ENTER, stranger, and hear the haunts of nature - AMY ANNELLE - news http://highplainssigh.com/news.html AMY ANNELLE: news Jannis' PHPRss class - http://www.jannis.to/ Sat, 31 Jul 2010 01:07:47 -0700 High Plains Ahead http://highplainssigh.com/news.html#48 I'm about to perigrinate up the plains to play some shows,


across the valleys of the Candadian and the Cimarron,


to the Rocky Mountains and then some.


I hope to see some of you who dwell out that way and your neighbors too. 


 


Friday July 9 


MATTER BOOKSTORE


144 N. College Avenue


Fort Collins, CO


with Origami Hands


http://www.wolverinefarmpublishing.org/matter-bookstore/about-matter-bookstore.html


 


Saturday July 10 


TITWRENCH FESTIVAL


a three-day all-ages, DIY festival of music & visual art


GLOB


3551 Brighton Blvd.


Denver, CO


http://titwrench.com/day-two.php


 


Sunday July 11


Buckhorn Bar


114 E. Ivinson


Laramie, Wyoming


with Birgit Burke, Mike Safran & friends


(307) 742-3554


 


Monday July 12


KRFC Live at Lunch


noon Mountain Time


Ft. Collins, CO


listen live http://krfcfm.org/


 


 


I'll have copies of the new album"The Cimarron Banks" and other music too.


 


You might find me on the street at the Woody Guthrie Free Folk Festival in Okemah, Oklahoma July 14--18.  You might find me any old place between here and there.


 


Fare Forward, Voyagers!


Amy Annelle


 


P.S.  There's a page up for "The Cimarron Banks", come say hidy:


http://www.facebook.com/pages/Amy-Annelle-The-Cimarron-Banks/373241298603




]]> http://highplainssigh.com/news.html#48 Mon, 05 Jul 2010 00:00:00 -0700 ENTER, stranger, and hear the haunts of nature - AMY ANNELLE - news a storm's a-brewing http://highplainssigh.com/news.html#46 Oh, how the storms come up o'er the High Plains.  


On a moody muggy afternoon, a lonely gravid cloud 


means possibilities.



It casts its shadow & starts to stir up the air around it.  


Before your very eyes, it's gathered a roiling mass of allies,


charged particles, all with a notion to rumble and lash.  


There is a lively energy exchange with the paralell plane.  


The thunder comes, bolts of lightning are hurled,


a banshee wind drives a curtain of rain.  


To be caught in the open in such a storm is to laugh as you run for your life,


is to know how it feels to be alive.



This is not unlike how a tour happens.  


A festival, an offer of hospitality, a house concert or happening


is the cloud that starts a reaction in the air around it.  


This is happening already; a tour is in the air!  


So I thought I would put the word out that, if you've written me in the past


about a show in your neck of the woods,


now is a good time to remind me.


Yes please to drop a line if you'd like to see about booking a show,


or want to suggest a friendly listening spot, happening


or show putter-onner near you.


 Commotion & reaction, thank you & bless you.



~~~~~~~~~~


The official release of "The Cimarron Banks" approaches June 1st!*


It can be got via good old fashioned mail order, or from me at a show.  


To order with cash or check, please send $12 $3 ship & handle = $15


(international orders please include $5 shipping & handling)


and do send an email to let me know it's on the way!


 


AMY ANNELLE/HIGH PLAINS SIGH


1101 JEWELL STREET


AUSTIN TEXAS 78704 USA


highplainssigh@gmail.com


 


Or you may use paypal by clicking the 'order now' button at www.highplainssigh.com




There's another curious happening on the High Plains:


at the very top of mesas, that much closer to the clouds


tiny butterflies fly around and do their thing,


despite the stiff winds and long odds.


perhaps it's the view that stretches forever,


perhaps it's the lack of affect from concrete & plow.


It's a wonder they survive, or find each other at all;


but clearly they do.  


 


With love from the hinterlands,


Amy Annelle


]]> http://highplainssigh.com/news.html#46 Mon, 24 May 2010 00:00:00 -0700 ENTER, stranger, and hear the haunts of nature - AMY ANNELLE - news new Amy Annelle solo album "THE CIMARRON BANKS" http://highplainssigh.com/news.html#47 Hello friends,


 


 I am very happy to announce the new album:


 


THE CIMARRON BANKS


A High Plains Emanation.


by Amy Annelle




"The Cimarron Banks reveals Amy Annelle as


a High Plains angel, serenading sagebrush


and shadows, while harmonizing with the wind. 


Her songs are sparse and transcendent. 


But far from being cloud-bound, Amy exalts the soil—


what grows from it, walks on it, and is built upon it. 


She also marks the trail of remnants:  that which is


wilted, forsaken and ghostly"


–Irwin Chusid, WFMU radio





cover painting by Valerie Fowler




TRACK LISTING:


The Cimarron Banks ~ The Hellhound's Address ~ Wounded Man ~ Harden Your Blades ~ Carrion Dream ~ Wake Up, Little Dark Eyes ~ Paleface Blues ~ Forever In-Between ~ Miss It More Than You Know How ~ Ode To A Lone Bird ~ The Nightjar's Blues ~ Streaking With The Lightning




SEALED CD IN TRIPLE-GATEFOLD SLEEVE


Official Release Date June 1, 2010


~Pre-orders will be filled Immediately~


$12 each $3 shipping & handling


normal bulk shipping rates will be estimated for multiple or International copies.


 


AVAILABLE FROM HIGH PLAINS SIGH MAIL ORDER ONLY!


YOU MAY ORDER YOUR COPY


via paypal button:


http://www.highplainssigh.com




or good old fashioned mail order with check or cash:


Amy Annelle/High Plains Sigh


1101 Jewell Street


Austin, Tex 78704 USA




listen to music samples & read more about the album here:


http://www.highplainssigh.com/bio.html




early airplay on WFMU, KXT, Asheville Free Media


To request a review or airplay copy please write 


highplainssigh@gmail.com


 


THANK YOU, ALL OF YOU,


FOR YOUR SUPPORT THROUGH THE YEARS!




"The Cimarron Banks" written & played by Amy Annelle; produced & recorded by Craig Ross. Additional recording by Brian Beattie. Mastered by Joe Gastwirt. Paintings and illustrations by Valerie Fowler. Special guest musicians Ian McLagan, Paul Brainard, Craig Ross, Josh Housh, Molly Fischer, Will Landin, Tom Cornelison.


 


 


~~~~~~~~~~




"THE CIMARRON BANKS" is on Facebook, but it's shy and not really sure what it's supposed to do there.  Please come visit and give it a cup of tea or something:


http://www.facebook.com/pages/Amy-Annelle-The-Cimarron-Banks/373241298603?v=info

]]> http://highplainssigh.com/news.html#47 Thu, 20 May 2010 00:00:00 -0700 ENTER, stranger, and hear the haunts of nature - AMY ANNELLE - news Amy Annelle SXSW 2010 http://highplainssigh.com/news.html#45


Amy Annelle SXSW 2010 Austin Texas USA


Music Showcase--Friday, March 19 7:30 p.m. at Stephen F.'s Bar at Intercontinental Hotel, 701 Congress Ave.


Sweet Relief Acoustic Stage/SXSW Interactive--Monday March 13 4 p.m. at the Beacon Lounge in the Austin Convention Center, 500 E. Cesar Chavez St.


Free Show--Sunday 2.21 7:30 PM at Flipnotics South, 1601 Barton Springs Road

]]> http://highplainssigh.com/news.html#45 Mon, 01 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -0800 ENTER, stranger, and hear the haunts of nature - AMY ANNELLE - news a sister from the very same pasture http://highplainssigh.com/news.html#43 OKEMAH, OKFUSKEE COUNTY, OKLAHOMA USA I met woody guthrie's sweet baby sister mary jo guthrie  at the Okemah Shamrock gas station.  she god blessed me and said she loved me and all musicians and sat with me a minute and gave me a little card with woody's photo and her address and a red heart and on the back was a version of the Optimist Creed. "my father raised all us kids on this," she told me, and that she passes it on to folks she meets. now i believe the Optimist Creed was written in 1912 and i don't know much of it's history or politics. this is personal. please don't overthink it. take ms. mary jo's words to heart and follow the straight line they make to a certain place: the guthrie family kids getting raised up in hard times, in a house on a hill in okemah.  (some of the story: "Bound For Glory" by Woody Guthrie)


here's what it says on the back of the card ms. guthrie gave to me:


TO BE so strong that nothing can disturb your peace of mind.


TO TALK health, happiness and prosperity to every person you meet.


TO MAKE all your friends feel there is something special in them.


TO LOOK at the sunny side of everything.


TO THINK, work, and expect only the best.


TO BE just as enthusiastic about the success of others as you are about your own.


TO FORGET the mistakes of the past and look to the future.


TO WEAR a cheerful countenance always and give every living creature you meet a smile.


TO GIVE so much time to self improvement that you have no time to criticize others.


TO BE too large for worry, too noble for anger, too strong for fear and too happy to permit the presence of trouble.

]]> http://highplainssigh.com/news.html#43 Fri, 17 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700 ENTER, stranger, and hear the haunts of nature - AMY ANNELLE - news further denatured http://highplainssigh.com/news.html#42
And welcome, those of you new to the High Plains Drifter Newsletter. It was really something, this last tour of America's oft-overlooked Great Plains (and some mountains too). Summoning songs with you in abandoned churches, art spaces, backyards and the odd dive bar. Thank you for being capacitors, and making it happen.

when i got back to texas though, i got whipped up in the whirlwind. and oh, i got tired. maybe you too would like to be let off the hook, to forget for a moment about the ephemeral billions being slung around Washington and Wall Street, indeed the world. the unfathomable debt in which we are, in a way, drowning. money, it seems, has grown tired of all the fuss, the discrepancies. money is flown off to some theoretical nest no economist can reach and it ain't coming down. encouraging in its absence the development of other currencies: self-sufficiency, creativity, friendship, thrift.

this is not to belittle the troubles of any given individual. indeed, we got big problems. but this is not all there is to it. there are happenings in other orbits. it's a warm morning here, and the mexican woodpeckers and grackles are up in the oaks babbling their cryptic liquid songs. selfish, it could be said, or self-preservative to focus elsewhere, but do try.

i would like to tell you what the great plains did to me. plains of earth, not air. i could tell you all kinds of stories, about the fishermen in thailand who, upon pulling up the day's catch in their big nets, pick out the stingrays and throw them like frisbees about the ship deck; or i could tell you about the geezer hobos i met under the Highway 969 bridge, who have been there since 1978 with one guitar and one styrofoam cooler, exploring their endless repertroire of obscure country songs. but these are of another plane. so, i will stick to the earth.

* * * * * * * * * * *

it was a hell of a drift, this one.
from the Balcones Escarpment to the Livingston Range,
by way of Sand Hills, open range and Bad Lands;
rivers Red, Arkansas, Milk, Missouri;
through the main upthrust of the Rocky Mountains
and her many drifting island offspring.

Threading it all together are plains so vast as to wipe off the map the heavy-handed boundaries of states, the dotted lines of latitude and longitude. Skies so wide as to reduce to a whisper those wildcat oil towns, handsome brick-laid cowtowns, fur trading outposts and county seats. sightlines so long as to dismiss the last hundred and fifty-odd years of white settlement that led up to the settled American Great Plains of today, the Greatly Unsettled America of today. The fear-mongers' voices do not carry far on a prairie wind, and if they do, it's because you're listening for them.

But then the traveler tops a rise and falls into region of endless corporate croplands. a stillness descends. the spirit of the land dies. it's the same sort of feeling you get when you see your first open pit mine or old growth clear cut: it has to come from somewhere, my dear. many plains farmers today are laying their bets on biofuels. this is the source of one kind of "green energy", oceans of it stretching endlessly (though when ripe, the strange sorghum heads are more of a pinkish-purple).

and then a town grid rises from the flat monoculture palatte and you temporarily inhabit it, and start to meet more kids at shows and folks gas stations of Indian descent. you enter and leave whole other nations: Omaha, Cheyenne, Lakota. or hear, from a highway worker in the Nebraska panhandle, of an isolated all-white town called Whiteclay (pop. 14), located just a few hundred feet from the Pine Ridge Oglala Sioux reservation, where 4 million cans of beer are sold each year*.

history is alive, the people and the land are breathing, at times singing their death song. and simple distinctions between past and present can't be made; suffering and injustice, sacrifice and windfall all wrapped up in the person next to you at the cafe or listening to you sing. No, it wasn't so long ago, and the book is not closed. The Great Plains are a Great Paradox, and my love for them, conflicted as it is, grows deeper still.

a version of the vision:
FURTHER DENATURED
http://www.highplainssigh.com/photos-group-47.html

* * * * * * * * * * *

On the plains today you might still see for yourself how our history's writ in blood in many a meadow and creek bed and sacred, holy place. America has managed to hide the bones of ten million massacred buffalo. and the truth too, shrouded in shame and apathy, when it comes to the wrath loosed upon the Plains Indians, the war we waged on their ground. "Threats, deception and murder"...i don't mean to preach, but if you aren't sure what happened on the plains in the 19th century, you might ought to start asking, reading, finding out.

"redman vs. bluecoat in the Wild West, a few battles ensue and America completes her mainfest destiny, under the auspice of the christian god": this was the lie we were fed as schoolkids, a story that might have stretched from p. 402 halfway down p. 404 in your grade school textbook of US history. this rendition of historical fiction affords much romance to the prairie sod buster, the Sooners racing for their Oklahoma land claims, wily scouts and lone rangers who made the plains "safe" for white expansion. this fiction casts the Indian character as carved of wood, some mysterious wildman who pops out of the bushes in his full feather bonnet, a half-wit with a hatchet and a peace pipe, a willing, doe-eyed squaw played by a white lady with braided hair dyed black.

Of course, the nation had much to gain by dehumanizing the Plains Indian--America coveted the land they lived on and the untold riches therein--and dehumanizing is an essential component of genocide. in the century and a half since, tens of millions of settlers, tens of billions of dollars of resource exploitation and agriculture do make a lot of historical noise, threatening to drown out anything that doesn't substantiate it.

Quiet, quiet. what remains is the impact of deeper harmonics, the legacy of an american "victory": reservations carved like gristle out of the plains, accounts of the miserly rations doled out by agencies in the midst of blizzard or drought; the empty treaties, the forced marches, the massacres. and most of all, the descendants of those who survived. No, it wasn't so long ago, and the book is not closed!


* * * * * * * * * * *

Please drop a line if you are so inclined.

Fare Forward, Voyagers!
Amy Annelle

* * * * * * * * * * *

*more on Whiteclay: http://www.commongroundcommonsense.org/forums/lofiversion/index.php/t30469.html]]> http://highplainssigh.com/news.html#42 Thu, 09 Oct 2008 00:00:00 -0700 ENTER, stranger, and hear the haunts of nature - AMY ANNELLE - news US High Plains Tour Dates http://highplainssigh.com/news.html#40
I write with word that a tour of the High Plains and Rockies draws
nigh for some friends and I.

Me and Ralph White will be playing solo sets through North Texas and
Oklahoma into Kansas, where we will be joined by dear friend and high
order songmaker Michael Hurley. We continue as a threesome, treading
a faint path 'cross the sea of grass and lightning wrath and cradle of
nomadic horse culture, with a final transect of the Rockies (from
whence the horse cultures descended).

My new album is not quite finished, but I'll be peddling a new very
limited edition tour compilation called "SOME FROM THE STREAM". This
is a drift through my recorded output, from the gloaming of the
twentieth century through the day before yesterday, including several
unreleased tracks.

If you find yourself an inconvenient distance from the high plains,
you may mailorder a copy here:

http://highplainssigh.com/products.html

Also will have a collage notebook series exploring the hypnaogogic
state, based on paintings of exotic deer from the 1920s. see for
yourself:

http://highplainssigh.com/photos.html

We'll see you out there, friends, in your imagination, or physical
manifestation.


HIGH PLAINS & PEAKS US TOUR

* with Ralph White || www.ralphewhite.com
** with Michael Hurley || www.snockonews.net

FRIDAY, AUGUST 8TH, 2008
DALLAS, TX
*Lee Harvey's
Theater Fire's CD Release Show

SATURDAY, AUGUST 9TH, 2008
DENTON, TX
*Dan's Silver Leaf

MONDAY, AUGUST 11TH, 2008
OKLAHOMA CITY, OK
*Sauced

WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 13TH, 2008
TULSA, OK
*Sound Pony

THURSDAY, AUGUST 14TH, 2008
WICHITA, KS
*The Artichoke

FRIDAY, AUGUST 15TH, 2008
KANSAS CITY, MO
**The Brick

SATURDAY, AUGUST 16TH, 2008
LAWRENCE, KS
The Replay Lounge
~~Precious Blood, Michael Hurley~~

SUNDAY, AUGUST 17TH, 2008
LAWRENCE, KS
**Love Garden Sounds

MONDAY, AUGUST 18TH, 2008
OMAHA, NE
**P.S. Collective


TUESDAY, AUGUST 19TH, 2008
VERMILLION, SD
**Washington Street Art Center

FRIDAY, AUGUST 22ND, 2008
FORT COLLINS, CO
KRFC FM
1--3 PM
~~Precious Blood & Michael Hurley play live & disc jockey~~

