Brooklyn based , Estevan, Saskatchewan born songwriter Ana Egge
entertained an intimate audience with beautiful alt country music at the
Geomatic Attic, June 9 for the last day of her tour with her trio.
Egge looked completely blissed out as she strummed her acoustic guitar and switched between a mandolin and a resonator guitar.
Though she was suffering from a cold she picked up in Saskatchewan, her voice and music sounded like a mix of Kathleen Edwards, kd lang and The Cowboy Junkies. John Kengla alternated between laying down a groove on the bass and playing tasteful guitar solos while drummer Michael Thompson kept the beat. Egge was in complete bliss as she strummed and sang with her eyes closed, playing songs and telling stories from throughout her careers.
A couple of the highlights off the new CD were “Hole in Your Halo” and another which Steve Earle sang on on the CD.
She
played a pretty, low key set only picking up the tempo on a couple
songs, like on “ Fairest of them All,” which was definitely a highlight.
She talked about murder ballads and visiting an abandoned hotel in
upstate New York which had been closed for 40 years and about finding
old newspapers from the late 1800’s and being caught up in their
graphic reports of the crime of the day. That lead her into another of
the show’s haunting highlights “Evil.” from her new CD “Bad Blood.”
She
slowed things even more as her band left the stage leaving her to
perform a handful of solo acoustic songs on a n old mandolin she
borrowed from a friend in Austin and an old Resonator guitar. By the end
of the night she got the audience singing along with her on a solid
version of an old Bee Gees folk song “ To Love Somebody.”
She ended
her show with a spirited version of her song “Motorcycle,” but a
standing ovation brought her back for an encore of “Talko Girl” and a
Sam Cooke song.
Bridgette Yarwood and Jason Eveleigh made their
Geomatic Attic debut to open the show. They played a variety of Yarwood’s jazz
tinged originals and a beautiful version of Etta James’ “At Last.” One
of the highlights was her “dirty song” “Nobody Else To Blame But
Myself.”
She sang beautifully as always, and added some impressive vocalizations which showed off her range.
— By Richard Amery, L.A. Beat Editor
