Artists:Blind Willies
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Blind Willies is Annie Staninec, multi-genre fiddler, and Alexei Wajchman, guitarist/singer/songwriter. They met and began playing together at San Francisco School of the Arts.
Annie has been playing bluegrass/old time fiddle for more than a decade. She's also a consummate gypsy jazz violinist. In 2006, she toured with David Grisman and the Gypsy Caravan. The highlight of those performances was a full orchestra playing David Grisman’s “Gypsy Medley” from his soundtrack recording for the film, King of the Gypsies. As the featured fiddler, Annie electrified audiences in solos that honored the late Stéphane Grappelli who originally recorded the piece with David. She has also played with Darol Anger, Mike Marshall, Stephane Wrembel, and Crooked Still. Annie was Djangofest Northwest's 2006 recipient of the Dudley Hill Award for exceptional young artist. In 2008 she was named Fiddler of the Year at the inaugural Northern California Bluegrass Awards.
Alexei grew up in San Francisco's Mission District. After learning to play clarinet and sax, he taught himself to play guitar and began writing songs at 15. He was awarded the Blue Bear Celebrity Scholarship to study guitar and voice in 2002 and 2003, and he was a 2003 California Arts Scholar in sax. His early influences included Nirvana, Bob Dylan, Woody Guthrie, Velvet Underground, Robert Johnson, Leadbelly, Hank Williams, Jimi Hendrix, The Doors. His music is a soulful mix of folk, country, rock, and blues, and his lyrics are an intimate exploration of America's psycho/social landscapes. Writing in the popular online zine Delusions of Adequacy, editor Jennifer Patton wrote "Blind Willies play incredibly wonderful music. Alexei is a remarkable songwriter."
Blind Willies made their professional debut at San Francisco's Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival in 2004. They've played Berkeley's legendary Freight and Salvage, SF's Great American Music Hall, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Zeum, and the SF Folk Festival. In 2007 they performed with Peter Stampfel(The Holy Modal Rounders, The Fugs) in New York, and opened for Penelope Houston(Avengers) in San Francisco.
Their debut album, The Unkindness of Ravens, was recorded and mixed by Lemon DeGeorge(Jolie Holland, film Genghis Blues) at Crib Nebula in San Francisco, and mastered by Paul Carlsen(Nirvana's Nevermind) at the Russian River.
Blind Willies' new CD, Everybody's Looking for a Meal, was released in May 2008.
The Unkindness of Ravens was the featured review in popular online music zine, Delusions of Adequacy, on April 12, 2007. It's on editor Jennifer Patton's 2007 Top 10 Albums list:
Blind Willies' debut, The Unkindness of Ravens, has been knocking around my CD player for quite a few months now, quietly haunting random moments of my life during this tail end of winter and early spring. As the days grow longer and the East Coast slowly emerges from icy temperatures, I've come to love this disc rather a lot - so much so, that I find words are failing me. How can one truly relay the maddening beauty of the first crocus poking through the dry, cracked Earth to someone who has never seen it happen? How can I possibly explain something like the Blind Willies song, "Last Rites in December", in such a way that you'll understand how breathtaking it is?
Blind Willies are Annie Staninec (fiddle) and Alexei Wajchman (guitar, vocals), a duo that met while at San Francisco School of the Arts. Staninec and Wajchman, both accomplished musicians, made their professional debut as Blind Willies in 2004 at a bluegrass festival. Since then, they've played a variety of venues and recorded their first release - a collection of ten acoustic tunes featuring the fiddle, guitar, and a bit of harmonica.
There's nothing overtly unexpected on The Unkindness of Ravens, but Blind Willies play incredibly wonderful music. Alexei is a remarkable songwriter whose lyrics go well beyond the average ramblings of most singer-songwriters. Even "Mainline" - with its "hungry pawn store prisoners" - is well-crafted enough to run with the big boys and Wajchman wrote the song at the tender age of 15. Annie's fiddle is the perfect accompaniment for Alexei and it's the soft wails from her instrument that really give this album an overall feel of quiet desperation - like waking up in a cold sweat with traces of a nightmare clouding your mind.
