MP3 Lisa Ann Wright - Sweet Bye & Bye

If Lucinda Williams had a snotty little sister; at once reflective and forward-looking, funny and heartbreaking, folk with an urban edge.

11 MP3 Songs
FOLK: Modern Folk, COUNTRY: Country Folk



Details:
Lisa Ann Wright has been wowing DC-area audiences in one way or another for nearly 18 years as an actress and singer, most recently as one of the three fabulous Fabulettes. Singing for the Fabs brought Lisa a nomination in 2001 for the Washington Area Music Associationâs Wammie award as best female rock/pop vocalist. Now Lisaâs struck out on her own with her first solo recording, Sweet Bye & Bye, a collection of original songs about women, friendship and the strange world we all sometimes have to inhabit.

Anchored by Lisaâs rural roots, the songs and stories on Sweet Bye & Bye are at once reflective and forward-looking, funny and sad, folk with an urban edge. The album features an all-star cast of some of the greatest pickers and players in the DC area and beyond. Grammy-winner Al Pettewayâs melancholy guitar infuses The Letter with bittersweet empathy for a Japanese woman facing unbearable shame over her familyâs debts. Robbie Magruderâs drumming is always in the pocket, just as he has been for artists like Mary Chapin Carpenter. Everywomanâs Blues, a sassy testimony to the right of every girl to say what she feels, blends sophisticated texture from jazz great Davey Yarboroughâs saxophone with Melanie Masonâs down-home slide guitar. Thereâs a lot of pickinâ by Ira Gitlin, Pauline Anson-Dross and Mike Woods. Rounding out the strong cast here on keys and accordion are Benjie Porecki and Brian Simms (Junkyard Saints), Bobby Martin (Honky Tonk Confidential) on pedal steel and bassists John Nazdin and Paul Bloch. Lisaâs Fab-mates Diana Quinn and Jane Q. Brack sing back up, along with Geff King, Jay Britton and Matt Holsen. Justin E. Mathews, a New York jazz guitar player in his own right and Lisaâs son, closes the album with his gentle, haunting adaptation of the traditional hymn Sweet Bye & Bye, giving the CD its name and capturing its theme. Award-winning producer Marco Delmar helped Lisa pull together her first solo project.

Lisa Ann Wright is an actor, puppeteer and singer/songwriter who has performed on stages in New York, Washington and a few places in-between, has even played a fugitive biker babe on televisionâs Americaâs Most Wanted! She is a member of AFTRA, ASCAP, WAMA and SAW and is proud to be a card-carrying member of the ACLU.

In Lisaâs Wordsâ¦

âI was born in upstate New York, the seventh of eight kids. We had a dairy/crop farm. I suppose we were pretty poor, but everyone I knew was pretty poor so I didnât know it until I was eleven. I guess the long and winding road has taken me back to my own childhood bedroom door where I used to play songs and giggle about boys with my best friend Ginny. I went back to the guitar feeling a bit like the prodigal son â ashamed to have ignored something so wonderful for so long. Happily, it took me back and we are friends again, but itâs making me work hard to keep in its good gracesâ¦Songs may also keep the past alive, encouraging us to remember and revere, celebrate and perhaps to mourn, heal and grow.â