On a black and blustery January night, three of the most distinctive female voices on the contemporary Scottish folk-roots scene got together round a Borders kitchen table with a bottle of rioja, some baked tatties and The Collected Songs of Robert Burns. What began as a brief set for a show at Celtic Connections Festival 2006 has evolved into something we're running with a wee bit further ... because we're having so much fun with it!
The three of us have wound up performing together many times over the past five years: as members of the landmark Scots Women celebration of Scots traditional song; with some of our Gaelic singing sisters, in the popular spin off touring project Scottish Women; and as members and guests of the splendid Scottish folk big band experience The Unusual Suspects (which Corrina co-directs).
Through these collaborative encounters we discovered our mutual love of inventive vocal harmony and before we knew it some of the arrangements assembled spontaneously in buses and back rooms hit the stage. And they actually worked.
In between times Annie has crafted a smokily intimate solo album of traditional and contemporary songs and tunes "Take Me Out Drinking Tonight" (Greentrax), released her farewell album with the influential folk band Iron Horse and starred in award winning stage productions. She doesn't mention it much but she's a bit of legend on the Dutch roots and world music scene too.
Corrina has recorded a spacious and sensuous solo album of Scots song and dazzling harp virtuosity "My Favourite Place" (Footstompin), pioneered (with partner David Milligan) the 32 piece magical musical monster The Unusual Suspects and recorded a gorgeous duo album with Northumbrian piper and fiddler Kathryn Tickell, as well as composed for and played in innumerable collaborative projects.
And Karine has recorded four solo albums of her own songs, the first of which ("Faultlines") won her a bunch of BBC Folk Awards, and all of which prove that she's a writer and singer who knows both the best and the worst that the world has to offer.
Well that's the pitch about us for now.
When we get together we sound - well - a bit like we are! Lilting and lovely sometimes; bolshy and bawdy at others; and both dark and discordant and hopeful and happy!
