Three Imaginary Girls - Star Anna

More Friday goodness: Star Anna at the Sorrento {1/13}

imaginary victoria — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 18:03:50 +0000

It looks like Friday's gonna be alright this week, with so much out there to pick from -- first we made plans for Pickwick's show in Portland, then Lovesick Empire's first-of-three at the Highline, and now we catch wind of Star Anna at the Fireside Room at the Sorrento. Can someone hurry up and invent cloning, please? Seriously.

If you need any convincing as to why you should stop into the Sorrento's Fireside Room for this set, just take a peek at the video for the title track off of Star's most recent release, Alone In This Together -- assuming the powerful, cinematic drive of this song is indicative of the direction her music is headed, here's yet another local artist who's well on the track to continue blowing minds with her work. And PS, Friday's show is free, so you literally have no excuse not to go.

Facebook invite here, band official website here.

{21+ / FREE / 7:30p. Photo of Star Anna at KEXP by Victoria VanBruinisse.}

Recommended Show: Carrie Akre (her last one in Seattle!) & Star Anna at The Croc {7/7}

Imaginary Amie — Wed, 06 Jul 2011 15:50:54 +0000

The Crocodile is poised to break your hearts this Thursday {7/7} with a double dose of powerhouse female vocalists: the throaty, drop-dead gorgeous voice of grunge-Queen Ms. Carrie Akre (if you don't know who she is, look up Hammerbox, Goodness, and The Rockfords) and the amazingly raw and pretty tones of Star Anna. AND IT IS ONLY $10!!! What.

Akre is leaving Seattle to head to the midwest, and this is billed as her FINAL Seattle show (we can only hope that isn't entirely true), so y'all better get out there to hear how incredible she is one last time before she's gone. If you've never experienced her live, you have to. She will shake you the core, trust me.

I couldn't be more pleased about this pairing, because it seems like these two ladies are meant to play together - which is another argument for getting your butt down to The Croc, as you might never have another chance at that.

The Crocodile Presents
Carrie Akre (FINAL Seattle show)
and Star Anna
Thursday, July 7
Door @8, 21+, $10 Adv/$12 day of

{Star Anna is also playing earlier in the eve on 7/7 at the Kenmore Summer Concert series, and plays 7/9 @Wine, Women and Song, 7/10 @the Ballard Seafood Fest, and has a record release party on 7/12 @Easy St in West Seattle. Whew - that woman is busy!}

No Depression Festival

heather b — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 14:27:36 +0000

11 Jul 2009

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No Depression Festival - Short Version:

It was hot. We ate barbecue. I drank a lot of beer and cider. Most of us had dirty, bare feet. Zee Avi is adorable. Jeff Fielder is totally amazing. Jessica Lea Mayfield is a lo-fi version of Jesse Sykes. Everyone loved Justin Townes Earle. No one much liked Patterson Hood. Sam Beam makes me swoon, EVERY DAMN TIME. Lesbians love Gillian Welch.

No Depression Festival - Long Version:

Due to bad traffic across the water, I was a little late arriving at the No Depression festival on Saturday but still managed to hear the last two or three songs by the very pleasant Zee Avi. I was interested to see her live, owing to the lore that has built up around her unusual entry into the biz and she pulled it off with very confident stage presence. I have to admit though, she does sound a little like Norah Jones to me.

The crew at Marymoor always run a fairly tight schedule, but I did manage to scope out the little string band (The Tallboys) under the trees between major sets. Boy howdy, they were fantastic! Fiddle, standup bass, banjo and guitar coupled with great nasal harmonizing and some percussive dance moves created a real bluegrass kind of feel in the lazy afternoon. I'm hoping that they'll play in town again soon because I would love to see them again. They sold loads of CD's and even though it was early in the day, people were dancing and clapping along. Good vibe. I found it amusing though, as we were all stood under the trees listening to bluegrass we were met with an overwhelming smell of curry coming from the nearby food court. That, and the banjo player was drinking Kombucha instead of moonshine, but hey...we ARE in the Pacific Northwest.

