Album Notes

Daughter of Mennonite missionaries, raised in Zaire and Freeman, S.D., Rachel Ries performs "Prairie Swing & City Folk". Classically trained in voice, piano, violin and viola, Ries marries sophisticated, vintage musicality to smart lyrics. Like Andrew Bird and Erin McKeown, Ries has developed an urban cult following based on a fresh approach to musical forms of the '20s and '30s. Recorded analog on vintage microphones, her vocals recall Billie Holiday and early Maria Muldaur, with a self-taught guitar style reminiscent of Mississippi John Hurt. Songs range from the romantic simplicity of jazz standards to the distilled intensity of poet Anne Sexton. Ries has an adventurous ear for melody and a voice flexible enough to accomplish it. Now twenty-five, Ms. Ries has performed her music from Denver to Winnipeg, Texas to South Dakota, Chicago to Scotland. She currently tours solo, with Anais Mitchell, and the Tin Pan Caravan, an eclectic songwriters-in-the-round. Rachel's latest album, For You Only, will be released on Waterbug Records in the summer of 2005.

"Rachel's songs have a strange and visceral impact on listeners - they literally shiver, their jaws drop, they smile incredulously - I have see this happen to listeners from all walks of life and in all corners of this country. She is a skillful writer and a classically-trained musician, and this allows her to express the trickiest of human emotions and tell stories both subtle and sublime. At the same time, there is not the slightest trace of pretense in her work; her songs are as honest, humble and gracious as Rachel is herself." -Anais Mitchell

"The most seductively literary folk debut since Dar Williams." -Tom Neff, Grassy Hill Radio

"Few artists have grabbed me the way Rachel Ries does. She reminds me of the first time I heard singers like Emmylou Harris, Aimee Mann & Jenny Lewis of Rilo Kiley... I immediately fell in love with her voice and songwriting." -Michael Cameron, Uncommon Ground, Chicago

"Music as pure and necessary as anything Alan Lomax ever found." -Greg Sorrell, gray.