Olenka (Alexandra Krakus) started her life in an environment rich in tenderness and turmoil, conditions which left their indelible mark on her character and eventually her music. Her earliest memories of Poland, the Communist Poland of the early 80s, consist of experiences typical to most children – swings and sandboxes and teddy bear confidantes – but inflected by the melancholy instability of the time, a spirit revealed in the gypsy folksongs she inherited from her grandparents and parents. It is the images within these early songs to which she often returns in her own music: apparitions isolated in poverty, loneliness, heartache, disconnected from a society that is nevertheless converging on them.She has explored the paradoxical mood of those Eastern European tunes, but admittedly her mother’s fondness for the Beatles played an equal role in her preliminary musical development. In her mid-teens, after having appropriated her father’s seldom-used acoustic guitar, Olenka started playing in a variety of bands and on occasion performed as a solo artist. During those years, Olenka was involved in Vancouver’s punk and hardcore scenes as a musician and promoter, though her music seemed always to revert to its melodic pop origins. Soon after she started playing a number of her close friends in a variety of ensembles which included some short and some longer lived appellations: The Reverse Vampires, The Convoy, The Rub, Tableaux Recs, and The Concrete Lions. On occasion a variety of musicians came together in tribute to Bob as The Robert Zimmerman.Olenka is now based in London, Ontario where she is pursuing a Ph.D. degree in English literature; it is this lifelong commitment to literature, music and the arts and humanities in general that has contributed to her lyrical depth. Olenka is currently playing in and around Southern Ontario with the support of a number of London and Toronto-based musicians, dubbed The Autumn Lovers.Olenka's music ranges from mild country folk, to gypsy madness, to sombre fête pop and has been compared to the work of Gillian Welch, Chan Marshall, Townes Van Zandt, Devotchka, and Beirut.Olenka's musical influences are as varied as the insights she has gained from them, but those musicians who have left the most lasting impressions include The Beatles, Townes Van Zandt, Sonic Youth, Chopin, Bob Dylan, The Pixies, Gram Parsons, Miles Davis, Gillian Welch, The Dead Kennedys, John Prine, Leonard Cohen, The Band, Wilco and Bach.
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