Anne Beverly Brown - Biography

Anne Beverly Brown was born to British parents during the halcyon years between the Baby Boomers and Generation X, in Onefineplace, Canada. Her family returned to England when she was 14 years old where she attended school, including reading biology at the University of London. She started writing songs as a teenager while learning to play piano and guitar

Anne returned to Canada in 1980 and worked at a number of jobs in Calgary, Alberta. She tightened bottle caps at the nail polish factory, then worked as a secretary minus the typewriter and shorthand. Later, during her years as an environmentalist with Mobil Oil she grew increasingly impatient playing

"Rapunzel in her tower, cement and very square,
Sitting at her desk trying to grow her hair."
So she jumped from her skyscraper and landed behind the counter at the Natural Bread Store. The bakery provided plenty of stone ground food for thought and song as the place was run by a disillusioned ex-math professor searching for a better whole wheat loaf. The place also attracted a world of alternative souls on a similar quest, including David Cebuliak, secret admirer of the woman at the till.

For 18 months in 1985 and 1986, she and her partner David, with one backpack between them, meandered through the Cook Islands to Australia, Nepal, Egypt, Turkey and Ireland, stopping at several other places in between. During this odyssey there were opportunities to perform - not at the foot of Big Buddha on Lan Tau Island - but at clubs in Christ Church, Wellington, Auckland (New Zealand) and restaurants on Australia's east Coast, in particular at Karanda. From a potent mixture of soft beds and gastroenteritis in the Hindu Kush came songs like "Red Dust" and "The Power of the Atman."

Upon their return to Calgary, Anne and David started their first experiments with home recording. During this time Anne began to perform regularly at Marty's Place and Kensington's Deli and to connect with the rich musical community in Calgary.

In the spring of 1989, David and Anne (now 4 months pregnant with their first born, Noah) stuffed their VW golf with musical and camping equipment - everything but the air conditioning - and headed south for Santa Fe. In New Mexico Anne recorded a 3 song EP with jazz pianist Kevin Zoernig (Ferron's sideman at the time) and Aaron Stone (percussionist to New Age recording artist Peter Kater). They also managed a scorching side trip down to Texas to attend the Kerrville Folk Festival and wriggle in around the campfires.

This Tex/Mex introduction to the recording business was followed in 1993 with the release of Anne's first full length CD, Keyhole and the Eternal Kiss. Shortly after the birth of their second child, Emma Sophie, in the spring of 1995, Anne began weaving together the music and contacting the musicians to work on her second CD, The Landlord's Daughter. Producer David meanwhile set about creating the CD package with help of friends, including Calgary photographer, Marnie Burkhart.

Much of the recording for the CD's is done in the sound studio integrated into the main floor of the house Anne and David built in Bragg Creek, Alberta. This golden log cabin, planted firmly in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains, is nicknamed The Ark. Recording sessions at The Ark are characterised by a syncopated and eclectic stream of musicians up the gravel road to the house. Music is made and good food and drink are consumed into the early morning hours. The sound show inside is occasionally highlit by a radiant blast of the Aurora Borealis across the night sky.

What next? An exploration of Etruscan pot percussion and Celtic digeridoo? Perhaps. Currently Anne writes songs to the rhythm of changing diapers against a backdrop of homeschooling Noah. Preparations are underway for a 3rd CD. To travel and perform further afield are also rising slowly to the top of the Brown-Cebuliak agenda.

Anne Beverly Brown - Discography

Worldbeat, Celtic pop, ethereal folk - Anne Beverly Brown's music resists easy classification. Perhaps folk/new paradigm says it best.

1990 Santa fe Sessions

- 3 song EP

Drawing blood from a singing stone in the search for Merlin's music
Flying a tattered kite with rotten string I'd be bound to lose it
...from "Indigo Blue"

"On this first small sampling of Anne Beverly Brown's music it is already obvious that here is a singer-songwriter who has combined wonderfully poetic lyricism with fine musicianship to create... a Blakian journey toward the freedom of innocence." Dirty Linen Magazine

This EP contains an unusual ode to Oliver John, Anne's paternal grandfather, in addition to "Quiet Heart." The latter concerns the "new cold winds of freedom", one of the feelings that many political refugees are said to experience upon their initial escape.

1993 Keyhole & The Eternal Kiss

I recite psalms on my erotic rosary, I pray for release daily
In paradise afraid of cruel consequence
Rachmaninoff, bring me to the present tense of love.
...from "Send Me Rachmaninoff"

Anne Beverly Brown's 1993 release is a fusion of music, metaphor and metaphysics that winds lyrically from Glastonbury in Somerset to Cleopatra's barge to the Tin Pan Alleys of "roaring twenties Chicago." The CD takes it's name from one small subterranean room in the Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico. The image becomes a metaphor for the unconquerable wellspring.

Highlights on this recording include a musical adaptation of Jean Giono's "The Man Who Planted Trees," a simple but moving story of conservation and reforestation. On "Never Thought I'd Sing The Blues" Anne does just that to a compelling piano accompaniment by Ron Casat (member of The Cold Club and Amos Garrett's Eh Team). And why is the church door locked? Anne asks on "The Church Door" while guitar wizard Oscar Lopez shimmers through the melody.

Other friends joining Anne on her debut CD are Karl Roth (another Cold Club member) on electric violin, Anderson and Brown on Celtic harp, flute and guitars, along with Steafan Hannigan on uillean pipes aka his "Irish liturgical colostomy bag."

1996 The Landlord's Daughter

Oh Father confessor it's written too large across my heart
Drink deep from the drug of experience, now is the time to start.
...from "I Threw The I Ching Tonight"

There are few excursions more enchanting than those taken in the imagination of an inspired songwriter. This experience is offered by Anne Beverly Brown in The Landlord's Daughter . It is a collection of colour and romance, of grace and pulse - intimate and immediate. The Landlord's Daughter is intriguing.

The CD title refers to the tragic heroine of Alfred Noyes' poem "The Highwayman." Anne's setting of this familiar Victorian ballad is the spellbinding centerpiece of the CD. What precisely is better than music and better than poetry may be discovered listening to "Roll Me". The penetrating silence of an "Angel Walking" through the room is complimented by dobro, violin and Steafan Hannigan's ethereal uillean pipes. Worldbeat influences stir things up on "Red Dust" - a pulsating and poetic tune inspired by an aboriginal dance festival.

Musical collaborators on the CD include Cold Club members Ron Casat and Karl Roth, Anderson and Brown, David Knutson (sideman to Eileen McGann) and Myran Szott ( Ian Tyson's long time fiddler).

For more information, write to:

Akashic Records,
P.O. Box 178,
Bragg Creek, Alberta,
Canada T0L 0K0
e-mail: akashic@cadvision.com