Album Notes

Allison is a finalist in the 2008 South Florida Folk Festival Singer/Songwriter Competition!

Allison Adams’s debut solo CD, Redbud Winter, was released in September 2007. The song “Famous Blue Apron” from the release won her a spot as a featured artist on the Halifax, Nova Scotia-based WOT90 internet radio station featuring the voices of women. She was also selected as a “Fresh Pic” on WOT90 webpage on July 13, 2007. “Famous Blue Apron” spent nine weeks in the top 15 on the WOT90 charts, including two weeks at number 1.

Raised in Rabun County, in the farthest corner of the Northeast Georgia mountains, Allison writes songs that draw on a reservoir of experiences from her upbringing—the comfort offered by a tiny A.M. gospel radio station, the fragile economy of a rural community, the traditional art and science of canning food.

Allison’s music is also influenced by the sounds she grew up hearing—the local bluegrass and traditional music of her community, her father’s Grandpa Jones albums, her mother’s “The Sound of Music” soundtrack, and a lot of southern rock—as well as her own inner voice. She also had ten years of classical piano training from age six and began playing acoustic guitar at fifteen.

After college, Allison set aside her music interests to pursue a career as a writer and editor. On completing a graduate degree in English at Emory University in 2000, she bought a new guitar and began writing, singing, and playing again. She also picked up a new instrument—the English concertina. More recently she has added the mandolin.

Harmony singing brings Allison great joy, and she loves finding a place for her voice in duets and ensembles. In past years she has sung and played concertina around the Atlanta area and the North Georgia mountains in the folk duo Bittersweet and the original roots-rock band Letters to Mary.

Since 2003, Allison has been one-third of Local Honey, an acoustic trio that performs “songs we like,” whether it’s jazz standards, pop covers, or Allison’s originals, and features female duet harmony. She sings alto and plays concertina and guitar with the eclectic vocal quartet Old Enough to Know Better. She also sings and plays guitar, concertina, and mandolin in the new trio The Beans, with longtime Atlanta acoustic music scene favorites Cyndi Craven and Tom Wolf. She also occasionally backs the acclaimed singer-songwriter Caroline Herring on local and regional shows.