“Whoa - this is really good, sounds great” Jim Pugh (Robert Cray band) "Wow - beautiful vocal. Thoughtful lyrics. Really love your voice. Serious talent." - Suzanne Koga (india.arie, Roberta Flack ) 10 out of 10 Performance, 10 out of 10 for song (Strength to Stay) - Freddie Stone (co-founder, guitarist Sly and the Family Stone) "For all the noise over the last decade about how the Indie music scene and the web has now made music "a level playing field", it's still a very rare thing to find any new and great major label quality music coming from unknown Indie artists. MacClain & Cole are that exception. MacClain is a bruisingly powerful and gorgeous voiced singer who writes as if her life, and the listener's life, depended on it. The duo has that same type of simple beauty as The Black Keys: just two people making your jaw drop with songs, beats and singing. Step Into Now is the best new US Indie album release I've heard this year." George Daly CEO About Records Former Head of A&R, BMG/Zoo, Atlantic Records, Elektra Records -- MacClain & Cole spent most of 2011 and early 2012 writing and recording this new album, the Kickstarter funded, “Step Into Now.” The “big budget” eleven song set was recorded at the historic Hyde Street Studios in San Francisco and features a full band of pro studio musicians including Jim Pugh from Robert Cray’s band on B3 organ. BIO- MacClain & Cole originally formed “by accident” as Utah Girl in 1999 in Oakland, California. Then roommates singer/songwriter Amy MacClain and drummer Jason Cole sat in their living room drinking coffee, their Saturday morning ritual. The two roomies were also bandmates in a No Doubt style funk rock band called Sugar Boogie however, Jason had always wanted to learn the guitar in order to satisfy his songwriting urges. Jason was strumming (bashing!) the only two chords he knew on Amy’s old acoustic guitar when out of nowhere she began to sing, channeling full stream of conscious lyrics and melodies. Their first song, “Noble” was born that morning and within weeks they had written a half a dozen more. Amy and Jason soon added bass, drums, violin, and female backing vocals to their live show and quickly became a popular draw on the burgeoning San Francisco Bay Area acoustic scene (getting their name almost by default by playing The Hotel Utah club so often.) “Utah Girl”, their self-titled first album, was released in 2001. The six song EP contained a broken down set of poignant yet heart wrenching songs of pain, isolation, and yearning with MacClain channeled deeply personal lyrics from the darkness of her childhood past. After constant gigging and promotion, MacClain and Cole went their separate ways in 2003 only to reemerge in 2009 with the prolific duo writing their strongest material to date. New songs focusing on hope, growth, love, and the desire to get the world to slow down, take a deep breath, and get back to what was real- family, community, healing, and truth. This new uplifting direction was captured on their 2011 EP, the warmly received, “Back to Love”, released under the Utah Girl moniker and available for digital download here on CD Baby as well as iTunes, Amazon, Spotify, and elsewhere on the the web. Tired of being asked what part of Utah they were from, the duo officially re-christened themselves as MacClain & Cole in March of 2012.