The Angel Voice of Annie Wells

Every once in a while I like to brag... Hey, what do you mean; “what do you mean 'once in a while'”, let me finish... Every once in a while I like to brag about one of my friends.

When I moved to Rochester from Canandaigua.... No, let's go further back...

In the times of the ancient Romans...

TOO FAR BACK!

When I was in college, a friend of mine Went to Geneseo State or “SUNY Geneseo”. There was a music shop in Geneseo called BUZZO's which is an experience of it's own. In that shop worked a talented dude named Mic Fambro who many of my friends had god-like respect for. He could, and perhaps will be, the subject of an entire blog post.

But not this one.

Mic turned me on to a lot of great stuff including one of my greatest influences “The Blue Nile”. He also turned me on to and introduced me to (in a round about way) a local artist named Annie Wells.

Yup, this is about her.

I met Annie at a record release party for “Miche' and the Anglos,” Mic's amazing band, but I had already heard her music so I was actually a bit star struck. That fact that she was very cute didn't help... or hurt... or help...

Annie was also very sweet and despite my awkward fawning over her and her music was kind and forgiving. It kinda reminds me of that scene in “High Fidelity” when John Cusack and his buddies see Lisa Bonet play at a bar and (sort-of) talk to her after her set.

Annie sang and played piano in a distinct style (both) her voice had the remarkable quality of being at once airy sweet and sultry. Her piano playing was jazzy but with a folksy quality all her own.

I got to hang out with Annie here and there. Once I helped her move in her apartment building from one floor to another. The biggest challenge was helping move her baby grand piano that she wrote most of her music on.

Imagine my surprise and delight when she called me and asked if I would be interesting in playing bass in her band. I said yes right away but I was concerned. Even though I had played all sorts of music from Jazz and classical to rock, the louder variety was all I had played for several years running--and not because I didn't enjoy it. I wasn't sure if I was going to do a good job playing under Annie's whisper-soft voice and her low key piano playing.

Our first rehearsal was at Annie's Parent's house about 40 miles away from Rochester. The recent bands I had rehearsed even further away so it didn't seem that far. It was just Annie, myself and a drummer who was a bit mediocre. Having a decent drummer has always been of pinnacle importance to me but I was so pleased to be playing with Annie that I didn't complain about the drummer until she herself expressed reservations.

For my part, it was a very odd thing not to hear my amp throbbing at 100dB and to deliberately allow long warm sustained notes without embelishment, to place subtle vibratos and nuance in ways that would have been completely lost in the fray of the other bands I had played in. Don't get me wrong, I loved 'the fray', I still do, but Annie's music opened me up to a new level of musicianship I hadn't had the need for since high school, but didn't have quite the skill to pull-off until then.

Annie's first gig was at the Women's Music Festival at William Smith College. I was pretty self conscious about being a dude playing at such an event but maybe not as much as I should have been. I joked with Annie that maybe we (the dudes in the band) should dress in drag. She didn't laugh and said that definitely wouldn't be a good idea. I believe she had played at the event before as a solo artist and had a better idea what was coming. My parents wanted to come see me play—the gig was in Geneva, New York, closer to where they lived than most of my gigs. My mom happened to be busy that day but my father came on his own. The stage of the daytime concert event was the raised portion of a grassy sunken garden. There where a smattering of people in lawn chairs—about fifty women of various ages and one guy, my dad—were gathered, mostly at a comfortably distance from the 'stage'. The exception was two college age girls lying on the grass only a few feet from where we were playing.

About halfway through Annie's set, I looked down at the two girls. I wasn't sure that what I was seeing was real. They had, in front of us and the entire audience started an impromptu wrestling match on the grass. No... that's not wrestling. They were... it appeared... passionately... making out? I both looked up at my dad and made sure not to look at him. It was the kind of awkward moment like when you got you're first VCR and found yourself watching R-rated movies sitting across from your parents for the first time. F-bombs and T&A bounced unabashedly around the room while you avoided their glance and they avoided yours.

I also avoided looking at the wrestlers, which in reality, meant I could look at nothing but.

Before our next gig Annie found a different drummer who, if nothing else, apparently had a local place to practice. I arrived for my first rehearsal with Tim, the new drummer. I was impressed when I learned the address and amazed when I saw the house. It was an large English Tudor just off East Avenue across from the historic George Eastman house; the George Eastman “Kodak” house for you non-Rochesterians.

The brick driveway led to a four-car garage that was bigger than many homes with it's (empty) chauffeur and gardener quarters on the second floor. The entryway of the house had strips of polished brass between the large squares of marble on the floor. Tim met me at the door. He was a good looking guy with an warm easy-goingness that could border cavalier at times, but a good guy overall with a decent sense of humor.

Could he play though?

