Music
Prepare to Be Blown Away: These 23 MTS Management Group Artists Rocked the International Singer Songwriter Association Awards!
The International Singer Songwriters Association has recently announced the finalists for its upcoming awards ceremony. We are delighted to share that 23 MTS Management Group artists have been included in this esteemed list. Notable among the finalists are Gary Pratt from Pittsburgh with six nominations, Pamela Hopkins from Little Rock with five, John Blangero from Texas with two, Ludlow Creek from Dayton Ohio with two, Jen Ash from Los Angeles with one, and two Ontario-based artists, Tia McGraff and Cory M. Coons, with two nominations each. The awards ceremony is scheduled to take place in Atlanta, GA on August 5th.
For a comprehensive list of all the finalists, we invite you to visit https://issasongwriters.com/2023-finalists/.
The International Singer Songwriters Association was established by Tamanie Dove, a Nashville-born and raised singer-songwriter who now resides in Atlanta. The organization is dedicated to promoting and supporting independent artists, as well as recognizing and fostering aspiring and professional singers and songwriters across all music genres worldwide.
“We are thrilled to have so many of our talented artists named as finalists in the ISSA Awards,” said Michael Stover, President of MTS Management Group. “These awards recognize excellence in music on an international level, and we are honored to be a part of it. We wish all of our artists the best of luck at the awards ceremony.”
MTS Management Group is a full-service artist management company based in Pittsburgh, PA, representing artists in the genres of country, Americana, rock, and pop. The company has worked with a variety of artists, including Grammy Winners, Juno Winners and Billboard charting hitmakers.
For more information about MTS Management Group and their roster of artists, please visit their website at www.mtsmanagementgroup.com.
Artist Spotlight
“Subterranean Homesick Blues” finds a new direction through Ghost of Panama
Rearranging a song that carries six decades of cultural weight is a creative challenge, but Ghost of Panama approaches “Subterranean Homesick Blues” with clear purpose. The rock band radically reworks Bob Dylan’s counter-culture hit, reshaping its identity while keeping its rebellious spirit. It’s a tribute to musical heritage and a statement of artistic independence all in one.
This new interpretation is very much shaped by the production, made at Ghost of Panama’s home studio in West London. The setting allows an intimate approach to reinterpreting a familiar song and lets the group engage directly with the material, taking it in a new artistic direction.
“Subterranean Homesick Blues” centers on the tension between conservation and transformation. Ghost of Panama is true to the song’s rebellious spirit without adding to its legacy, and this approach gives the release an adventurous feel, grounded in countercultural energy but driven by a desire to see what the composition can become in a different musical context.
Their version of this 60-year-old classic shows that respecting a song’s history can also mean breaking the rules and finding new ways to express its spirit. Fundamentally, “Subterranean Homesick Blues” presents Ghost of Panama as artists who want to engage with the past without being tied to it. The release’s strongest identity is a familiar heritage reimagined through a singularly forward-looking creative vision.
Artist Spotlight
“NO MORE” by Amanda Holley connects healing, awakening, and survival
“NO MORE“ carries that kind of emotional weight, and some songs feel like they come from lived experience but reach for something bigger. Amanda Holley blends R&B and soul, turning a lifetime of survival into a vision of healing, awakening, and the determination to move beyond what caused the pain.
“NO MORE“ is a healing anthem for people who have gone through bad experiences and reached a place of higher awareness, but it’s also an emotionally charged protest. The duality is introspective and outward-looking at the same time, turning personal survival into a broader declaration that some experiences, conditions, or cycles should end.
Holley had a premonition of the song six months before the world went into global shutdown. In the vocal booth, working out melodies with her collaborators, she pictured people in the streets. Those images were hard to imagine at the time, but subsequent events would make them painfully familiar.
“NO MORE“ is given a particularly contemplative underpinning by the context. The identity of R&B and soul leaves room for emotion. The song’s themes link survival, awakening, resistance, and the need for change. Amanda Holley is an artist using music to process personal endurance and a broader sense of social awakening. It’s got a complicated significance, and its release feels like a glimpse of a moment when personal intuition and public reality collided in an unexpected way.
Photo Credit: Yulia Shusharina
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