Ana Egge

Saskatchewan-born, Brooklyn-based songwriter Ana Egge delves into dark subject matter on her Steve Earle-produced seventh album, recorded at the late Levon Helm’s studio in upstate New York.

Egge’s Americana recalls Lucinda Williams and Gillian Welch, but with a harder edge and a delivery that’s her own. Though the guitar work can be overly pretty (Egge built her main instrument herself) and many songs have an upbeat folk-pop feel, lurking just under the surface are multiple references to the title’s bad blood.

Opener Driving With No Hands conveys the distress and confusion of mental illness through distorted guitar and topsy-turvy string lines, and a weary urgency runs through the chorus of the gentler Hole In Your Halo. The title track, about crimes committed by a family, kicks off like a frantic heartbeat, while Silver Heels tells of prostitutes who lost their lives during the 1918 flu epidemic.

- Now Magazine Toronto

Maïa Davies of Ladies of the Canyon is back with ‘Takes A Woman Like You,’ a new feature blog at Music Canada that brings a twist to the traditional music interview. This summer, Maïa will pick the brains of smart, strange, and relevant women working as part of the Canadian music industry. In her seventh update, Maïa speaks with Ana Egge:

The first time I heard Ana Egge’s music, she had until that moment been unknown to me. I was on a wintery Ontario tour, checking in to another strange hotel. We laid our bags down and my tour mate pulled up Ana’s video for “Morning” on my laptop. Within 15 seconds, I was in tears, flooded by the raw emotion and stunning beautiful quality of her voice and songs. I later had the honour of playing a few shows opening for her in Toronto and New York City, watching her badass band (featuring fellow Canadian Peter Elkas on guitar) tear through her haunting, powerful songs. Raised in North Dakota and Saskatchewan, now living in Brooklyn, Egge is a somewhat best-kept secret of the music scene. Ron Sexsmith is her biggest fan. So is Steve Earle, and he produced her last record, entitled “Bad Blood”. Do yourself a favor and discover her, if you haven’t already. I am fortunate enough to call her a friend, and an inspiration. Here is a conversation I had with her a few weeks ago.

I’ve heard you like to read a lot. What inspirations or life lessons can you tell us about that you’ve pulled directly from your literary adventures lately?

Lately… let’s see.. I just got my first book on Audible for my last flight home from touring in Alberta. That’s been a new experience to listen to a book, on my phone. It’s the new novel by one of my favorite authors, Louise Erdrich. She mostly centers her stories around people of the Ojibwe nation. Weaving in the spirituality, politics and humor of Native American life in the past and present in such an earth bound yet ever uplifting way. And the land that she inherits and evokes is that of the plains of North Dakota and Minnesota which is where I spent most of my childhood.

You’re on the road quite a bit and have made some great musical friends along the way from what I can gather. What is your favourite thing about being a part of such a nomadic musical community, how has it enriched your life experience?Any specific meetings you can recall that have changed you?

My big dreams as a young picker were to meet my heroes and heroines. It’s such a beautiful and rare thing to be so moved by the work of an artist or musician. And to meet them and collaborate is just mind blowing. Yesterday I got 4 copies of my debut, self titled cassette (1994) in the mail from a store that just went out of business in Texas. I remember sending that tape off to Iris Dement and then getting a call from her to tour together. I gave that tape at least 3 times to Shawn Colvin and then when my first full length CD ‘River Under The Road’ came out in 1997 she called me at work and asked if I wanted to open some shows for her. Crazy town.

What differences, if any, have you observed in the way women and men approach songwriting? Do you believe their perspectives are different, or inherently linked?

No I haven’t really noticed any difference between the sexes. To me there are two very important things that go into songwriting, craft and inspiration. One who is continually in touch with who they are and what moves them and works to explore expressing that is an individual artist. They have a unique voice and open themselves up to that kind of personal inspiration. This takes as much practice and ‘showing up’ as learning the craft of how a song works, architecturally speaking.

What are your favourite moments like onstage, what is happening that gives you those magical moments while performing?

1. Feeling energy pour through me, smiling.
2. Connecting on another level with the band when everything just feels so connected and right.
3. When I hear someone in the audience whoop or holler!!!

What advice would you offer to other artists on searching for success?

First, we all can get to know our personal definition of success. I vacillate between feeling like the luckiest person alive to pouting and wishing that I could just get a break. My hope is to keep reaching more and more people through music. It’s the most fun, healing and positive way to communicate and I’m completely in love with the mysterious pioneering spirit that it set up inside me.

