Photo by Marian Call
Anaïs Mitchell
Anaïs Mitchell is the closest thing on Earth to a living Greek Goddess. Her songs paint empathetic portraits of lonely souls, and she wields an acoustic guitar with the essence of a renaissance bard. Taking inspiration from folk legends like Woody Guthrie and Joni (the other great folk Mitchell), Mitchell’s lyrics take the listener on journeys through locked apartment doors, New Orleans, and the underworld itself. Mitchell is a troubadour for the modern age, and it's time to start listening.
Mitchell, has won the “New Folk Award” from The Kerrville Folk Festival and was nominated for the Folk Alliance’s “Best Contemporary Artist Award.” Currently on a national tour with Grammy Award-winner Patty Griffin and singer Sara Watkins, the performance features a special “in-the-round” style show with all three artists on stage in celebration of American songwriting.
In an interview with For Folk’s Sake, Mitchell explains the influence of her parents on her musical roots.
My parents were hippies. They were back-to-the-landers. They came from the suburbs and they hitchhiked to San Francisco for the Summer of Love. And the thing to do back then was to go to the margins of society and to buy a farm – to go back to the land and to raise your own. So they did that and they bought a farm so I was raised in a really rural spot in Vermont. And they had a great record collection of the music that came from this time.
Have you ever heard of this book ‘Rise Up Singing‘? It was kind of the bible of my songhood – my song childhood – it was put together by some hippies, and it was all these folk songs would have early Paul Simon but it would also have child ballads that maybe Bob Dylan or Joan Baez had sung. And I remember there was ‘Willie Winsburg’ and it said “child ballad number whatever”. And I always thought ‘what are these child ballads’?
For more information and tour schedule and dates, go to her website.
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