycutters
Lyrically driven, the songs of Amanda Anne Platt & The Honeycutters blend the band’s old-school country roots attitude with their shared influences of rock and folk. Based in Asheville, North Carolina, Amanda Anne Platt is a storyteller by nature with an incredible band backing her. Performing along with Platt, The Honeycutters are Matt Smith on pedal steel and guitar; Rick Cooper on bass, guitar and vocals; and Evan Martin on drums, piano, organ and harmony vocals.

There is an empathetic and charming wit ingrained in Platt’s songwriting. She has a knack for accessing a deep well of emotion and applying it to her story-telling, whether she is writing from her own experiences or immersing herself into the melody of emotions in another person's life.

Music City Roots’ Craig Havighurst writes, “She’s soothing (even in the hurtin’ songs) and sobering (except for the drinkin’ songs) and nuanced… I’d be hard pressed to find a finer string of recordings from any band working in the classic country/mountain tradition in these last five years.”

A homegrown entity, the band is critically acclaimed locally, regionally, nationally, as well as overseas. Their prior album Amanda Anne Platt & The Honeycutters [Organic Records 2017] placed #2 (sandwiched between Jason Isbell and Gregg Allman) in their regional radio station WNCW’s year end listeners poll for 2017. The station’s Music Director Martin Anderson said to No Depression, “Amanda Platt writes songs on par with Lucinda, Isbell, Lauderdale, Hank Sr. In my opinion, anyway."

“This is a band that does everything right,” says Goldmine’s Mike Greenblatt. “Platt deserves all that might come to her over this, her fifth (and best) album. Backed by pedal steel, electric guitar, keyboards, bass, drums, percussion, and vocal harmony, it’s Platt’s show as she writes, sings and co-produces. Complete with lyrics of introspection with the kind of words you can chew on long after the album ends, it also works on a lighter level by dint of the fact that it just sounds so damn good. Go as deep as you want. It’s all good, as they say.”

Amanda Anne Platt & The Honeycutters received a shout out from Fodor’s Travel Magazine in a write-up about the band’s hometown of Asheville, NC, and a couple of years back they were also featured on XPN World Cafe’s Sense of Place series. In 2017, their music also placed into the Americana Music Association Year End Top 100 list of Americana Airplay for the second year in a row.