One Woman Band

Tonight Theresa Andersson performed at the Borders in Metairie. It was a small, thirty minute show that highlighted her new album. There was a few awkward moments at the start when she wasn't sure if she was supposed to just start playing or the book store was going to announce her start. With no employee in sight Theresa just decided to start on her own. Forgoing any band, save for her husband who sat off to the right and fiddled with the gear, Theresa was a one woman band, recreating the atmosphere of the album's creation in front of us. She opened with "Mary, Don't You Weep" which is not on the album and is a terrific version. Theresa really needs to put out a live album. After the one non album song the rest of the show were all pulled from her recent album Hummingbird, Go! The song "Na Na Na" is featured on You Tube and has pulled in over a quarter of million views so far. Following was "Birds Fly Away" and than she introduced her back up singers. This was a joke, she was her own back up singers for her album, but she said she named each member of the back up singers and even gave them their own group name: The Kitchenettes. She outlined the background and attitude of her own girl group and than played her final song "Hi -Low." Theresa is always a treat to see live and she put on a great show for the brief time she was on.

At the end of the show someone asked her why she wasn't going to be at the Gretna Heritage Fest tomorrow. Theresa has been a mainstay of the Fest for at least the past decade. She said the Fest canceled her show because they didn't think the audience would accept a one woman band and was afraid she'd get booed off the stage. It's evident that no one from the Fest has seen any of Theresa's recent shows or they'd know better.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Theresa Andersson: Hummingbird, Go!
• Why Obama, by Theresa Andersson

The Waifs

You know those times when you hear a voice that you don’t recognize but it reaches out and just grabs ahold of you. One of those voices that you can’t get out of your head. It doesn’t happen often, but when it does it’s magic. Sometimes when I’m shopping, checking out the music bins and I don’t have any particular cd or person or group that I’m looking for, I’ll just stroll through the bins, skipping around and looking through names that I don’t recognize or sometimes finding a name that I vaguely remember reading something about. I was at Borders one day, doing just this, when I came across a cd by a group called the Waifs. No idea who they were. Now I do a lot of reading about music and musicians, so I generally have some clue to a lot of names in the record bins, but there are still some out there that for one reason or another has escaped my eye. This group called the Waifs was one of them.

I was looking at a double album, a live album by them called “A Brief History.” They got marks for having a Dylan song on the album. The price was good for a double album. I didn’t have anything else to buy, nothing else reached out and spoke to me, so I decided to give this album a chance. After getting in my car and fighting with the packaging (why do they make cds so hard to open?) I finally managed to get the cd out and in the player. The last time I was so moved by a new voice that I didn’t know was when I heard Joss Stone. The sound coming out of my car stero captivated me. The voices did more than just reach out to me, they reached out and shook me. I didn’t just like this cd, I feel in love with it. There was something in the music, something in the voices that sang it, that just made me want to listen to it over and over.

The Waifs are Donna and Vikki Simpson and Josh Cunningham. They are from Australia and sing folk rock. The two sisters started singing as a group called Colours. After they met Josh and he joined the duo they changed their name to the Waifs.

In Australia they built up their fan base until the release of their fourth album Up All Night in 2003 which debuted at number 3 in Australia and went double platinum in their home country. Later that year Bob Dylan toured Australia and the band opened for him. Dylan was so impressed by the band that he offered them the opening spot for them on his U.S. tour.

The single for this week is “Bridal Train” and tells the story of Vikki and Donna’s Grandmother, a war-bride of a U.S. sailor during World War II.

After the release of their double live album in 2004 the Waifs have been quiet on the album front. The two sisters have been busy having children and getting on with their lives. But this month the group released a new album entitled Sun, Dirt, Water.