Amy Annelle
http://do512.com/band/amy-annelle
http://do512.com/band/amy-annelle.xmlometime-Portlander and drifter Amy Annelle has amassed a growing body of music that limps and staggers but always stays true. She is a gifted songwriter and performer: unaffected and affecting, daringly original, but all the while answering to some ancient, spooky muse. She mines ground alongside haggard romantics, naturalists and outsiders, eluding genres and creating music that is "really unique in the way it goes outside the lines" (Village Voice Choices, 2002).
Annelle left her hometown of Chicago during the waning days of the twentieth century with exactly one recording credit to her name: a creepy meditation on a neighbor named "Rudy" which appeared on an early Arena Rock compilation. Some months later she landed in Portland a virtual stranger, holing up in a house in the southeast part of town that had a basement studio called Laundry Rules. Larry Crane recorded local bands there and had just opened Jackpot Recording, and Elliott Smith had done some recording there for either/or. Inspired by this moody yet welcoming town, where everyone seemed to be in a band and volcanoes hulked in the distance, Annelle waited out the rainy season writing songs and making home recordings. Her 1999 solo debut Which One's You? was recorded and released by Portland's then CDR-only label Hush Records while, starting with guitarist Ryan Stowe, The Places came together one by one. Friends often sat in on recording sessions and live sets, but a usual lineup was Annelle backed by Stowe, Alaric True on accordion and piano, drummer Jordan Hudson and Zak Riles on bass and banjo. <a href="http://www.last.fm/music/Amy+Annelle" target="_blank">Listen at Last.fm</a><br />The Places' Amy Annelle is a tough one to pin down. She lives on the American road as often as not, touring and recording with friends, staying everywhere from a high desert trailer park to a flophouse on the Bowery, and picks up work as chamber maid, forest ranger and carny. Her maverick folk music, too, shies away from convention. Over the course of six acclaimed albums and hundreds of live shows, she's created a heavy, feral and beautiful body of work that "straddles the fence between the organic and the atmospheric" (Rolling Stone).amyannellehttp://s3.amazonaws.com/do512/photos/71263/1385238935_m_poster.jpg21568398http://www.myspace.com/theplacesamyannelleAustin, TXhttp://www.highplainssigh.com/PWGO43UzFOQThe Places' Amy Annelle is a tough one to pin down. "A brilliant desert troubadour with a dark and compelling vision" (Brian Baker, Amplifier Magazine), she lives on the road as often as not, touring and recording with friends, staying everywhere from a high desert trailer park to a flophouse on the Bowery, and picking up work as laborer, forest ranger and carny. Her maverick folk music, too, shies away from convention. Over the course of six acclaimed albums and hundreds of live shows, she's created a heavy, feral and beautiful body of work that "straddles the fence between the organic and the atmospheric" <a href="http://mog.com/The_Places/blog/8424">more at mog.com</a>Amy Annelle has never sung a word she didn't need. On her solo albums and in her work with the Places, she has a perfect sense of how to use silence in her recordings-- neither playing faster to fill the quiet, nor slowing down to create it. <a href="http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/article/record_review/14960-a-school-of-secret-dangers?artist_title=14960-a-school-of-secret-dangers">more at www.pitchforkmedia.com</a>MogThe Places' Amy Annelle is a tough one to pin down. "A brilliant desert troubadour with a dark and compelling vision" (Brian Baker, Amplifier Magazine), she lives on the road as often as not, touring and recording with friends, staying everywhere from a high desert trailer park to a flophouse on the Bowery, and picking up work as laborer, forest ranger and carny. Her maverick folk music, too, shies away from convention. Over the course of six acclaimed albums and hundreds of live shows, she's created a heavy, feral and beautiful body of work that "straddles the fence between the organic and the atmospheric" <a href="http://mog.com/The_Places/blog/8424">more at mog.com</a>pitchforkAmy Annelle has never sung a word she didn't need. On her solo albums and in her work with the Places, she has a perfect sense of how to use silence in her recordings-- neither playing faster to fill the quiet, nor slowing down to create it. <a href="http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/article/record_review/14960-a-school-of-secret-dangers?artist_title=14960-a-school-of-secret-dangers">more at www.pitchforkmedia.com</a>