Vladimir Vissotski, Alan Price, Big Joe Williams, Blind Blake, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Blind Willie Johnson, Blind Willie Mctell, Bessie Smith, Blind Boy Grunt, Bob Dylan, The Band, Bruce Springsteen, Brecht/Weill, Stephen Sondheim, Huddie Ledbetter, Beethoven, Dave Van Ronk, David Blue, Dead Kennedys, Django Reinhardt, Dock Boggs, The Doors, Dvorak, Elvis, Frank Zappa, Fred Neil, Hank Williams, Lefty Frizzell, J.B. Lenoir,
The Jonah Kit, Leonard Cohen, Lightnin' Hopkins, Lou Reed, Meat Puppets, Mississippi John Hurt, Muddy Waters, Neil Young, Nico, Nirvana, Odetta, Otis Redding, Patti Smith, Phil Ochs, The Pogues, Ramblin' Jack Elliot, Rev. Gary Davis, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Skip James, The Staple Singers, Townes Van Zandt, Ted Hawkins, Vic Chesnutt, Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, Jimmie Rodgers, Coltrane, Benny Goodman, Artie Shaw, Billie Holiday, Gene Krupa, Stravinsky, Sol Wajchman.
Sounds Like
The Unkindness Of Ravens came today
in the mail. I'm listening to it now.
And I love it, the songs, the good
sound of it, the intimacy of it, old
spirits joined in its newness.
I will introduce your music to my
show's listeners on March 1st.
Thank you for sharing yourselves in
music, and for getting a copy of
this beautiful recording to me.
Doug Lang
Better Days Radio
coopradio.org, 102.7FM
Vancouver, BC
" . . . these ten tales explore the darker side of life with word play that is evocative of a quiet desperation, a cool loathing of unavoidable situations or perhaps a pitiful yearning for redemption. Take this as an example: “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” (‘There’s Something In The Night’) or the near genius of: “Marie was born in Santa Fe/with saxophone and pretty lace/she’d play for food or spread her thighs/depending on the moon/and on its hollow bones of solitude” (‘Marie’). There’s plenty more where these gems came from and with scarcely a track less than five, six or seven minutes long there’s plenty of scope for developing the themes."
Paul Villers, Americana UK
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, Editor
Delusions of Adequacy
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Blind Willies perform If You Was A Good Pimp, 5/24/08:
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
It's not often I write to thank an artist on the same day as I receive a CD in the mail. Indeed I don't often listen to them for weeks. As I am listening to it for the 4th time now, continuously, it is dawning on me what a unique album this is. The country/bluegrassy tones give
a driving rhythm to some of the most thought provoking songs I've heard for a long time, as well as some of the best fiddling. Sinners Medley opens with a freilachs type tune(rarely heard on radio in Israel)and goes on to become a satanic urban nightmare. I didn't actually intend to write a review, just to say that what initially appeared to me to be a bit of a weird CD rapidly turned into something marvelous which is going to take me many many spins to fully fathom out - if ever I do. Many many thanks for this. I will give it airplay just as soon as I present my next American format program.
Menachem Vinegrad, Director
Radio Upper Galilee
Jacob's Ladder Folk Festival, Israel
Everybody's Looking for a Meal, 11/11/08
"Everybody's Looking For A Meal" is a very interesting and fine album, with a highly individual approach to folk and roots music. I want you to know that more music from your CD will be on air in the next weeks.
Massimo Ferro
Highway 61/Radio Voce Spazio
Alessandria, Italy 11/30/08
Last Rites In December, 8/29/07 at Freight and Salvage:
I love your unique sound, edgy lyrics, and urban sensibility
combined with a Woody Guthrie heart.
Lilli Kuzma
Folk Festival, WDCB Chicago Public Radio 12/2/08
Just a quickie late night note from southwest montana, to say I'm kickin back tickled fine up with your fiddle and good songs singing. I'm spinnin' your disc on the americana backroads show, and grateful for the good music you have offered up here. Favorite cuts? (everybody wants to know) well, tonight I'm saying 2, 4, and my very most favorite is 5 "Don't Trade in Paradise." I think lots of folks here will be relating to it. Thanks again.
Rik James
Americana Backroads, KGLT, 12/11/08
I am doing an Artist Spotlight next week – show 335, culling from both your CDs. I really dig your writing & vocal style and the old-timey fiddle is a cool complement. Keep doing what you’re doing, ‘cause it works.