- MusicCanada.com

Rolling Stone review
Posted on August 25th, 2011

Ana Egge – Bad Blood
Ammal
Rolling Stone: 3.5 star rating

You can’t say this North Dakota-raised singer-songwriter doesn’t have range. Her 2007 Lazy Days, a breezy concept LP about idleness, covered Arcade Fire and the Kinks. Her latest, a team-up with producer Steve Earle, is folk-rock storytelling stained red and flush with madness. “Blood on the floor,” she sings sweetly on “Evil,” a standout on a set that’s as upbeat musically as it is chilling lyrically. Egge rocks harder than usual on “Driving With No Hands” and works her sublime lower-register on the Richard Thompson-flavored “Shadow Fall.” And her sprightly reading of Charlie Rich’s kiss-off “There Won’t Be Anymore” places her tuneful noir in a long American tradition of depressing feel-good music. Thank the Puritans. - Rolling Stone

Independent singer-songwriter Ana Egge just finished recording her seventh solo album with producer Steve Earle at the famed Levon Helm Studio in Woodstock. Ana is in the midst of raising funds for her new album via Kickstarter with only three days left to fund the project and meet her $15,000 goal. Under Kickstarter’s unique fan-friendly system, funding is all or nothing, and donors are not charged unless the funding goal is reached. Thus far, Ana has reached 70% of the target. Check out the short video from Ana at her Kickstarter page http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/602699736/ana-egges-new-record-.... Ana is offering extensive perks for donating to her fund, depending upon what you contribute you could be hosting your own Ana Egge living room concert.

Working with Steve Earle in the studio was a dream-come-true moment for Ana who had imagined working with the icon since she had become a fan. Because the songs she had written for the new album were more stripped down than before, Ana envisioned them with the Steve Earle edge she had heard in the albums he did with Lucinda Williams and Ron Sexsmith.

Ana describes what it was like to work with Earle. “The day before we went into the studio Steve said he was going to ‘get me out of the singer-songwriter ghetto’. He was testing the waters, to see how I felt about hard hitting drums. We recorded three songs a day with a live band, everyday for five days. Steve was totally committed every moment in the studio and pulled the very best out of each one of us on every track, always for the sake of the song. The result is that we've made a real Americana roots rock record that I am really proud and excited to share with the world.”

Twelve songs later and Ana is in Nashville mixing and mastering the tracks with Ray Kennedy. Ana’s new album is scheduled for release in early 2011 and will follow up 2009’s critically acclaimed Road To My Love, Lazy Days, Out Past the Lights, Mile Marker and her debut album River Under the Road, for which she garnered two Austin Music Awards. The Austin Chronicle proclaimed it “A debut masterpiece worthy of a songwriter decades worldlier than this mere twenty-year old soul.”

- No Depression

www.myspace.com/anaegge - multiple

Rolling Stone
Ana Egge
'Road To My Love'

Lucinda Williams once called her "a folk Nina Simone." But Ana Egge is
more country than that. Raised by hippies who grew wheat in North
Dakota, the Brooklyn singer-songwriter crafts homespun hymns on her
sixth disc to sing with your bare feet on the dashboard. "Bully of New
York" recounts a sad late-night conversation between Egge and a park
ranger whose hours broke up his marriage (best part: She met him while
hitchhiking). Egge's rootsy pedal-steel pop recalls singers like Shawn
Colvin, but her sharply observed tales of the overlooked and underpaid
feel utterly of the moment.
***
MELISSA MAERZ


- Rolling Stone

Folk singer with the guts for the job
With its stripped-down instrumentation and focus on storytelling, folk music has long enjoyed a powerful association with social consciousness. How unfortunate that a lot of gifted folk singers seem too fragile or precious for the burden of their work. Not so with Anna Egge, a rough-and-tumble Lilith Fair alum who builds her own guitars and regales with an itinerant lifestyle—calling at any one time, Canada, North Dakota, New Mexico, Austin and Brooklyn home—from the back of a bicentennial-year motorcycle.



With a little help from Ron Sexsmith on backing vocals, this honey-tongued wandering minstrel tells it like it is on her countrified fourth album, Out Past the Lights. Confessing loneliness without shame in the melodious “Sailor,” tackling patriotism without pride in the symphonic country of “City of Liberty,” and nailing Red-State/Blue-State disconnect on rollicking gem, “Wedding Dress,” Egge pulls the listener into her life portraits. “Anne Marie lives in Kansas City. She’s a Christian, she loves living there,” Egge sings without sarcasm or pretense in “Wedding Dress.” If you can’t see the white-picket fence by the time the song ends, it’s time to clean out the earwax.

Ana Egge
Out Past the Lights
(Grace Records)

I first heard Ana Egge perform as an opening act for Dar Williams at Somerville Theater, and I was immediately taken in by Ana's nonchalant stage presence and the deceptive simplicity of her songs.Simplicity in music (or any art) can be densely layered and hard-earned; that's certainly been the case in the trajectory of Egge's four albums to date. On her newest, the sublime Out Past the Lights, Ana picks up her homemade guitar and travels to unexpected places both rural and urban, successfully stretching the boundaries of the acoustic scene. Egge's voice, warm yet off-center, sounds distant and intimate at once, a far whisper right in your ear. Richly understated, it's reminiscent of lesbian favorites such as Catie Curtis, Maia Sharp, and Gillian Welch, not to mention popstars like Sheryl Crow and Shawn Colvin. Ana's lulling vocals perfectly complement a sexy tune of abandon like "Straight to My Head," on which her voice acts as a counterpoint to sweeping trumpet notes. Dancing and tipsy on home-brewed wine, the singer surrenders to a rush of infatuation: "I wanna be as soft as the air/ Disappear before your eyes/ And wake up with you in your bed." Ani DiFranco mainstay Jason Mercer co-produced the album and shares his multi-instrumental skills on all 12 pieces here. The disc's roster of powerhouse players breathes life into numbers like a moving character

