Anaïs Mitchell & Rachel Ries - November 20th, 2008
| November 20, 2008 | ||
| 7:30 pm |
We are ridiculously excited to be hosting the brilliant and beautiful ladies Anaïs Mitchell and Rachel Ries on Thursday, November 20th.
Singer/songwriters Anaïs Mitchell and Rachel Ries met at a Texas campfire in 2004. Both artists had releases on the same small label—Chicago’s Waterbug Records—before Mitchell joined Ani Difranco’s Righteous Babe Records and Ries founded her own SoDak Records in 2007. The two friends began doing occasional tours together, for camaraderie and to share touring expenses. “People kept saying, ‘you girls should make a recording,’” says Mitchell. “So finally we did!” The result is the simply titled country e.p. The relaxed, vintage production features musicians from the artists’ respective Boston and Chicago communities and the vocal harmonies they worked out for their tours. We are thrilled that Anaïs & Rachel are stopping by Little Apple House Concerts as part of their tour in support of this new record.
Anaïs Mitchell is, according to one reviewer, “a bundle of contradictions. She has the earthiness of Shawn Colvin, the child like bite of Joanna Newsom, and the urban jumpiness of Ani DiFranco.” From her birthplace on a Vermont sheep farm to Beirut cafés, Cairo apartments and Austin recording studios, Anaïs Mitchell has been around. After debuting in 2002 with (now out-of-print) The Song They Sang When Rome Fell, Anaïs became known and loved in the folk community. Her first big break came in 2003, when the Kerrville Folk Festival honored her with its New Folk Award. Soon thereafter Anaïs released her second album, Hymns For The Exiled, on Chicago-based Waterbug Records in 2004. The stirring collection of guitar and voice cemented Mitchell’s status as a folksinger to watch, and the record eventually reached the ears of Ani DiFranco. After seeing a few of Anaïs’ captivating concerts, DiFranco signed the artist to her label, Righteous Babe Records. The Brightness, Anaïs’ Righteous Babe debut released in 2007, spills over with worldly metaphors, intense emotions and unshakeable reverence to the art of song. (AnaisMitchell.com / MySpace)
Daughter of Mennonite missionaries, raised in Zaire and Freeman, SD, Chicagoan Rachel Ries has been steadily and somewhat quietly building a reputation as one of the country’s finest Americana singer-songwriters. Classically trained in voice, piano, violin and viola, she marries sophisticated, vintage musicality to smart lyrics. Like Andrew Bird and Erin McKeown, Rachel has developed an urban cult following based on a fresh approach to musical forms of the ‘20s and ‘30s. Her songs range from the romantic simplicity of jazz standards to the distilled intensity of poet Anne Sexton. Ries has an adventurous ear for melody and a voice flexible enough to accomplish it. Without a Bird, Rachel’s second full-length album, released on her own SoDak Records in 2007, is a warm and carefully orchestral record, featuring some of Chicago’s finest musicians. Rachel’s first album, For You Only, was released on Waterbug Records in the summer of 2005. “The most seductively literary folk debut since Dar Williams,” writes Tom Neff, Grassy Hill Radio. (MySpace)
The suggested donation for this show is $15 per person. Music will begin at 7:30pm.
RSVP to reserve your seat via the Contact page. You will receive full details about the show, including the location, after we receive your RSVP.
Watch a recent video of Anaïs & Rachel performing “Come September” from country e.p.:
