The Barrel House Mamas - Gathering - Music & Performance - CD

The Barrel House Mamas: Sweet & Sultry Mountain Music The Barrel House Mamas represent the fluid union of three equally talented yet vastly divergent female musicians combining to create a seamless and even timeless sound that manages to be, all at once, sultry, undeniably sweet, yet strong and robust. These three women draw from equally divergent backgrounds, cultural histories and musical influences such as Joni Mitchell, Bonnie Raitt, Mary J. Blidge, Natalie Merchant, Taj Mahal and traditional Old Time, and claim hometowns from rural Williamsburg Virginia to Philadelphia to the center of urban Atlanta. The result is a rare and crisp musical harmony that is perhaps best described by the pristine natural features of their current home in western North Carolina: gentle and mighty as the course of the Swannanoa River, wise, secretive and patient as the towering Blue Ridge Mountains, or layered and complex as the roots of a dense Rhododendron. These three women: Eleanor Underhill, Molly Reed and Jane Kramer Edens, met while attending Warren Wilson College in the Swannanoa River Valley. In March of 2003, then only acquaintances who shared a love for music in it's many forms and the rich culture and sounds of Appalachia, Molly, Jane and Eleanor were to perform individual sets of their original music in honor of an event hosted by the college celebrating women musicians. One week prior to this Women's Music Night event in what was supposed to be a playful, one-time collaboration as a finale for the show, their voices and instruments meshed for the first time, echoing up a cold dormitory stairwell, stopping passers by, and converging into a deep and comfortable oneness often likened to that of blood relative performing groups. Now two years later, they have flowered into a tight, fiercely unique and gracefully powerful musical trio, maintaining each woman's individual voice in ever-more complex three part vocal harmonies featured in original songs and some creative arrangements of old favorites. Somewhere between the trickling twang of the banjo which slides effortlessly between intensely melodic solos, traditional Claw Hammer rhythms and funky percussive riffs, the blues pluck of their jumbo-bodied guitar, the folksy arpeggios of their classical guitar, the classical and sometimes Middle Eastern-inspired flute lines and the soulful belting of heartfelt poetry, The Barrel House Mamas possess a sound which is truly these Mamas' own. Earning a growing following in Asheville, NC where they reside as well as in Atlanta and other parts of the Southeast and recently receiving praise for their original songs and sound from Indigo Girl Emily Sailiers, the Barrel House Mamas have cultivated a rich musical garden, the harvest of which seems to simply be growing sweeter. Jane Kramer Eden - guitar, flute, vocals Molly Reed- guitar, banjo, vocals Eleanor Underhill- banjo, banjo ukulele, vocals.

• GATHERING
• Music & Performance
• Barrel House Mamas