BEST ORIGINAL MUSIC BAND

Brushville

Beating out Hipbone Sam by one vote, this popular country group based in Bloomington is not known for original music, but perhaps our readers heard about the band’s recent Kickstarter project to record in Nashville and just figured they’d be writing songs soon. They’ve been looking at songs from professional songwriters, attempting to make that transition from cover to original band. Hipbone deserves a mention at coming so close to a tie and is also known for doing a good bunch of covers in a night. His originals have been distributed on digital jukeboxes worldwide under the recent release The Best of Hipbone Sam. Both groups deserve credit for making the bold move from easy pleasing covers to original songs and still hanging on to a crowd. Josh Catalano & the Dirty Thoughts and NIL8, bands doing entirely original music from their inception, came in a near tie for third. Runner-up: Hipbone Sam