Annie Lou is coming back to town. Annie Lou – the band, that is – performed two years ago on the stage at the Salmon Arm Roots and Blues Festival, as well as last year at the Sorrento Bluegrass Festival, where fans could not get enough of their good old-time, foot-stomping bluegrass and country music.
Annie Lou will perform in concert at 7 p.m. Wednesday, Jan. 23 at Carlin Hall.
Built around the original songwriting styles of Anne Louise Genest and driven by fiddle and banjo, along with guitar, upright bass and plenty of solid vocals, Annie Lou has a foot rooted in both the past and the present. Their music is new and original, yet old and familiar all at the same time.
Annie Lou is Canadian roots music at its best.
Nominated for a Juno Award, a Galaxie Rising Star, a Western Canadian Music and two Canadian Folk Music awards, along with numerous appearances at festivals across the country, Annie Lou has become a familiar sight on the Canadian roots music scene.
The current band is comprised of Anne Louise Genest on guitar, vocals and banjo, Kim Barlow on vocals and banjo, Andrew Collins on fiddle and mandolin and Max Heineman on upright bass and vocals.
Genest, who spent 20 years living in the Yukon woods, started out as a solo artist after being drawn to old- time mountain and traditional country music.
She founded Annie Lou after deciding she wanted a band experience. She has not looked back since.
“Sometimes it can be a challenge to write new music that feels like it’s somehow in step with the older repertoire, but 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,” says Genest. “Joy and grief are two sides of the same coin. The older music expresses that tension so perfectly.”
With the much-anticipated release of Grandma’s Rules for Drinking, which was recorded in Toronto at Sytesounds Studios, Genest delivers the same great energy, but with a subtle maturity.
Produced by multiple Juno-nominee Andrew Collins, from the Creaking Tree String Quartet, the CD features some of Canada’s finest acoustic musicians, including current band member Kim Barlow, as well as John Showman from New Country Rehab and Max Heineman from the Foggy Hogtown Boys.
There is a certain quality to the music of Annie Lou that seems to transport the listener back to a simpler time.
And while their songs are sung and played with skill, humour and gusto, it is also obvious to everyone in the audience that Anne Louise Genest and the band are having fun.
So are their audiences.
Tickets for the concert are $15 and are available at Acorn Music. Folks in outlying areas can contact Tracy at 250-517-7977.