I was excited to see what this No Depression All Star Revue would be all about. Holy crap. After a short, glowing intro from Don Slack, members of North Twin took the stage with a high spirited rendition of "Give Back The Key To My Heart". They had good energy and were obviously having a lot of fun up there. The revue continued with Zoe Muth performing "Give Me The Roses While I Live" featuring a fantastic solo by Jeff Fielding (Incidentally, Zoe's CD release will be at the Sunset on August 1). This was followed by some Neil Young styling during Mark Pickerel's throaty version of "One More Cup Of Coffee For the Road" which was met with thunderous applause. The revue continued with the crowd-pleasing Kristin Ward confidently belting out a very honky tonk Emmylou Harris tune and then Star Anna giving it to us with a very swampy and electrified "Car Wheels On A Gravel Road". Exhausted yet? I was! But every act in the revue was better than the last, for true! Continuing, we were then entertained by Sera Cahoone and Ian Moore. The final act was a really good, sad bastard tune ("Dirt Farmer": lots of honky, not so much tonky) by most of The Maldives, encompassing a really good full-band quality sound with all the elements working together, providing a fitting end to the set. Whoo!

Following the revue, we hoofed it over to score some more booze before Jessica Lea Mayfield began. I was grateful for the dark and landscape-y guitar swells, they were different for this festival but still fitting. It's a nice departure after all the classic Americana we just got from the revue. Accompanied by her "brother and best friend Dave" on the guitar, Jessica sang with plaintive vocals that were reminiscent of Mazzy Star. I love that the music isn't even a little bit perky, and I'm glad not all the kids are taking their darkness to an electro/emo place. Most of the songs in the intense set had a desperate, kind of druggy edge but not in a negative way. The set seemed a tad long, since there wasn't much variation in tone, but Mayfield still garnered big crowd love on the finale.

One of the best sets of the day followed, Justin Townes Earle. Taking the stage in classic old-school suits and snake oil salesmen hair, he and his accompanying dude (Cory Younts) entertained the crowd with numbers "They Killed John Henry," and "Ain't Glad I'm Leaving" before dedicating their third song to Woodie Guthrie. That third song was so fast I couldn't keep up with the lyrics, but it didn't stop the crowd up front from dancing like crazy people. Shifting gears a bit, JTE then rolled out the more sentimental "Mama's Eyes". It was absolutely perfection in the dusty heat. The two men onstage were bantering back and forth like carnival barkers as they shifted back up-tempo and switched out strings for mouth harps and harmonicas (swoon) for their next frenetic, bouncy tune. The audience was all over the Younts, what a talent! JTE communicates well with the crowd, giving up the honest details of why he wrote a particular song about a train ride from Nashville to Jackson. It was amazing, harmonica dude somehow totally emulated all the sounds of a chugging train. I was in awe. Not so much that I didn't break away for more hooch though, and from afar heard Earle's finale, a truly lovely, stripped down version of "Can't Hardly Wait". Hot damn...LOVE HIM. For the rest of the day, everyone I encountered sang his well-deserved praises.

Unfortunately Jesse Sykes played her very deep and textured set during what I thought to be the hottest part of the day, and I was more interested in running through the sprinklers and finding a shady place to take a little nap. Eventually the sun's intensity faded a little and everyone woke up a bit for Patterson Hood's heartland-infused performance. There was lots of frisbee playing, lounging, drinking and consumption of HUGE sandwiches (seriously, this girl was eating a sandwich that was bigger than my whole head). Everyone was eating actually, I watched a guy eat beets straight out of a gallon drum. Yay. In between hot dogs, I took note of the interesting assemblage of people at the festival. Old, young, indie, corporate, children, lumberjacks, hippies...and all of them smiling. We live in a truly great place, y'all.

