Amy Annelle

ometime-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.