Tim showed me in to where we would be practicing. To call it a living room would fall several notches short of the mark; this was a a thirty-five by twenty foot 'great room'. Every inch of the walls were either covered in (real) walnut paneling and decorative woodwork or tall diamond-cut leaded glass windows, The entire twelve foot ceiling was ornate and detailed plaster bas relief that featured birds and fruit and bunches of grapes on vines. The floor was wall-to-wall hardwood but had a couple immense oriental carpets covering most of it. The furniture was arranged into several conversation areas breaking up the larger room into intimate spaces.

It was soon clear why this room was chosen, not because it was the largest or most impressive room in the house, but because of the baby grand piano at one end. I brought my amp in and we rehearsed in one of the most luxurious and beautiful places I have ever played. Annie's voice sounded particularly heavenly in that room.

My parents had once received “The Preppy Handbook” as a gift in the early eighties. It was an amusing hand illustrated book that essentially defined the American 'Preppy' in great detail. It wasn't until after I had known Tim a while that I happened to flip through the pages once again and discover that point after point he was not just kind-of preppy, he was nearly text book. From the Polos, Khakis and topsiders he wore to the VW Golf he drove, point after point, it was all there in the book. And yes, he had attended actual prep school. Not just any prep school, Tim had attended St. Andrews of Middletown, Delaware better known for being the main backdrop of “Dead Poets Society”.

And by-the-way, Tim could play his ass off! He had a slick, snappy, on-top-off-the-beat sound that was reminiscent of Stewart Copeland (the Police) and make-it-look-easy jazz chops like Dave Weckle (Chic Corea).

Annie also added a keyboard player named Chip and a sometimes sax/WX7 player named Doug. Doug walked up and gave me a hug the first time I met him as if that's what everyone does. He also had a tremendous sense of humor and he could play!

The aforementioned WX7 is a electronic MIDI control device that uses standard sax/flute fingering and a breath and pressure sensitive mouthpiece to play a synthesizer or sound module instead of a keyboard.

It was still the eighties.

I would joke with Doug that he was encroaching on my turf when he would play runs on his WX7 that unencumbered by actual physical acoustics, started with stratospheric high notes and ended on subterranean lows that were far below what my standard four-string bass could even dream about.

Annie had a lot of class and would bring it to all her gigs, even though there were one or two that frankly didn't deserve it, or her. One early show was at a rave-like club that was freezing cold and featured graffiti covered walls with several spray paint splattered TVs playing random images.

I would help out by creating computer designed posters For Annie's shows. This was a bit of a challenge as I didn't have a computer in the late '80s. I discovered somehow that if I showed up at the University of Rochester Library and simply sat down at one of their Macs, I could design and print out a poster and no one would question my presence. Yes, not the most honest thing I could have done, but I was always sure not to be seated at a computer when there were no others available.

I wish I could post one of those posters which I still have somewhere... somewhere.

Tim, the drummer, and I got along well both musically and otherwise. Drummer/bass player combinations are an important relationship that can have dire or magic consequence. He was tasteful player but also a little bit of a hot dog like myself. With a combination like this it was hard to resist playing off each other into a jazz fusion 'hot dog' mode during rehearsals which Annie was not keen on.

Tim decided to have a party for the express purpose of (besides the obvious reasons of having a party) giving both Annie and “Miche' and the Anglos” a place to play on that particular Saturday night. I told a lot of my friends about it as we all did. Tim went a step further and printed up invites that he handed out at some bars. Perhaps not the best idea since it was his parent's very nice home that he was having the party at. Even worse: technically, it wasn't even his parents house but the parsonage of the church where his father was the pastor.

Tim did take measures however. He almost completely stripped the ground floor of furniture and removed the large oriental rugs that covered the great room floor. He also placed sheets of plywood on the stairs to keep the amorous ones off the beds upstairs.

Annie played first which was great as it allowed us to enjoy the party more. Miche' put on a great show, of course and the party went off pretty well considering the disaster it could have been. There was some serious cleaning up to do and despite the stair barricades, Tim had to chase lovers off his parents' bed and clean up after them. I guess love, or at least sex knows no barriers.

Not surprisingly, a neighbor outed him to his parents when they returned. After all this was East Avenue, not fraternity row.

Annie began to record at a studio in Rochester that was so new the lobby was still studs and plywood floors in places. Not all the handles were not on all the doors. The studio itself was completely finished and functional. It featured some pretty world class gear and design. I would record at Dajhelon Productions several times in the next decade but I believe Annie was the very first person to record there. It was an amazing place to be, with or without door handles.

Listening to the tracks though, things weren't quite right. Annie herself was fine, but Tim and I were losing our ability to hold back and play tasteful, supportive and unobtrusive parts, our technical ambitions were getting the best of us. Annie's producer came in to play on some tracks but he seemed distant and distracted. The tracks sounded okay, but not great. It wasn't quite the Annie Wells that Annie Wells could be.