And then there he was, my bumbling, bearded boyfriend, Sam Beam. Iron & Wine. Sam reminded us that exactly one year from the day, he was on this same stage playing for the SP20 festival. He jokingly threatened to play the same set and screw up in the same places as last year, which he kind of did. But no one cared, we all love him. He's so funny and charming and clearly enjoys interacting with his audience. I'll just give a total fanboy rundown of his set list, otherwise this could get embarrassing:

Such Great Heights (spaced the lyrics again: "Didn't I mess this song up last year?")
Woman King - Naked As We Came (breathless)
History of Lovers (fumbles a bit: "Three chords is just too many")
Fever Dream (gritty)
Trapeze Swinger (had the audience in the palm of his hand at this point)
Jezebel - Lion's Mane (Perfect a capella on bridge)
New song with no name (heart filling)
Upward Over The Mountain (simply played with nice little riffs)
Boy With A Coin (awesome)
Sodom South Georgia (really rocked out the finale)
Flightless Bird (absolute falsetto perfection)

At the close of his set, Beam had the 2000+ member assembly stood completely silent for a moment, then everyone just went all crazy town. The crowd positively roared for more, but alas no encore.

Finally, Gillian Welch appeared just as the sky was painted with pinks and purples and dragonflies buzzed overhead. I have to confess I am not a great aficionado of Ms. Welch, but people around me were plenty helpful. All day long we bumped into crazed Gillian fans, some who had traveled from as far as Saskatoon and Alberta just for this show. Apparently she doesn't play up there too much.

She began very very softly but I quickly recognized the zydeco "Oh Me Oh My-Oh" in her opener "Miss Ohio". She dedicated her next song to one of her favorite dead folk heroes (Elvis) which included some beautiful harmonizing and was just simply a pretty song. They brought it down a bit but quickly brought us right back up with some simple banjo on Steve Miller's "Quicksilver Girl", followed by "No One Knows My Name" which totally reminded me of one of those old Sunday School songs we used to sing back home. The crowd was totally rocking out to the nice bluegrass jam that followed and then we were all stunned by the amazing slow-paced duet she sang with David Rawlings, "Throw Me A Rope". He's got a beautiful, soothing voice and it was the highlight of the whole performance for me.

The tempo picked back up again for a total reel that had the audience clapping along and oooh! noodling! At this point, Gillian told us a funny little story about meeting Loretta Lynn at the Grand Ole Opry: "You know, they just don't make the good diet pills no more!" followed by a big ol' jam. As I was headed to my car to beat the mass exodus from the park, Gillian got the only encore of the day, finishing with a great version of "Jackson" and "I'll Fly Away", finishing off a really wonderful, lazy summer day. Hopefully they'll be back again next year.

Star Anna in-store at Easy Street Records (QA) tonight

Jflores — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 21:26:01 +0000

Remember Star Anna from Exile in Imaginary Guyville?

The girl with the big voice has a new record out today with her band The Laughing Dogs called The Only Thing That Matters. It is a great follow up to Crooked Path, her critically and fan acclaimed debut.

She'll be stopping by Queen Anne Easy Street tonight at 7 pm to celebrate! She also has a record release show at The Tractor Tavern this Saturday.

Mike McCready? Hendrix Tribute? TRACTOR?

imaginary victoria — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 19:53:12 +0000

Day-job calendar scouring strikes again!

Best of 2008: it's half-yearly check-in time

three imaginary girls — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 16:45:01 +0000

As of today, we're officially in the second half of 2008. Welcome! To gear you up for another fabulous six months of local Northwest releases, we here at imaginary headquarters have brainstormed an imaginary mix for all of you, containing some of our favorite songs by Northwest artists released this year to date thus far.

No promises that each of these will make our Best of 2008 Reader's Poll final list, but at least this way you have the next six months to follow-up and listen to these releases before you have to decide. To paraphrase imaginary ChrisB, we feel like this list is pretty unfuckwithable. But that doesn't mean that we didn't inadvertently overlook something great. If you have additions for our list, please chime in with your comments below.

