Rise & ReviewShine Monday: Michaela Anne - To Know Where

Michaela Anne's debut album, To Know Where, features songs influenced by her travels throughout the US as a child of the military. Always musically inclined, she picked up the musical influences of the different and diverse places she lived. Now, living in Brooklyn, she has found the perfect city and venues for her original Americana compositions and stylings.

Recorded by Jesse Lauter (The Low Anthem, Elvis Perkins), Diko Shoturma and Scott Kettner, To Know Where is an album with soul-searching songs that have a way of touching the spirit. These songs of hardships and pleasures are an effective blend of the genres that inspired her -- country, blues, and folk. The title track is a gospel influenced tribute to her family and upbringing which features backing vocals by Willie Nelson's Farm Aid regular Jesse Lenat, while the backing vocals and phenomenal guitar playing are provided by Michael Daves (Chris Thile, Steve Martin, Roseanne Cash) on "Taken Away." The sweet melancholy in "Willow Tree" later becomes a sorrowful yearning in "Pardon," and jazz and blues influences can be found in the ragtime "Carry On" and the sultry "When We're Alone." But, it's "That Winter" that stands out most to me, with its beautiful expansive sound, doleful pedal steel, and Michaela's emotional and angelic vocal delivery.

With To Know Where, Michaela Anne shows us that although she is relatively new, she is far from amateur. She has already shared the stage with great musicians like Daves and Danny Molad (Elizabeth and the Catapult), Kristin Andreassen (Uncle Earl), and many others as well as open for The Diamond Doves, Lady Lamb and the Beekeeper, and Frontier Ruckus.

To Know Where will be self-released April 5th with tour dates to follow.

Michaela Anne's Website
Purchase To Know Where

06 Taken Away - Michaela Anne by aibrean

04 That Winter by aibrean