Maybe it was for those reasons, maybe for others I wasn't aware of, but the recording process came to a halt.

More importantly than being her bass player, Annie was and is a great friend of mine. She has a wonderful sense of humor and there was always a lot of laughter. We were once both considering parallel moves to the Boston area. I have fond memories of a road trip we once took to get a feel for the place.

Annie has a wonderful way of putting people at ease and speaks nearly as softly as she sings. To this day I can barely even imagine Annie being upset or angry. Of course, she is human and entitle to the same range of emotion and expression as everyone else.

I was hanging out with Tim at his vast kitchen table while he was on the phone with Annie. He had just rather flippantly told her that he could not play a gig that had already been booked. Tim was quiet for a minute as he listened to her response. Without excusing himself, he took the phone away from his ear, covered the receiver and turned to me.

“Joel, I think Annie Wells is yelling at me... Just a sec.” He slowly put the phone back to his ear for a bit longer and removed it again. “Yep, yep, Annie Wells is yelling at me.”

Annie, as sweet as she was, was growing impatient with Tim's attitude. She was frustrated with his recreational (over)playing and perhaps mine as well. She did some solo performances for a while and eventually starting using some members of an established Rochester band as her own; a band that better matched her classy style and were far less inclined to the progressive/fusion bent that Tim and I were.

There were no hard feelings. I went back to playing loud and aggressive but with some new skills of subtlety and expression under my belt. Tim, as talented as he was, strictly played drums for fun and had no desires to be a career musician. He continued his true ambition: to be a cinematographer.

As I had started out, I was still and remain an ardent Annie Wells fan. I was excited when her first CD “Sad and Beautiful” came out. It was humbling to hear how much better she sounded with her new band. I was glad to hear that the new bass player had learned some of my parts pretty closely and I could quietly claim some small role in what ended up being a wonderful CD. Her next disk. “Something to Dream About”, came out after I had moved to LA. It was even better than the first.

Annie did a CD of lullabies called “Sleepy Town, no voice is more perfect for that than hers! Her latest CD “Tell Me” has taken a more jazz direction with some really stellar players and I believe it is her finest work yet.

Tim sold me his Yamaha drum kit of which I still have some cymbals. The rest of the kit I in-turn sold to another friend of mine, Jeff Dopko who is another of my favorite drummers to play with. He still uses those drums to play with “Gray Young.” Tim went on to be the cinematographer for “Cherry Crush” a movie shot mostly around Rochester. I was surprised to learn that it was produced by one of my high school classmates and I remember seeing advertising for it here in Hollywood. To Tim's credit, it looks beautiful but other than that, sadly, it's not a very good movie. I once made an attempt to get in touch with Tim but never heard back.

Annie, I am still in touch with, though it has been a long time since I have been able to see her play. You won't hear music or a voice anything like Annie's. Her lyrics, even when they sport a touch a humor, are always extremely touching and personal. “Rosary” one of my all-time desert island top 10 songs, gets to me every single time.

I highly recommend picking up one or more of her disks, or at the very least, checking out her samples on iTunes or her website http://anniewells.com where you can purchase any CD individually or the whole AW library as a box set.

To really experience her charm though, one should really see Annie Wells perform which she does from time to time in the Rochester area. One would be well-advised to 'like' her Facebook page to keep attuned to shows, news and additional recordings.

These days you need a student ID to use the computers at the University of Rochester, but it's my guess they sit dormant most of the time.

DOUBLE J's Double Take

A Music & Personal Update

I wasn't able to rehearse once this week. I spent the first three days this week working two different jobs day and night. On Wednesday I tried to catch up on sleep and take care of things that have piled up while I was working so much and on the road shooting the Hundai 'Event'. Thursday I drove out to Highland to pick up Audra and we didn't get back until late on Friday. Night hours over the weekend and wanting to spend some time with Audra killed off the week for rehearsals. This kinda stinks because I am paying money for the rehearsal space and so far I haven't been able to make effective use of the place. I may have to rethink this and use commercial hourly spaces. I brought back my small PA system from where I was storing it at Audra's folks' in Highland because the last couple of times I rehearsed their PA system was gone leaving me to sing into a dead microphone (better than not rehearsing at all). Next week is pretty open so far so perhaps I can get in a trio of rehearsals then. On Friday I'll have to cough up rent again. Regarding next week being “open”, it's an interesting thing being a freelance worker; I absolutely love when I find myself face to face with a whole week when I have nothing to do, and yet there is a certain underlying terror to it. I am essentially unemployed until the phone rings again. I have every reason to believe it will but it hard to escape the reality that we're in free-fall until it does. As many know I work on Jeopardy, a steady gig many in this business would love to have but what many don't know is that's it's a part time gig (4 to 6 days a month), and only for 9 months of the year. Still, I love the relative freedom.