Annie Lou’s heart-moving, homegrown tunes are ringing out across the North American roots music stage, gathering audiences coast to coast and garnering Juno, WCMA, and Galaxie Rising Star nominations.
You can hear Annie Lou on Jan. 17 at the Waverley Hotel.
Annie Lou is built around the original songwriting of Anne Louise Genest, who spent 20 years living in the Yukon woods.
Now relocated to the balmier shores of Vancouver Island, Genest carries the spirit of an old storyteller inside her, and this voice, mixed with the stringband sounds of fiddle, banjo, guitar, mandolin and upright bass, traces a journey through days gone by to the here and now.
Genest founded Annie Lou after finding herself drawn to old time mountain and traditional country music.
“This music has a profound edge to it — there in the voices and in the playing is the lament we all carry as people trying to get by in this beautiful, terrible world,” she says. “Joy and grief are two sides of the same coin. The older music expresses that tension so perfectly.”
Genest’s first outing as Annie Lou brought 2010 Juno and WCMA nominations, and her much anticipated sophomore release Grandma’s Rules for Drinking delivers the same great energy, with an added elegant touch and subtle maturity.
Produced by multiple Juno-nominee Andrew Collins (Creaking Tree String Quartet), the album features some of Canada’s finest acoustic musicians, including John Showman (New Country Rehab), Kim Barlow, and Max Heineman (Foggy Hogtown Boys).
Beautifully crafted songs range from rousing and boisterous to gentle and poignant, and map a homescape of hard-drinking grandmas, rural dancehalls, blue collar fashions, and the deep snows and silences of a Canadian winter.
Touring as Annie Lou in 2012: Anne Louise Genest – guitar, vocals, banjo; Kim Barlow – vocals, banjo; Andrew Collins – fiddle, mandolin; Max Heineman – upright bass, vocals.
For more about the band, visit www.annielou.ca and http://soundcloud.com/annie-lou-1.
Tickets are available at Bop City, the Waverley Hotel or by phoning 250-336-8322. Doors open at 9 p.m.
— Cumberland Village Works