Celebrating six years of TIG at Exile in {Imaginary} Girlville

imaginary dana — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 21:07:07 +0000

25 Jun 2008

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Last night Three Imaginary Girls celebrated two momentous occasions -- our sixth birthday, and the re-release of one of our favorite albums of all times, Liz Phair's seminal debut Exile in Guyville -- with the best tribute to the fine record we could think of: nine of our favorite Northwest bands, covering the record from start to finish. We're still reeling from the sheer giddiness of the night. Chop Suey was packed with over 300 amazing people, reveling in the joy of finally getting to hear the album performed live by such amazing musicians.

The bands were stellar. Srsly. I had extremely high expectatation for the night, and they were all exceeded.

Thanks so much to all the amazing bands who played; thanks a zillion to Easy Street Records, KEXP, Seattle Sound Magazine for co-sponsoring the night and especially to David Schmader of the Stranger for co-emceeing it; and most of all, thanks to all of YOU, our readers for an insanely wonderful six years of Three Imaginary Girls.

Without further ado, here's the setlist as well as some fabu-photos from the night. We expect loads more pictures coming in the next few days; in fact, if you have some yourself, please post them to our TIG Sparkly Indie Pop Flickr group.

Lucy Bland "6'1""
Lucy Bland "Help Me Mary"
Star Anna "Glory"
Star Anna "Dance Of The Seven Veils"
Tennis Pro "Never Said"
Tennis Pro "Soap Star Joe"
M. Bison "Explain It To Me"
M. Bison "Canary"
Visqueen "Mesmerizing"
Rachel Flotard "Fuck And Run"
Lesli Wood "Girls! Girls! Girls!"
Lesli Wood "Divorce Song"
Team Gina "Shatter"
Team Gina "Flower"
Tea Cozies "Johnny Sunshine"
Tea Cozies "Gunshy"
Throw Me The Statue "Stratford-On-Guy"
Throw Me The Statue "Strange Loop"

Lucy Bland, standing six-feet-one instead of five-feet-two. Photo by Laura Musselman.

Who knew "Help Me Mary" needed a glockenspiel? Lucy Bland, that's who. Photo by Laura Musselman.

Star Anna bowled us over with her throaty, sparse interpretations of her songs. Photo by Laura Musselman.

Tennis Pro rocked "Never Said" in drag (and messy lipstick). Photo by Laura Musselman.

M. Bison killed "Canary." Photo by Laura Musselman.

M. Bison: They come when called. Photo by Laura Musselman.

Rachel Flotard of Visqueen was Mesmerrizing. Photo by Laura Musselman.

Letters and sodas and Visqueen. Photo by Laura Musselman.

Lesli Wood gets away with what the girls call murder. Photo by Laura Musselman.

Lesli is backed up by Cristina Bautista and the Team Ginas. Photo by Laura Musselman.

Anna Banana backup dances. Photo by Laura Musselman.

Gina Genius. Photo by Laura Musselman.

Gina Bling: Wants to be your blowjob queen? Photo by Jeanine Anderson.

Tea Cozies are "Gunshy." Photo by Laura Musselman.

Throw Me the Statue like to pretend they're in a Galaxie 500 video. Photo by Jeanine Anderson.

Throw Me the Statue. Photo by Jeanine Anderson.

Co-emcee David Schmader. Photo by Laura Musselman.

Photo by Laura Musselman.

See the setlist and some amazing photos from last night's Exile in {Imaginary} Girlville bash!

