Boister "Spy"
Boister at Zebra Ranch
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"Haunting....Like Dylan with estrogen."-John Barth
"Some Moths Drink The Tears of Elephants" is here, recorded with the great Jim Dickinson at Zebra Ranch in Mississippi. Dickinson produced the Replacements' classic "Pleased To Meet Me" and played piano on The Stones' "Sticky Fingers" and Dylan's "Time Out of Mind." He also produced Boister's 2003 "Pieces of Milk."
In the unsuspecting city of Baltimore, singer/pianist Anne Watts and a collective of creative types known as Boister are fashioning music unlike anything else currently coming out of the United States. The press has been especially enthusiastic in Europe, where Jade magazine called Boisters 1997 debut disc the album of the decade and critics lined up to praise the groups subsequent recordings (Song of the Smoke, Pieces of Milk, and Les Foules en Amour). One French critic likened Boister's music to "scenes shot in the footlights of a tin pan alley bar squatted by the Lounge Lizards and haunted by Kurt Weill, choreographed to Nino Rota with Irving Berlin on moonlit melodies, orchestrated with theatrical effects and pulsing with the fanfare of marching bands". Others have compared Watts to Tom Waits, Thelonious Monk, and Cat Power.
Boister's spirited live shows have quickened pulses up and down the East Coast, and the band has appeared at a variety of venues, including the World Cafe, AFI Silver, the Kennedy Center, numerous college campuses, and the NXNE Festival in Toronto. In the spring of 2006, the band was featured on National Public Radio's Morning Edition (Anne Watts and Boister: Music From Madness, archived at www.npr.org).
Beyond that, Boister's performances of original scores for classic Buster Keaton films have won widespread praise from critics including Roger Ebert. They have been performed to sold-out houses at The Maryland and Virginia Film Festivals, Radford University, Evergreen House at Johns Hopkins University, the Charles Theatre, The Smithsonian, and the Creative Alliance at the Patterson Theatre in Baltimore. In the summer of 2007, Boister presented their complete catalogue of scores for Keaton films (including several shorts featuring Curt Heavey on guitar, bass, and banjo) at the American Film Institute's Keaton festival.
On August 24th, 2007, Boister completed a residency at the Kohler Arts Center in Wisconsin. In conjunction with an exhibition featuring visionary artists Sabato Rodia, Nek Chand, Mary Nohl, and dozens of others, the performance highlighted the brilliant shadow puppetry and lantern construction of Nanaprojects, and included musicians and participants from the region. The band stayed on to record the score and a few miscellaneous songs with the talented Mr. Ripley.Other recording projects include a tribute album to Jacques Brel (Barclay/Universal) entitled "Next," featuring David Bowie, Marc Almond, Nina Simone, and Gavin Friday, as well as Boister's "Amsterdam." Available through Amazon.uk.
Boister has recorded with regular support from the Maryland State Arts Council. Their discs can be heard on the radio in France, Spain , Canada, Australia, Italy, Germany, Finland, Belgium, Norway, Albuquerque, Charlottesville, Philadelphia, and Lookout Mountain, Georgia.
Here's a review from Toronto's Being There magazine:
http://beingtheremag.com/feature.php?id=285
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