Artists:Angie Palmer

Angie Palmer's life, it is fair to say, has been a bit different. At seventeen she left England for Europe, deciding to do a bit of traveling before taking up a place at art college. In fact she ended up living there for seven years and making a living from playing music...

“I had a battered old Spanish guitar and I knew a couple of chords that an old boyfriend had shown me....I still remember the first few francs I made from playing music, I played three songs in the Paris metro and that was it...I was a minstrel following in the long tradition of the wandering musician. At least that’s how I saw myself back then.”

Angie spent that seven years living mainly in Paris and Geneva, busking, playing bars and clubs, and small festivals. But it wasn't an easy way to earn a living. Apart from the competition from some of the other street musicians and the indifference of the public, there was also the fact that she was female...

“People often comment on the aggressiveness of my playing, but a lot of my style came from pure economics: the better I played the better I ate. It was as simple as that. I wanted to be as good as I could, but I had to compete with others so I went for making my guitar sound as big as possible. I thumped and slapped it to get some percussion so that I could grab people’s attention. If they did that they might part with some money. I still have the old Guild that I traveled with and it looks like it has been used as cricket bat! I could never part with it, all my learning was done on that guitar.”

Angie’s time in Europe was also spent writing songs, some of which appear on her first CD: A Certain Kind of Distance which she recorded on her return to England and took around the country’s blues and folk circuit, including two years appearing on the acoustic stage at Glastonbury. These were songs that Angie had been playing live for a long time and represented a solitary, traveling way of life. Whereas Angie's first CD was a totally solo effort, her next, romantica obscura, has drums and bass as well as cello, violin, and congas. It was on this CD that Angie first began working with her songwriting partner Paul Mason...

“romantica obscura is a CD that I had always wanted to make; working with someone whose songs that have a strong lyrical element. I guess it’s a bit like Joni Mitchell’s “Hejira-Summer Lawns” period, especially as the main instrument after my guitar is a fretless bass, and some of the arrangements have a more complex, yet slightly ‘free’ feel to them.”

Angie’s new CD Road has been recorded with Alan Gregson at West Orange. This CD is a return to her stripped down acoustic roots and finds Angie working with another guitarist, (Mark Townson) for the first time as well as with and Richard Curran on violin and mandolin. These songs again have strong narratives, but here they are grounded in an Americana country-blues musical setting that finds Angie drawing on her love of storytellers like Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, and later songwriters like Buddy and Julie Miller and Gillian Welch...

“I had been listening to Gillian Welch’s Time (the Revelator) a lot, the way she brings together stories and music that seems both traditional and revolutionary, and thinking about where my heart is really at. I realized that it is where it has always been; in an acoustic performance. The songs on this CD are the ones I am most proud of and I think I am singing and playing better than I have ever done. For me these new songs, for the first time really, capture everything that I am as a musician and a writer and I feel strongly connected to that songwriting tradition. It’s been a long journey but I think I have finally found my voice.

Angie’s music is now being championed by Bob Harris who recently chose her as one of only two female singer-songwriters on his recent “Best of British” show and invited her to play at one of his “Bob Harris Presents...” From Mojo to Maverick the music press has received “Road” with 4 and 5 star reviews (see reviews) and she has been compared by many with Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell thanks to lyrics described by reviewers as “intelligent” and “literate”. For others her potent mix of country, blues, and folk served up with equal measures of aggression and tenderness has led her to called the “British Lucinda Williams”..