Blind Willies is Alexei Wajchman, guitarist/singer/songwriter, and Annie Staninec, multi-genre fiddler. They met and began playing together at San Francisco School of the Arts. They're both recent graduates of University of California Santa Cruz.
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.
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 Falcon Ridge Folk Festival's 2008 Emerging Artists Showcase, The Folk Project's Minstrel Concert Series, San Luis Obispo Folk Music Society Concert Series, SF's 2008 Summer Sailstice, Berkeley's Freight and Salvage, SF's Great American Music Hall, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Zeum, SF Folk Festival, Djangofest, and smaller venues throughout the Bay Area and NYC. In 2007 they performed with Peter Stampfel(The Holy Modal Rounders, The Fugs)at New York's Sidewalk Cafe.
Their albums were recorded and mixed by Lemon DeGeorge(Jolie Holland, Sundance Audience Award documentary Genghis Blues) at Crib Nebula in San Francisco, and mixed and mastered by Paul Carlsen(Nirvana's Nevermind, Neil Young, John Prine) at Paul Carlsen Productions in Guerneville on the Russian River.
Confirmed radio play includes Better Days Radio, Vancouver, BC; Pirate Cat Radio, SF; KPIG, KRSH, WXPN, WFUV Woody's Children, KPFA, WFDU, KALW, KZSC, KUSP, KYOU, KQED, KDVS, KKUP, WTSR, WOBC, WTJU, WDVX Writer's Block, WCOM Taproot Radio, Americana Roots, WWUH, KZSU, KRCB, KSCL, WBGU, KAOS, WTUL, WCBN, KBCS, WEFT, WMBR, KCBX, KBGA, WSDP, WDCB, KXCI, WRKF, KACI, WLRN, KCSC, WFHB, KUSU, WMUD, KAFM, Thayrone's The Bone Conduction Music Show(syndicated), WRFL, WDBX, KGLP, Radio Marabu/Europe/No Pigeonholes, Hanx/Netherlands, Crossroads/Netherlands, Heart of the Night & TransAtlantic Acoustic indieheart.com podcasts, indieSF.com, Todd Mack's Off the Beat-n-Track, Suffolk 'n Cool/UK, CKUA Tom Coxworth's Folk Routes/Canada, WYEP, WGDR, CJLX, CKHA, WHAY, WBSD, WKZE, WHDD, NHPR, KRCC, KLOI, CHES Erin Radio, CJTR, Progressive Roots/WSJF, WHJX, WFJO, KFOK, WMRD-AM, WLIS, WMPG, WXIN, KVMR, WMUC, 2 MAX/Australia, Triplej/Australia, 3 INR/Australia, 2AIR/Australia, 4RED/Australia, Radio Upper Galilee/Israel, Highway 61 Radio Voce Spazio/Italy, Radio EVW, Germany, Radio ZuSa, Germany. If you hear Blind Willies please let us know the station/podcast. Many stations don't post playlists or confirm play.
Blind Willies T-shirt available now in Small and Medium Black 100% pre-shrunk soft lightweight 4.5oz cotton. Very comfortable. Image is white, grey, red, black.
PRESS
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
Listening to this album is like reading a book
of stories in a Greyhound terminal in the
middle of the night. There are a few people
sleeping in chairs around you, the
fluorescent lights are spooky and warm at
the same time, and one stark and poignant
story after another--of loss, redemption,
love, hope and no hope--leaves you
somehow elated to be alive and on your way
anywhere. I love these songs.
Sean Adams, CD Baby review, The Unkindness of Ravens
We got this in the mail a couple of weeks
ago and really like the stripped-down folky
sound to Blind Willies . . . "Marie" reminds
me of "Hobo," a very old Tim Buckley tune
that I have on vinyl on a Linda
Ronstadt/Stone Poneys compilation. "Hobo"
has a cold and blustery sound to it, like a
Northeastern winter by the ocean. "Hobo"
and "Marie" share a similar, repeated
descending melody, but "Marie" sounds
more like the blown-out desert, a cold wind
howling as the sun descends on a scrubby
landscape of rock and cactus. The song's
tragic teen storyline reminds me of Ben
Ehrenreich's novel,The Suitors.
KQED December 2006 Mix Tape Dark X-mas
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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.
