MOTHER LEGACY is a personal expansion of my life as MOTHER Ray Collins (Founding Member - Mothers of Invention) niece/protege. I need to carry on your legacy Uncle Ray, your words and teachings were not unheard or wasted.

Riverbend 2018
Franklin County Fair 2018 with Layla spring of American Idol
over 370+ shows since June 2017
Multiple appearances on channel 12 Chattanooga
30+ fundraisers & benefits
With extensive professional experience in every aspect of entertainment, TV, studio, to main stages big and small. Public to private events.
Recently called the Sonny & Cher of modern day.
BIO
A guy, a girl and a guitar with a show unlike any other acoustic act.
Don’t let the 2pc fool you, SOFT, HARD, WILD, PRETTY…..a wide variety for everyone. Vocals unlike any you've heard. Which will knock you off your seat, harmony to make goose bumps crawl and bring tears to your eyes. Such full sound rhythm, rocking guitar playing & finger picking to have you scratching your head. Nobody can fathom how they can create so much energy and sound with a tiny simple package.
MOTHER WHO, YOU ASK?
Shay Collins IS Mother Legacy. Many don’t know that Shay came into this world through music, as her mother, Sue was a popular club singer in Taipei, Taiwan.
Shay, together with her flashy velvet vocals crooning cowboy husband Steve, have created quite an inspiring, exciting, rocking performance lighting up stages everywhere. Loveable, real, raw and honest, they are able to conquer:
big shows, private shows, loud shows, quiet shows, dance shows, dinner shows, they are diverse enough to cover all of them with a sound so unique and powerful.
Ask Shay how this all started and she will humbly tell you, she never thought she was good enough. Losing both her biological and stepfather to cancer in one year, their last words were for her to sing. Singing Journey’s “Faithfully” as their wedding vows was the first time any of the family had heard their musical magic.
Best man, best friend, brother and veteran musician, Robert Stone, decided this was going to happen and he presented Steven with a guitar.
Honoring her fathers’ wishes, they stepped out to do a few free shows for friends. Opening for Chattanooga’s top bands, The Band Antle, Aunt Betty and well known gospel/country singer/songwriter Tyson Leamon, this led to an unbelievable and overwhelming amount of bookings; and they haven’t stopped coming since.
Bringing them to today, neither dreamed of anyone wanting them to produce original music, let alone a CD but by popular demand and pressure they set out to create just that. They knew it needed to be done quickly and professionally. Beloved and admired booking manager, Rick Davis (Holly Oak Management Services) saw something in these two and decided it needed to happen now.

"In the House" at the Grinder House is broadcast live on WFMC Jams every Friday from 6-8pm central.

At the start of his third album, RISE, in the song “Carry Me,” Roger Street Friedman confesses that, “You know a man just can’t change his stripes/I will ride this road the rest of my life...Mixing notes and words with piles of dust, One part obsession, one part sacred trust.”

Translation: The man is a songwriter, singer and musician. It’s in his DNA, his blood, the very fiber of his being. Friedman knows, because he’s stepped away from it for a time -- and returned, even more passionate and committed than ever. And as he brings RISE, produced by fellow artist, Grammy winning producer, and longtime Levon Helm collaborator Larry Campbell, to the world, Friedman declares his status with pride and without apology.

“That song is really about how this is who I am -- I’m a writer and a singer and a performer, and this is my calling,” Friedman acknowledges. “But, you know, coming back to this later in life, I have a family and a wife and responsibilities, so it’s a balancing act. I’m leaving home to tour, leaving home to write. Trying to balance that with staying connected to the home-front is tricky. But I know who I am, and music is something I have to do.”

Friedman has, as he sings later in RISE, “learned that lesson well” -- and how to do it better than ever. RISE’s 12 songs, many co-written with an assembly of collaborators, are fully realized and cast so vividly we feel genuinely inside their characters -- whether it’s the Vietnam veteran “takin’ fire from Uncle Sam” upon his return, or the housewife questioning her life in “Over and Over.” There’s an honesty, immediacy and urgency to Friedman’s singing throughout the album, while the song arrangements are fat-free blends of Americana genre-splicing, from the twang of “Last Train to Babylon” to the rocking punch of “Outcasts of Love,” the Celtic anthemics of the title track and the Jimmy Buffett ebullience of “Tough Crowd.”

“I think I took a lot more risks with the songs on this album,” Friedman says. “Not everything has a happy ending. Some of them make me almost uncomfortable to sing because of that. My voice is also way more out front than it’s been on the other records, which feels pretty vulnerable to me. I’m just trying to go deeper, really trying to get to the heart of the matter.”

It helps, of course, that music is indeed the heart of Friedman’s matter. The New York native was bitten by the music bug early, learning to write songs and even developing his studio engineering skills. It was an avocation, however, as he worked his uncle’s retail display business for about 25 years. But a combination of events during the mid-’00s -- the deaths of his father and mother, marriage and, later, the births of his two children -- steered Friedman back to music, leading to the acclaimed 2014 debut THE WAITING SKY and 2017’s SHOOT THE MOON. “Those life events really kind of opened the floodgates for me to start writing again,” he notes.

"In the House" at the Grinder House is broadcast live on WFMC Jams every Friday from 6-8pm central.