Tracks like the seven minute long "Something in the Night" are further proof of Alexei's knack as a wordsmith; here, he sings "there's something in the night/even when you're blind/taking drugs to cancel time/that keeps your eyes wide open and your heart clenched tight" and the scene almost materializes right in front of you. Still, it's the opening track, "Last Rites in December" that gives me butterflies every time I hear it. This song just has that certain something that makes it stunning and I find myself returning to it over and over again. "Last Rites in December" is Blind Willies' perfect blend of instruments and voice(s). As Wajchman and Staninec sing "there's no warmth in this city/there's no joy in this lover of mine/so I'm leaving with nothing/I think I'll make it this time" you can feel not only the heartbreak, but the delicate new leaf of hope.
Although I'm sure my words are woefully inadequate, I cannot urge fans of all sorts of folk music enough that they should not miss out on The Unkindness of Ravens. The opening track alone is sufficient to pay for this debut CD, but there are nine other gems just waiting to be discovered. -Jennifer Patton 04/12/07
5/30/08 Review of new CD, Everybody's Looking for a Meal:
So many good albums, so little time! I really enjoyed the Blind Willies' debut album, The Unkindness of Ravens - so much so that it made the number 7 slot on my Top 10 of 2007 list. I was thrilled when the new Blind Willies disc, Everybody's Looking for a Meal, arrived recently. Though it's a great album, I just haven't found the time to do a full review that can do justice to the music here, so I thought I'd focus on one track - "If You Was a Good Pimp".
Other than having a great title, "If You Was a Good Pimp" shows off everything great about this duo. Annie Staninec (fiddle) and Alexei Wajchman (guitar, vocals) play off each other expertly here. Both the guitar and fiddle rock and roll off each other like nobody's business, and Staninec's chorus vocals give a gospel feel to Wajchman's more earnest singing.
Since I heard the first Blind Willies disc I've felt that Wajchman has a knack for writing lyrics, and this song is no exception. Consider "If you was a good pimp, Jesus would be smiling. I'm no two-bit mama, I'm no trash bag sister. You better play it right, I ain't gonna hook for you no more." I love it! Just like "Last Rites in December" from the debut moved me emotionally, this tune makes me shuffle and shimmy.
"If You Was a Good Pimp" is a fine example of what the Blind Willies is all about. I hope Annie and Alexei continue to follow this path, and continue to make great music. If I had a proper place to host, I'd be all over inviting these two by for a backyard party into the wee hours. Grilling, drinks, good friends, and the Blind Willies sounds like a perfect summer Saturday night to me!
-Jennifer Patton http://adequacy.net/review.php?reviewID=8762
9/6/08 CD Baby Review
Category: Music
Meal Ticket, CD Baby review, Paul Landers, 8/08
A radical album. That's all you need to know. Like The Unkindness of Ravens, their first CD, this one is a collection of stories that construct a powerful telling of what it's like to be alive, to be hungry, to feel the pain of desire and denial, to struggle through a day and to come out in one piece on the other side of one's dreams. Whether Alexei Wajchman's narrator is a child expressing want, a prostitute demanding simple respect, a homeless drifter dreaming of a lost life, or a lover betrayed, the intelligence of his lyrics gives a heightened poetic realism to the unsentimental testaments these characters deliver. Now add a musical universe of genres that suck up every American influence stirring the melting pot culture at large, played by two early twentysomething musicians who seem to have rocked together since birth, and you have some notion of what's going on here. Annie Staninec's fiddle is a Tower of Babel unto itself. If there was music outside while the masons and carpenters and water carriers were working their way up that spiral Jacob's Ladder, it sounded exactly like her fiddle does in Sinners Medley. Her vocabulary is endless, electric, melodious, and certifiably mad. She's as comfortable in funk, gospel, blues, jazz, country, old-time religion, cabaret, and rock, as she is in a Yiddish vernacular that breaks your heart while you're catching your breath. Wajchman is also a powerful guitar player. He plays what looks like a dreadnaught tank. His rhythm has a pulsing kick that drives his fiddle player into what sounds like mystery revealed. Their work on If You Was a Good Pimp is drop dead on. A quick rundown of the