Biography
Anaïs Mitchell
12/6/06

“And the big horns blowed and the pianos played/And the music rose to the old man’s ears/I guess those were the olden days/I guess those were the golden years,” sings Anaïs Mitchell on her new record The Brightness. This earnest nostalgia trip says a lot about the kind of art that this Vermont native has been creating since entering the underground folk scene in 2002. At a time when the music industry is playing the role of the slickest of defense attorneys, using flash and dazzle campaigns to distract us from the fact that their clients are terrible, Mitchell is an artist who grew up on a sheep farm. She makes small-sounding, big-thinking folk albums that play like a front-porch serenade. If she feels in a bit of a time warp, you can’t blame her.

Listening to this 25-year-old singer/songwriter perform her meticulously written songs, fervently singing them in a distinctive, almost childlike voice, you’d think it was her life mission to rouse the hearts and minds of her listeners with an acoustic guitar. But Mitchell wasn’t always committed to the idea. “I used to tell people I wanted to be a journalist. There is a lonely egotism and self-composure to journalists. Not unlike artists, they’re always traveling, always writing, loving their loneliness, feeling somehow that they have their finger on the pulse – worshipping the truth and trying to render it legible.”

Despite her journalistic leanings, Mitchell started writing songs at age 17 and eventually started performing them live during her school days, which were punctuated by a remarkable amount of traveling. In a short period of time, Anaïs made several trips to the Middle East, and also spent time in Europe and Latin America, studying languages and world politics. This stunning, troubadour-like experience seeped into her music, and she became adept at fusing her passion for literature and journalism in her lyrics.

With a clutch of quiet, ambitious songs in her arsenal, Mitchell recorded her now out-of-print debut, The Song They Sang When Rome Fell (2002), in a single afternoon in Austin, Texas. It was in Texas that Anais discovered the Kerrville Folk Festival, which honored her with the prestigious New Folk award in 2003. Soon thereafter, with the help of Michael Chorney and Chicago-based Waterbug Records, Anaïs released her second album, Hymns For The Exiled, 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, a songwriter whose fusion of personal and political themes was a formative influence on a teenaged Mitchell. After seeing a few of Anaïs’ captivating concerts, DiFranco signed the artist to her label, Righteous Babe Records.

“If you knew what Ani DiFranco meant to me as a young woman and a young songwriter … well, I was simultaneously elated and in total disbelief,” Mitchell told a Vermont reporter after joining the RBRrrmy. “It seemed too good to be true.”

The same can be said about Mitchell’s Righteous Babe debut, which hits stores February 13, 2007. During the recording process, Anaïs lived above the studio, which was built into an old Vermont gristmill. She could wake up, shake the sleep out of her eyes and record tracks in her pajamas, resulting in a decidedly intimate listening experience. Spilling over with worldly metaphors, intense emotions and unshakeable reverence to the art of song, The Brightness shimmers with creative spark.

And by no means is Anaïs Mitchell sitting on her laurels. She’s staging a folk-opera based on the myth of Hades and Eurydice, and will be embarking on a winter tour to do what she does best: pluck chords and tell stories.

Reviews

FULL PRESS KIT (PDF download)

Reviews for COUNTRY EP...

By Alan Pedder

WEB love for THE BRIGHTNESS...

Sing Out! Article by Hugh Blumenfeld

Sing Out! Review by Rich Warren

No Depression Review by Russell Hall

AllMusic.com Review by Margaret Reges

Popmatters.com Review by Aarik Danielsen

MORE REVIEWS of The Brightness (Righteous Babe Records 2007)

Reviews for HYMNS FOR THE EXILED...

Fish Records Review of Hymns For The Exiled

Quotes
“A songwriter of startling clarity and depth, equally skilled at turning a melody or lyrical phrase into what you didn't know you needed until you heard it... fearlessly emotive...like Dylan, Cohen, and Welch, Mitchell weaves her stories into an effortlessly beautiful and cohesive tapestry with the skill of an artisan's carpenter, showing no seams.”
- ACOUSTIC GUITAR

“Girlishly sprite and brimming with innocence... brings to mind the hippie-throwback charm of Victoria Williams, though... people more commonly note a resemblance to '80s pop star Cyndi Lauper.”
- NO DEPRESSION

“The earthiness of Shawn Colvin, the child-like bite of Joanna Newsom, and the urban jumpiness of Ani DiFranco... These elements, as disparate as they might seem, come together as nicely as cinnamon, cloves, and nutmeg...”
- ALL MUSIC GUIDE

“In Mitchell’s universe, there is no light between the personal and the political, the venerable and the radical... she brilliantly intertwines the mundane and the profound, singing with the same intimacy about a carefree night on the town and wandering the warring towns of Israel. Her vivid snapshots of sweetly ordinary moments spin suddenly outward to bemoan the eternal woes of poverty and militarism.”
- BOSTON GLOBE

“Anais sings of love among the ruins, coming of age to find yourself an outsider looking for the place you belong, finding other strangers along the way. Details of silverware and napkins, capes and shoes, the unexpected pooling of light, are offered like clues or keys to the reality all of us sense is imminent and eternal beneath the surfaces of things. These are observations that might be torn from journals, and like her journaling namesake, her real eroticism is saved for the world. That's why, like her heroines Ani DiFranco and Dar Williams, there's a sexual ambiguity about her work and why, even in her most intimate moments, she never sounds like a confessional songwriter.”
- SING OUT!

High Resolution Photos

press photo for country e.p.- by emma gluckman	country e.p. poster- jared metzner
	Photo by Louisa Conrad
Photo by Louisa Conrad	photo by emma gluckman
photo by emma gluckman	photo by emma gluckman
photo by emma gluckman	hey, little songbird- photo by jeb wallace-brodeur
hadestown company- photo by jeb wallace-brodeur	HADESTOWN digital image for press- by Tim Grunert & Tim Staszak

Downloadable Posters