Cosmo Country band The Shells

I always love getting new leads on great bands in my inbox, but not everything that comes my way is women artists, so when I saw things like “female harmony trio” and “MTV nomination for Best Breakout Artists in New York City” introducing the The Shells, I knew they were high on the list of potentials for a Lyrical Venus blog feature before even hearing a note!

Carrie Welling from Colorado Springs, CO, Melanie Klaja from Buffalo, NY, and Jessica Rae Waltz from Nashville, TN met in New York City in 2005 and formed The Shells.  After spending a while trying to use a long line of descriptions for their sound (like pop-rock-folk-alternative-country) they decided to coin their own term – “Cosmo Country”.

How do they know if something is Cosmo Country?  As The Shells say in a recent interview on The Mothpod,  “Our style always has to pass this one test:  If Carrie Bradshaw from Sex & the City would wear/do it, if Carrie Underwood would wear/do it and if Carrie Welling (from The Shells) would also, then it passes The Shells’ Cosmo Country test!”

It’s a great description for their debut album, Written Roads.  Released this October, Written Roads has a little bit of everything that is captured so well in the words Cosmo Country – a little twang, a little edge, a little grit, a little sweetness and a whole lot of honesty.  Each of the girls contributed by writing songs for the album, documenting bits of their life journeys to add up to one bigger journey of Written Roads.  Carrie, Melanie and Jessica have worked hard in a super competitive environment.  That they show up as graceful, tough and fun all in one, and are still together after four years is testament both to their strength and their passion for their craft.

Ready to hear for yourself? Check out The Shells site, friend them on MySpace or Facebook, and follow them on Twitter for updates!

And of course, tune in to KRUU Tuesday 11/17 for a live interview with them!  KRUU-LP 100.1 in town, kruufm.com online from anywhere. The Shells will be calling at 9:30AM Central (10:30 EST). Tune in at 9:00AM for some great tunes from other Lyrical Venus ladies before the interview.

When I found Brooke Brown Saracino on MySpace earlier this year, I immediately fell in love with her song About My Heart and was delighted to discover she was offering it as a free download. I played it the next week on my radio show and sent her a note saying so, and inviting her to do an interview sometime. She replied that she was working on a new album and planning to tour the Mid-West in the fall so she’d be in touch.

Late summer Brooke emailed me again, asking for recommendations of places to play in Iowa. I gave her several suggestions but none of them were panning out since she would be coming through on a weekday. I’d gone to a few house concerts at my across the street neighbor’s house and had a great time, so I told Brooke that I would be up for trying one myself.

If you haven’t heard of it, a house concert is pretty much just what it sounds like – a concert in a house instead of a bar or coffee shop venue. More and more artists are looking to do house concerts these days as the atmosphere is relaxed, respectful and intimate; just a small group of people in a living room. In a small space there’s little to no sound equipment to deal with and the artist plays for donations rather than a cut of the door at a venue. (For more on house concerts check out concertsinyourhome.com)

Brooke describes her sophomore release Stranger’s Story as minimal and melancholy with a playful sound. While her debut album Treading Water included trumpet, accordion and drums on some tracks, Stranger’s Story is stripped down to just Brooke and her guitar, with the occasional ukulele, xylophone, fiddle and kazoo layered in.

A truly independent artist, Brooke did all the recording, editing, mixing and production on the album herself. Her music has won her honors in the Rocky Mountain Folks Festival Singer/Songwriter showcase every year since 2005, and she was selected to perform at this year’s Falcon Ridge Folk Festival Emerging Artist Showcase.

Brooke has also opened for some of my very favorite singer/songwriters like Lori Mckenna, Rose Polenzani, Beth Amsel, and Cheryl Wheeler to name a few. While her sound is her own, Brooke definitely has a resonance with the aforementioned ladies, and I occasionally hear a hint of Anaïs Mitchell and maybe even a little Rachel Ries in her some of her songs too.

I’m looking forward to my interview with Brooke on Tuesday morning and the house concert that night. If you’re interested in the concert but didn’t get an invite consider this your official invitation and email me at [LyricalVenus at gmail dot com] for details!

If you can’t make it to the concert (or even if you can!), tune in to KRUU-LP 100.1 FM or kruufm.com from 9-10am for an interview and to hear a few songs from Brooke!