Meal Ticket, Paul Landers, CD Baby 8/08
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See all Blind Willies videos at http://www.youtube.com/user/blindwillies.
I thought you'd like to know that I'm going to feature songs from the Blind Willies' two recordings on my show tomorrow morning. There's a good many of the tracks from each disc that I think would fit right in with my show and on 'mix format' shows here at WFHB. It's rare that I'll listen to a disc and it'll be a week before I listen to something else, this has been a week like that. I really like your music. Thanks to you and Annie for a good sound, it is well appreciated here.
Mark Richardson, 12/5/08
Host, Roots For Breakfast, WFHB-FM
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My Music Director happened to be in the station last night, and she ran into the studio and demanded to know who was playing when Blind Willies were on. She loved it! I can tell you that in 15 years of volunteer DJ'ing I've never had that happen before.
Steve Harris, KRCC-FM, 4/8/09
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Blind Willies 11/09 One Dime Down video directed by Isaac Pingree:
So I'm in the middle of this painful intense massage and "Be fecund. Be vigilant" pops in my head and I start giggling uncontrollably and she got this weird look on her face, but I couldn't tell her I'm laughing at "Be fecund. Be vigilant."
Hello, it's me, Ruby Jane.To those who don't know me, I am a 14 year old fiddler, songwriter. I have some songs posted that are fresh out of the studio. Let me know if you like the new songs..be one of the first to hear, even before they are released!Thanks! new videos too! Ruby Jane
Founded in 1974 by Mimi Fariña, the sister of Joan Baez, Bread & Roses an organization that provides live entertainment to people who live in institutions or are otherwise isolated from society. http://breadandroses. org/
Tuesday, September 30 8th Notes From Underground Benefit Concert for Bread & Roses 7:00-9:30 pm Bazaar Cafe 5927 California Ave, SF, CA http://bazaarcafe. com/
Donations for Bread & Roses will be welcomed and appreciated.
HI !! Hey & Hi THANKS TO ADD Hello I’m an italian lover of good music, my name is Claude with the present letter, I send you my congratulation for your music I LIKE YOUR TRACKS IT’S A GOOD SOUND I’m a journalist of “BUSCADERO” the very best italian rock magazine, and other, desultorily I wrote on “Out Of Time” (roots music magazine) and the “FB Folk Bullettin” (folk magazine).
MY LAST REVIEWS: BUSCADERO July/Ago 2008: Floggin Molly: review live concert at Musicdrome - Milano 20,05.’08 Railroad Earth “Amen Corner” cd Michael Doucet “From You Noe On” cd Tony DeMarco “The Sligo Indians” cd Ned Ludd “Lavoro & Dignità” cd Riccardo Tesi “Presente Remoto” cd BUSCADERO June 2008: Davide Van de-Sfroos: review live concert at DatchForum, Assago-Milano 19,04.’08 Yonder Mountain String Band “Mountain Tracks: vol.5” 2cd Flavio Oreglio & LUF “Giù (non è stato facile cadere così in basso)” cd BUSCADERO May 2008: Waybacks: “Loaded” cd Clarence Gatemouth Brown “Live from Austin-City Limits” dvd Flaco Jimenez: “Ya Volvi De La Guerra” cd
F.B. Folk Bulletin June 2008: Riders In The Sky “Public Cowboy # 1 –The Music Of Gene Autry” cd IIIrd Tyme Out “Footprints: A IIIrd Tyme Out Collection” cd
I send you my best and brotherly rockin’ roots regards. ROOTS & RESPECT ALL THE BEST God Bless You.
Congrats on being selected to appear at the Falcon Ridge Folk Festival's Emerging Artists Showcase!
Don't forget, I will be featuring songs from all the Emerging Artists, including you guys, on my weekly web radio show, FiL With Sound, this Tuesday (July 15) from 5-7 pm ET at http://HearNewBrunswick. com.
I look forward to seeing you perform at Falcon Ridge!
The new CD sounds great. It's like Dylan, Waits, Springsteen and the Wandering Stranger stripped to their skivvies, singin' and shoutin' for their souls, while racing through the reeling Mission district night with the Devil cracking whips of fiddle strings at their heels, and bowing dark holler anthems with forked tongue and tail. Well done!
Love the songs so much I got on I tunes hunted you down and bought them I hope you guys come to Aus one day I am a big fan keep me updated on any new stuff.