Exile in {Imaginary} Girlville

imaginary dana — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 17:17:56 +0000

THREE IMAGINARY GIRLS TO HOST "EXILE IN {IMAGINARY} GIRLVILLE," AN EXILE IN GUYVILLE TRIBUTE NIGHT

June 3, 2008, Seattle, WA: It's true that we stole your lighter. And it's also true that we lost the map. That's why Three Imaginary Girls will proudly present the songs of Liz Phair's triumphant debut record "Exile in Guyville" as interpreted by some of the best up-and- coming bands in the Northwest. The event is called "Exile in {Imaginary} Girlville" and is co- sponsored by Easy Street Records, Seattle Sound Magazine, and 90.3 KEXP.

Exile in {Imaginary} Girlville takes place on Wednesday night June 25, 2008 at Chop Suey and features Throw Me the Statue, Team Gina, Star Anna, Tennis Pro, Lucy Bland, M. Bison, Tea Cozies, as well as special performances by Rachel Flotard of Visqueen and Lesli Wood of Ms. Led. The bands will perform the songs on the record in order, from "6'1"" to "Strange Loop" and everything in-between.

The event marks the 15th anniversary of the release of "Exile in Guyville" and ATO Records' re-release of the album with additional demo tracks, as well as finally releasing a vinyl version of the record. Which is certainly cause for celebration.

Speaking of celebration, the night also commemorates the sixth anniversary of Three Imaginary Girls.

"'Exile in Guyville' was such a pivotal record for me that it seems fitting to revel the start of Three Imaginary Girls to that soundtrack as performed by our favorite local bands," said Dana Bos, co-founder of Three Imaginary Girls.

Three Imaginary Girls anticipates another year of incredible live music and record reviews, as well as some new exciting changes. The website has some new looks and colors coming very soon as well as other big fun updates planned for the coming year.

But for now, the excitement is focused on June 25.

"Sure, Liz Phair just announced that she'll be performing 'Exile in Guyville' on the same name, in New York" said Liz Riley, co-founder of Three Imaginary Girls. "But I'd rather hear Rachel Flotard sing "Fuck and Run" than Liz Phair herself.

Do you wonder just how wild that would be? Join Three Imaginary Girls on June 25 to find out.

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THE JUICY DETAILS

WHAT: Three Imaginary Girls "Exile in {Imaginary} Girlville" show. Co-sponsored by 90.3 KEXP, Seattle Sound Magazine, and Easy Street Records. Proceeds to benefit Planned Parenthood of Western Washington.
WHERE: Chop Suey, 1325 E. Madison Street Seattle, WA
WHEN: Wednesday, June 25, 2008. Doors open 8p. 21+.
COST: $8. Advance tickets available through Ticketweb.

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Practice all your moves, and mark your calendars: Celebrate TIGs sixth anniversary with us at Chop Suey on June 25!

Exile in {Imaginary} Girlville, TONIGHT!!!

imaginary dana — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 16:33:46 +0000

Chop Suey. Tonight, Wednesday night, June 25th. Doors at 8p, "6'1"" starts promptly at 9p. Come celebrate six fabulous years of TIG with us.

Star Anna on KEXP tonight

imaginary dana — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 18:25:53 +0000

Tune in!

Three Imaginary Girls Podcast June 2008

three imaginary girls — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 18:56:53 +0000

Three Imaginary Girls will celebrate our sixth birthday with an Exile in {Imaginary} Girlville bash at Chop Suey on June 25, 2008, which will feature the music of Liz Phair's seminal debut Exile in Guyville performed in order by a bunch of our favorite Northwest bands of the moment. This podcast highlights the music of those bands. Enjoy!

39:41 minutes (8 MB)

Exciting TIG show news!! Exile in {Imaginary} Girlville show on June 25th at Chop Suey

imaginary dana — Wed, 21 May 2008 22:30:19 +0000

The night is called "Exile in {Imaginary} Girlville," it's going down June 25th at Chop Suey, and it's going to be an INCREDIBLE party!

Flickr photo of the day: Shane Tutmarc and Star Anna

imaginary dana — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 16:51:23 +0000

Shane Tutmarc and Star Anna at the Easy Street Records International Record Store Day on April 18, 2008.