You can get Brooke’s first album Treading Water from:
her website
CD Baby
or iTunes:

Check out Brooke’s MySpace to hear tracks from the just released Stranger’s Story, which should be available online soon!

The more good music I find, the more good music I find. Every musician has friends and recommendations, not to mention my friends and family telling me about their new favorites. It’s a bit overwhelming! How to choose what to buy, how to resist so I don’t go broke, etc. I figure when I start hitting play on a MySpace page over and over and over again, it means it’s not just a passing fancy and it’s time to make it my own…

For example, recently my other lovely cousin (sister to my cousin who suggested Colbie Caillat) pointed me to Ingrid Michaelson on MySpace.

She’s fabulous! I knew within a few bars (heard from under our conversation, no less!) that I’d be adding to my collection soon.

Everyone is going nuts over Ingrid because four of her songs have been featured on Grey’s Anatomy in season three. (I haven’t finished it yet, don’t tell me anything!) And because the songs all rock. Or rather, more people are finding out about her fabulousness because of the exposure.

Here’s a list from her website of the songs featured on Grey’s:

Keep Breathing | Grey’s Anatomy, s3 Episode 25: “Didn’t We Almost Have it All”
Corner of Your Heart | Grey’s Anatomy, s3 Episode 24: “Testing 1-2-3″
The Way I Am | Grey’s Anatomy, s3 Episode 12: “Six Days – Part 2″
Breakable | Grey’s Anatomy, s3 Episode 8: “Staring at the Sun”

Keep Breathing isn’t available to buy yet (Grey’s season 3 soundtrack will be released in Sept 07), but if you sign up to Ingrid’s mailing list you can listen to it online. Or on her MySpace page. That’s one more for my “Songs about breath and breathing” list.

AND, she has MORE than just those four songs! She has two full albums worth of musical goodness! I started off with her first one, slow the rain, as it’s a bit more “acoustic-y” sounding, but the new one Girls and Boys started really growing on me, so I broke down and got that one as well after a couple days. I really love the drums in both albums, there’s something about them that’s unique enough to catch my attention and fascinate me without distracting from the lyrics and melody.

Oh, and Ingrid is another one to add to the list of “Me and Zach Braff having the same taste in music without me knowing it” – In Ingrid’s MySpace pics, she has a screenshot of when Zach added her song to his MySpace profile and the caption is adorable and funny:

See Zach Braff’s page?? See my song??? See me pee in my pants??

That’s the other thing I love about Ingrid, her quirky fun sense of humor and the playfulness in her lyrics. Some people are comparing her to Regina Spektor (who I also love). I can see where they would get that (pianos, funky cuteness, catchy beats), but I would say Regina’s stuff is a little more dark and bizarre flavored, while Ingrid’s is more quirky/goofy and at the same time very poignant. Like her song about Charlie Brown and his crush on the little red-headed girl, or this bit from The Way I Am:

I’d buy you Rogaine if you start losing all your hair.
Sew on patches to all you tear.

Cuz I love you more than I could ever promise.
And you take me the way I am.

You don’t get the full effect without hearing her breathy, sparkly voice, the slow beats, the syncopated hand claps, but yeah, definitely quirky-sweet and infectious. Go have a listen! And once you’ve decided you can’t hold back either, you can buy her stuff on CD Baby (or iTunes or on Amazon)

Want to know when I find more great stuff by and about women in music? Subscribe to Lyrical Venus by Email or by RSS Feed and have the updates come straight to you!

Just a quick heads up – Ani’s team on MySpace is giving away an autographed poster. All you have to do to enter the drawing is send a MySpace message on August 4th.

Details from the MySpace bulletin:

“This is just a reminder to everyone that this Saturday, August 4, (TOMORROW) you have from 11AM to 4PM (EST) to enter to win an AUTOGRAPHED ANI POSTER.

It appears that some of you got confused and have been sending me entries before the contest has started. Entries received before 11AM EST August 4 will not be considered in the drawing. So if you entered before, enter again between 11AM and 4PM tomorrow to make sure your name is in the drawing.

All you have to do is send me a MySpace Message with REPEAT OFFENDER in the subject line sometime between 11 and 4. Include your name and address and I’ll do a random drawing from all of the entries. The winner will be announced, Monday, August 6 on the MySpace blog at 12PM EST.

The drawing will be completely random and this time, it’s not based on how fast you are, it’s based on how lucky you are.

