Ana-Vey

Vaudeville Carnevale - 2007

Ana-Vey’s guitarist, Jack Hays, had the earliest success as a musician by playing lead guitar in a band called 5 Corners. This band later morphed into the moderately successful band Dangerous Willie – a later incarnation of which was called Edward. Although these bands attracted a strong local following and some more widespread attention opening for bands like The Reverend Horton Heat and Clutch, these projects eventually came to an end.

Jack began writing music that has almost a classical sensibility and an odd-ball jazz feel to it. Realizing he was onto something, Jack enlisted the help of sisters Liza and Meggie Georgiana whose relationship with Jack goes all the way back to junior high school.

Cellist, Meggie, in addition to being a musician, is somewhat of a writer/actress/spoken-word artist who sometimes performs under the moniker Midge Crickett. She is a classically trained Cellist, and she has been playing since the age of seven. What she likes about Ana-Vey is that it allows her to showcase the emotional range of the cello, in that her parts can be mournful and yearning at times and intricate and bouncy at others.

Liza, Ana-Vey’s singer and front woman, first developed a reputation for herself as a whimsical visual artist, a fantastic drunken dancer, and a girl with outrageous personal style. She also more quietly honed her abilities as a secret singer of old jazz standards with songs by Gershwin and Cole Porter sung in the style of Billy Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, Eartha Kitt, etc… Liza also plays piano, guitar, and the bass ukulele, and she writes music independent of Ana-Vey which she describes as simple, emotional and old-fashioned.

With the divergent backgrounds and abilities of the 3 band members, it is difficult for them to agree on a coherent description of their sound. If pressed for details, they will most likely say something along the lines of “Ummm… its kind of down-tempo, gypsy jazz, parlor rock with a slight trip-hop edge”. They pretty much agree that if someone likes the Squirrel Nut Zippers, Rasputina, Portishead, Morphine, The Dresden Dolls, The Ditty Bops, Django Reinhardt, Stephen Grappelli, and Billy Holiday, that they will find something in Ana-Vey’s style that is appealing.

The songs they have collected on their EP so-long & ashes have mostly to do with the cold feeling that goes along with certain kinds of goodbyes. The so-longs you deliver in a" whatever man" kind of way and how that's sad because it is much easier to accept a big rose hello....