California-born, and now Idaho-based songwriter, Bill Coffey and acclaimed fretless guitarist, Ned Evett, collaborated recently on a full-length CD of Coffey’s material. Hoping to capture the energy of their live shows without compromising recording quality, they did the whole thing live in front of a studio audience made up of friends, family and fellow musicians at The Tonic Room Studios in Boise, Idaho. This disc is totally live. No overdubs. No digital trickery.Bill Coffey has been compared to John Prine, Gram Parsons, Townes Van Zandt, and Bruce Springsteen. He’s a low-fi, high-energy, roots-rock and retro-country singer, songwriter, and guitar player whose twangy, sometimes-twisted songs swerve from upbeat, jangly country pop to the darker, lonesomer side of Americana and tell the stories of the real West. Coffey’s vocals are direct and set against instrumentation firmly rooted in the traditions of American music – folk, country, bluegrass, rock, and everything in between.Coffey has been singing and writing songs for two decades. Both as a solo artist and in various groups, he has played tour dates throughout the West and opened shows for such artists as John Hiatt, George Jones, Dwight Yoakum, Hal Ketchum, John Hammond, Peter Case, Glen Phillips and many others.Over the years, Coffey has fronted a variety of different musical groups. With each new band he assembles, Coffey puts a new twist on his own artistic vision while staying true to his deeply rooted influences, which cut across the full spectrum of American music styles. From the psychedelic roots-rock of the Ventura, CA-based Mudheads (1986-1992) to the more acoustic, folk- rock sound of The Third Man (1994-2000), Coffey has covered a lot of musical territory. In 2001, along with other Boise music scene luminaries, he put together an eight-piece country-soul band called The Boxer Rebellion featuring Hammond organ and a horn section. Coffey followed that project up by forming a straight-up, and more stripped-down, roots-country outfit called Seven Devils.Most recently, Coffey and Evett have been performing as an acoustic/electric duo. And, never one to be pigeonholed stylistically, Bill is also the frontman and principal songwriter for a power pop quartet called Soft Gong, which also features Evett, along with bassist John Warfel and drummer Tim Willis.