-Amanda”

So if you aren’t friends with Ani yet, go add her now and send in your MySpace Messages tomorrow!

Natalia Zuckerman, folk-blues-country-jazzy-soul, singer-songwriter, slide guitarist extraordinaire is in the studio recording a new album!

Looks like she’s going to be posting updates on her MySpace blog. It’s always fun to get a little behind-the-scenes peek at things.

I love Natalia’s range of styles, and she’s an AWESOME guitarist! She played a solo concert at Cafe Paradiso last year. It was really amazing to watch her get sound out of her instruments with such ease and grace. I have her album “Only One”, with just her voice and a guitar or dobro (which is how I saw her live), so it’ll be interesting to hear what she sounds like with more people, although I suppose you could do that already, since she has 2 other previous albums!

Listen to songs on her website
and MySpace

Or watch her performing one of my favorites, Haunted House, at Bluesfest in Ottawa 2006:

Wishing Natalia smooth and speedy days in the studio, I can’t wait for the new album! Especially because at the concert she played some new songs that hadn’t been recorded yet, and I’ve been wanting to hear them again.

Ok, so I found something to mix in with my Mandy Moore rotation these days – Colbie Caillat’s new album CoCo.

It has that Southern California vibe that reminds me of the time I got to stay in a beach house that belonged to my mom’s friend. The doors and windows were always open because there weren’t any bugs to speak of and the weather was perfect, perfect, perfect. So I had three or four days of gauzy sheer curtains blowing in the breeze and that fresh ocean air smell all through the house. Flip-flops and sarongs as standard dress. Lemon trees in the backyard. Spontaneously arranged seashell collections on the porch. That’s where I go when I listen to CoCo. Not a bad place to be taken back to in my mind!

And apparently appropriate, since she IS from California. I can see what the people reviewing her on iTunes mean when they say things like she’s writing “Beach Music” and they would love for her play with Jack Johnson sometime.

Colbie’s voice is sweet and soothing, and overall the beats are light and bouncy, even on the slower songs. Favorite songs of the moment: Bubbly for the super cute lyrics and tune, Tied Down for the ukulele and reggae vibe, Feelings Show for the catchy chorus that gets my head bopping every time. Honestly though, I really just like the whole album! Every song is good, so no need to skip around or fast forward.

My lovely cousin pointed me to Colbie’s MySpace page a few months ago and I signed up to get updates right away because I knew I’d be wanting to hear more! One of those MySpace success stories, Colbie ventured out into the public arena by posting a few songs on her page. When she put Bubbly up she suddenly skyrocketed to be the number one unsigned artist on MySpace, a position she held for four months in a row! Of course record companies took notice, and since she already had a huge fan base and real life feedback that she was a success, she was able to sign with a company that would give her full creative control. I think her fans will agree it’s a good thing, Colbie knows what she’s doing and has a good thing going. I could listen to her pure, simple, sweet sound for a long, long time.

UPDATE – where to buy CoCo:

Download on On iTunes
Download or buy CD On Amazon

(I’ll tie that coffee reference in at the end, I promise!)

Back when I joined MySpace in Sept 2006, one of the first musicians to find me was Adrina Thorpe.

With 14 out of her 20 influences already in my music collection (Sarah McLachlan, Tori Amos, Jewel, Coldplay, Michelle Branch, Avril Lavigne, Alanis Morissette and Norah Jones to name a few) I figured there was a pretty good chance of me liking Adrina’s music, and I do! Her soothing piano pop has catchy hooks, soaring vocals and relatable lyrics. She even has a fun remix that reminds me of the stuff on Sarah McLachlin’s Bloom .

The other thing I like about Adrina is she’s doing everything on her own and making it work as an independent musician! By keeping up with her bulletins and blog entries I’ve gotten to see her process. I’ve loved watching her grow and try new things. I love how she is a genuinely good person who asks her fans for feedback and actually writes back to them. It’s fun to be part of her climb/journey to wider exposure and making it as a musician.

Right now she is in the process of gathering funds to record her next album and has started a new MySpace page with that as the focus.

Have a listen to some songs for free on her original page and if you like what you hear, pop over to her album fund page and “buy her a latte”, cuz if all her fans did that, she’d have enough to cover the recording costs in no time! It’s amazing what a little bit can do. Make mine a venti!