3 Penny Acre ~ 3 Penny Acre ~ Contemporary Folk ~ CD Album ~ Used VG ~ 2009

About the Artist
3 Penny Acre is a musical collaboration between three up and coming songwriters: Bayard Blain, Bernice Hembree, and Bryan Hembree. Fans and critics have quickly identified their unique, Ozark-inspired sound as distinct, yet universally appealing. Listeners in all corners have begun to appreciate their attention to lyrics, harmony, and carefully crafted acoustic arrangements steeped in roots music traditions but with a focus on fresh, new songs.

Shortly after forming as a band, 3 Penny Acre won the 2008 Walnut Valley Festival (Winfield, Kansas) NewSongs competition. The exposure the win brought 3 Penny Acre helped to solidify their path as emerging artists. In the 18 months that followed, they toured extensively throughout the nation, were invited as an official showcase artist to the 2009 and 2010 International Folk Alliance Conference, and released a debut album that was selected as one of the Top 40 albums of 2009 by Norm Mast and Al Kniola of The Back Porch 88.1 WVPE (Indiana) and won "Album of the Year" at the Northwest Arkansas Music Awards.

Their sophomore effort "Highway 71" is an album of 10 songs documenting the people and places of middle America. 3 Penny Acre, whose name comes from the cost of the Louisiana Purchase, is a fitting name for a band whose members were all raised inside its borders. The album paints a portrait of their homeland two-hundred years on. The songs are beautiful and longing, yet at times anti-nostalgic, resisting the temptation to "gold wash" the tough history of the people and places they portray.