AMY ANNELLE (the places): bio
Amy Annelle
"A folksinger in the truest sense, Annelle and her high, lonesome, pretty voice seem to be from no particular time—more like many of them at once...few artists get closer to the ineffable essence of this land of ours in all its great and awful beauty"
~~Mike Wolf, Music Editor, TimeOut NY
If America seems sometimes to have lost its musical compass, then Amy Annelle's music is a steady beacon in the wilderness. A "brilliant desert troubadour with a dark and compelling vision" (Brian Baker, Amplifier Magazine), this unusual artist has been on the road since 1999, staying everywhere from a cabin on the High Plains to a flophouse on the Bowery, and performing everywhere from art galleries, rock clubs and festivals in the woods to New York City's esteemed Town Hall. Over the course of six acclaimed albums and hundreds of live shows (using 'The Places' moniker and her own name), she's created a feral and beautiful body of work, with one foot rooted in traditional folk and country idioms and the other blazing otherworldly trails through the subconscious. Her songs have been called "extraordinary scrap-yard Americana", "aswim in spirits", and "arresting and enthralling"; her voice "strong and lilting", "angelic" and "beguiling".
Earlier works with her loose-knit cohorts, the Places, framed Annelle's songwriting with small ensembles, and wandered wide-eyed through folk-rock, country and improvisational landscapes. But her last album, Songs For Creeps (High Plains Sigh), pushed Annelle's timeless voice and lucid storytelling to the forefront. Written and recorded all over America during a particularly restless spell on the road, Creeps came into focus with producer Brian Beattie (Smog, Okkervil River) in Austin, TX. Annelle's life on the road made formal publicity or distribution impossible, but the album nevertheless garnered high praise from both underground and mainstream music fans, airplay on free-form radio mainstays like WFMU and a Billboard Magazine Critic's Choice/Ten Best Albums of the year. Critics noted the mark of a serious talent coming into her own: possessed of rare complexity and power, drawing inspiration from this land, the one beyond, and the souls who inhabit them. Annelle's much-anticipated new album, written in a remote cabin on the High Plains and recorded in Austin with gifted producer Craig Ross (Patty Griffin, Shearwater), will be completed in early 2009.
~D. Walker, 2008
DISCOGRAPHY
2008 Amy Annelle, Some From the Stream Tour Comp (High Plains Sigh)
2006 The Places, Songs for Creeps (High Plains Sigh)
2005 The Places, Fawns With Fangs: Seclctions from the Dark Heart of the Thicket (High Plains Sigh)
2005 The Places, Appetizers & Leftovers/Austin, TX Compilation (I Eat Records)
2004 The Places, Call It Sleep (Hush)
2002 The Places, Pop Life Vol. 9 Compilation (Contact Records Japan)
2001 Amy Annelle, A School of Secret Dangers (Hush)
2000 The Places, The Autopilot Knows You Best (Absolutely Kosher)
1999 Amy Annelle, Which One's You? (Hush)
1997 Amy Annelle (as Underwater Salvage Partners), Fuel Compilation (Arena Rock)
FAMILY TREE
AMY ANNELLE writes the songs; she performs and records solo sometimes, & other times with loosely affiliated eccentric intuitives; who in the last year or so have included these bretheren;
CRAIG ROSS (Lisa Germano, Daniel Johnston),
RALPH E. WHITE (Bad Livers, Jandek), MICHAEL HURLEY, ANDY PIPER (Lone Bird, Reeks & the Wrecks), PAUL BRAINARD (The Sadies, Richmond Fontaine, Victoria WIlliams), JOSHUA HOUSH (Our Lady of the Highway), GEORGE D'ANUNZIO (Oogie), BRIAN BEATTIE (Glasseye, Daniel Johnston), JUDE WEBRE (Dimestore Dance Ensemble, Nina Nastasia)
...and blurring in the mists of time, but still ringing true:
STELLIN NEWSOME (Sweethearts of the Rodeo), JACK MARTIN (Dimestore Dance Ensemble, Kid Congo Powers, Knoxville Girls), SCOTT JARVIS (Mo Tucker, Jad Fair), RACHEL BLUMBERG (Norfolk & Western, The Decemberists, M. Ward), JASON SANDS (Reeks & The Wrecks), DYLAN REILLY (Juanita Family), JEEZ HORNER (Grails, Jackie-O Motherfucker), JOHNNY SCHIER (Last of the Juanitas), RYAN STOWE (Swords Project, Slower Than), JORDAN HUDSON (Operacycle, The Thermals), ZAK RILES (Harbor, Grails, M. Ward), MIKE SCHORR (Death Cab for Cutie), JOE HAEGE (31 Knots), ADAM KRINEY (Castanets)
PRECIOUS BLOOD - band bio
"Amy Annelle and Ralph White are true kindred spirits, musical nomads who seem to yearn for the same pastoral past"~~Austin Powell, Austin Chronicle
Austin, Texas' new duo Precious Blood is indeed "steeped in folk music's strange past" (Adam Schragin, Austinist). Singer-guitarist Annelle and multi-instrumentalist White met while on tour with their original music projects. They have an abiding love for the far-flung corners of old folk and country music, and started Precious Blood as a side project to share these songs with a wider audience. In the short time since forming the band, White and Annelle have debuted Precious Blood in New York City and New Orleans, as well as their hometown of Austin. They will be showcasing the band on a US tour this summer, with underground folk legend Michael Hurley.
Precious Blood throw themselves into the tunes of rowdy public houses, haunted bayous and lonesome prairies with atavistic abandon. They sidestep the formalities of folk purists, drawing instead on their inner visions and considerable experience with the repertoires of Cajun, Irish, Mexican and psychedelic folk music. In their hands, traditional songs switch key, time signature and even centuries before morphing into a sister song by T. Rex, Hank Williams or The Meat Puppets.
Precious Blood have played with indie comic Neil Hamburger and experimental folk trio Weird Weeds, and had shows in an extinct volcano and on a plywood barge floating down the Colorado River. Their full-length album, "The Songs Sing Themselves", will be released in early 2009, and both Annelle and White are busy recording new albums of solo original music. White has performed or recorded with The Bad Livers, Jandek, Sir Richard Bishop, Michelle Shocked, Eugene Chadbourne and The Golden Boys; Annelle with Jandek, Michael Hurley, Roy Harper, Jolie Holland and Smog. White plays fiddle with traditional Cajun dance band The Gulf Coast Playboys, of which Annelle is also an occasional member.