SATURDAY, AUGUST 23RD, 2008
CENTENNIAL, WY
Beartree Tavern
Arthur Magazine Presents:
the 9th Annual UPLAND BREAKDOWN - 2 PM
~~PRECIOUS BLOOD plays Carducci & Lightbourne's atavistic music
festival with Michael Hurley, The Stop & Listen Boys, Al Rivers &
friends~~

SUNDAY, AUGUST 24TH, 2008
DENVER, CO
**Sliding Door Gallery

MONDAY, AUGUST 25TH, 2008
DENVER, CO
**Lion's Lair

TUESDAY, AUGUST 26TH, 2008
LOUISVILLE, CO
**Waterloo Ice House

THURSDAY, AUGUST 28TH, 2008
SALT LAKE CITY, UT
**House Concert

SATURDAY, AUGUST 30TH, 2008
WEST GLACIER, MT
**Lake Five Resort
Outdoor Concert on the Belton Stage


Fare Forward, Voyagers!
Amy Annelle]]> http://highplainssigh.com/news.html#40 Tue, 05 Aug 2008 00:00:00 -0700 ENTER, stranger, and hear the haunts of nature - AMY ANNELLE - news creole acolyte http://highplainssigh.com/news.html#38
perigrinate, we, to new orleans

to pay homage to jellyroll, bix and magee

breathe of the pineywoods and lowland cajun prairie

tread lightly past water moc and allagata'

and put on harmony with katydid and ciccada



we hope to see you in NEW ORLEANS, friends, and friends thereof:


AMY ANNELLE, RALPH WHITE, LADY BABY MISS
Saturday, June 28 10 PM
Dragon's Den
435 Esplanade Ave.
New Orleans, LA

there's talk of a Precious Blood hootenanny Sunday somewhere.

Fare Forward, Voyagers!
Amy Annelle]]> http://highplainssigh.com/news.html#38 Thu, 26 Jun 2008 00:00:00 -0700 ENTER, stranger, and hear the haunts of nature - AMY ANNELLE - news a way, i say http://highplainssigh.com/news.html#39
the moon has made its final ptolemic aspect and is now Void of
Course. slow down, it says, and use your intuition. the moon has
nothing to fear of earthquakes, snakes or fakes.

amy annelle will be playing tonight in austin, texia:

FRIDAY MAY 2 (Void of Course moon)
Hello Lovers CD release party
with Amy Annelle, Silky and Fiction
Emo's
603 Red River
Austin, Texia

doors at 8, show at 10.

fare forward, voyagers!]]> http://highplainssigh.com/news.html#39 Fri, 02 May 2008 00:00:00 -0700 ENTER, stranger, and hear the haunts of nature - AMY ANNELLE - news the chthonic state http://highplainssigh.com/news.html#37
it's roundabout time to get things in order for a summer tour.

if you have written before about having a show in America (for now)
or would like to put one on, please drop a line:
booking@highplainssigh.com

surely some conventional bookings will come into play too. but we're
most curious about the good people and things waiting behind your door
when you open it. be it a house concert, art space, party in the
woods or meadow or what have you.

Amy Annelle will be playing all new songs, songs that are nearly done
being commited to the recorded format [------>now perhaps you are
thinking about being commited elsewhere, like the octagonal Insane
Asylum on Roosevelt Island in 1839]

Ralph White too will be playing songs from his forthcoming solo
album.
myspace.com/ralphewhite

And they will probably do a few shows as the duo Precious Blood,
which is another thing altogether: "Precious Blood is steeped in folk
music's strange past"~~Adam Schragin, Austinist
myspace.com/preciousbloodmusic

***********************
2008 Summer Tour of the Chthonic States

Amy Annelle solo, Ralph White solo
(and some shows as Precious Blood)

Fare Forward, Voyagers!
and thank ye!
xxamy annelle.

***********************
*chthonic...typically refers to the interior of the soil, rather than
the living surface of the land, or the land as territory. It evokes at
once abundance and the grave.

The term 'chthonic' can be used to describe the spirit of nature
within, the unconscious earthly impulses of the Self, one's material
depths, but not necessarily with negative connotations. In the
positive sense, it appears as a 'spirit of nature', creatively
animating Man, things, and the world.

(from the Greek khthonios, of the earth, from the earth; pertaining
to the Earth)]]> http://highplainssigh.com/news.html#37 Tue, 15 Apr 2008 00:00:00 -0700 ENTER, stranger, and hear the haunts of nature - AMY ANNELLE - news