sketch titled "Wedding Dress," as well as the raucous "Motorcycle," which could become a riot grrrl anthem of joy and escape ("At high speed, everything changes your mind"). It's easily the best ode to the motorbike since David Wilcox's classic "Eye of the Hurricane." Ron Sexsmith also contributes a number of excellent vocal assists, most notably as an imaginary childhood friend on the hauntingly nostalgic "The Flood." Ana's songs are often open-ended, trailing off indefinitely, as in the disc's closing homage to New York, "City of Liberty," where she leaves a couple standing in the rain, "all tangled up, out on the street." Her music shows an equal love for cityscapes and countrysides, a love that seems reciprocated. -Jason Roush, Bay Windows
- Paste Magazine Online

Brooklyn-by-way-of-Austin songsmith Ana Egge emerges from opening-act status for the likes of Shawn Colvin and Ron Sexsmith to deserving headliner with her fourth CD, "Out Past the Lights," a breakout collection. Egge sings about tangled relationships and new beginnings in her lyrical tunes that are dreamlike and haunting, delicate and rough, folksy and hard-strum rocking. While she could easily play the folk card with her acoustic guitar-crafted songs, Egge takes them to a new level, with instrumental flavors and textures from country (pedal steel), jazz (trumpet) and pop (electric guitar). Sexsmith contributes harmony vocals, guitarist Tony Scherr plays a stinging slide on the gritty "Closer to the Motor," and trumpeter Shane Endsley soars through the indelible pop tune "Straight to My Head." Highlights include "Motorcycle," which captures the freedom of the two-wheel-experience, and the quiet, show-stopping gem "Victoria," that clocks in at barely more than two minutes.
- Billboard

Folk singer with the guts for the job
With its stripped-down instrumentation and focus on storytelling, folk music has long enjoyed a powerful association with social consciousness. How unfortunate that a lot of gifted folk singers seem too fragile or precious for the burden of their work. Not so with Anna Egge, a rough-and-tumble Lilith Fair alum who builds her own guitars and regales with an itinerant lifestyle—calling at any one time, Canada, North Dakota, New Mexico, Austin and Brooklyn home—from the back of a bicentennial-year motorcycle.



With a little help from Ron Sexsmith on backing vocals, this honey-tongued wandering minstrel tells it like it is on her countrified fourth album, Out Past the Lights. Confessing loneliness without shame in the melodious “Sailor,” tackling patriotism without pride in the symphonic country of “City of Liberty,” and nailing Red-State/Blue-State disconnect on rollicking gem, “Wedding Dress,” Egge pulls the listener into her life portraits. “Anne Marie lives in Kansas City. She’s a Christian, she loves living there,” Egge sings without sarcasm or pretense in “Wedding Dress.” If you can’t see the white-picket fence by the time the song ends, it’s time to clean out the earwax.

Ana Egge
Out Past the Lights
(Grace Records)

I first heard Ana Egge perform as an opening act for Dar Williams at Somerville Theater, and I was immediately taken in by Ana's nonchalant stage presence and the deceptive simplicity of her songs.Simplicity in music (or any art) can be densely layered and hard-earned; that's certainly been the case in the trajectory of Egge's four albums to date. On her newest, the sublime Out Past the Lights, Ana picks up her homemade guitar and travels to unexpected places both rural and urban, successfully stretching the boundaries of the acoustic scene. Egge's voice, warm yet off-center, sounds distant and intimate at once, a far whisper right in your ear. Richly understated, it's reminiscent of lesbian favorites such as Catie Curtis, Maia Sharp, and Gillian Welch, not to mention popstars like Sheryl Crow and Shawn Colvin. Ana's lulling vocals perfectly complement a sexy tune of abandon like "Straight to My Head," on which her voice acts as a counterpoint to sweeping trumpet notes. Dancing and tipsy on home-brewed wine, the singer surrenders to a rush of infatuation: "I wanna be as soft as the air/ Disappear before your eyes/ And wake up with you in your bed." Ani DiFranco mainstay Jason Mercer co-produced the album and shares his multi-instrumental skills on all 12 pieces here. The disc's roster of powerhouse players breathes life into numbers like a moving character

sketch titled "Wedding Dress," as well as the raucous "Motorcycle," which could become a riot grrrl anthem of joy and escape ("At high speed, everything changes your mind"). It's easily the best ode to the motorbike since David Wilcox's classic "Eye of the Hurricane." Ron Sexsmith also contributes a number of excellent vocal assists, most notably as an imaginary childhood friend on the hauntingly nostalgic "The Flood." Ana's songs are often open-ended, trailing off indefinitely, as in the disc's closing homage to New York, "City of Liberty," where she leaves a couple standing in the rain, "all tangled up, out on the street." Her music shows an equal love for cityscapes and countrysides, a love that seems reciprocated. -Jason Roush, Bay Windows
- Paste Magazine Online