other songs. Mom Says No is so good they had to do it twice, at the beginning in Alexei's sneering complaint, and at the end sung by Annie in a tone that's innocent but strangely ominous. Trampin' is gospel turned on its head. They'll crucify a stranger though he's done his time. Heaven isn't all the false prophets promise. The title track, Everybody's Looking for a Meal, is a beautiful, rocking anthem of daily human conduct. Imagine it played by a marching band at our next president's Inaugural. Don't Trade In Paradise is a reflection of what we lose when we leave. The places we run away from are never far behind, never far from haunting. The music is a perfect sphere of melody and intention. Sinners Medley begins with a Yiddish traditional about a Rabbi who dances to keep the Devil down. The fiddler takes us back to a Polish shtetl where reverence and joy are tempered by respect for the unseen but unmistakable dark forces. Alexei berates the congregation in a Yiddish growl that spirals wildly with the fiddle into his original song, Shadows Everywhere, a soliloquy sung by a fallen man who sees corruption wherever he turns. Then there are the next 5 songs which play like a bildungsroman of love, betrayal, loss, denial, recognition, resolution, survival, and unmitigated scorn. It's an epic cycle, not a loose word in it, and it takes the album in a different musical direction but still very much about hunger and its consequences. Carnival is a masterpiece of sound and lyric. These songs are blue ballads of a heart laid bare, exposed to the elements, subject to worms, but stronger for having been eaten alive. Shark Out of Water is a party song. There isn't a person alive who doesn't understand the poisonous smile Wajchman nails mercilessly to the cross. I'm in awe of the beauty and bedrock sensibility of this record.
All too often, musicians take the path of least resistance in an attempt to be universally 'popular' so it is refreshing to come across an album that has something to say that is worth saying.
The greatest gift of Everybody's Looking For A Meal is that each time you return - and believe me you will - you'll discover a completely different album in front of you.
But be warned in place of sugar coated, banal nonsense you'll find an album that demands as much of the listener as it did of its creators.
Michael Mee, Americana UK review, 7/31/08, Everybody's Looking for a Meal
Imagine the White Stripes driven by the fevered folk of Leadbelly and Woody Guthrie, and you might get some idea of where the Blind Willies are coming from. Like Meg and Jack before them, they combine to create a sound bigger than the mere sum of their parts. High points include the rich, sneering sarcasm of "Mom Says No," the bluesy, Jagger-esque swagger of "Shark Out of Water," and the dark gypsy sorcery of "Sinners Medley." It's this sound, of traditional music being seized by musicians with new, fiercely held ideas of their own, that makes this album so invigorating. Keith Laidlaw Everybody's Looking For a Meal review 7/4/08 KQED Arts & Culture http://www.kqed.org/arts/music/index.jsp?id=22971
NOTE: Annie teaches improv fiddle at Alaska's Cordova 4H Music Camp.
External links
| Blind Willies on MySpace |
| Blind Willies on Wikipedia |
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If You Was A Good Pimp, an original performed 5/24/2008.
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Request a show of songs by Blind Willies
| Song | Album | Length | Played | Overall | You | Tags | Single Request |
| Mainline | The Unkindness Of Ravens | 4:04 | 5 |  7 votes |
You have to login to give your opinion about songs. | Instrumental / Acoustic / Solo vocalist / Acoustic guitar / Fiddle / Alternative / Americana / Ballad / Sparsely produced | Ticket Into Heaven | Everybody's Looking For A Meal | 4:33 | 2 |  3 votes |
You have to login to give your opinion about songs. | Fiddle / Acoustic guitar / Americana / Solo vocalist | Mom Says No Reprise | Everybody's Looking For A Meal | 3:15 | 1 |  2 votes |
You have to login to give your opinion about songs. | Fiddle / Americana / Solo vocalist / Banjo |
| Total Time | 11:52 |
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Artist name is|Blind Willies Last played| more than 1 month ago ---------------------------------------- Show name| Songs by Blind Willies Length| 15 minutes Order by| random Limit| 3 songs ----------------------------------------
Stats
- Spotlighted: Monday, April 30th 2007
- Songs on WWR: 15
- Total plays: 57
- Total requests: 48
- Total listens: 1794
- CDBaby referrals: 0
- CDBaby sales:
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