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Joanna Newsom

• Britney in the top ten: do you agree with our choices?

  Times Online - Found Nov. 22, 2009 26. Ys - Joanna Newsom (Drag City, 2006) Any suspicions that the American harpist is just a new folk curio are here vanquished utterly, the...

• New Song : Alexa Woodward : Eleanor + Live at The Earth House in ...

  My Old Kentucky Blog - Found Nov. 18, 2009 Music starts promptly at 8pm. For fans of Zooey Deschannel, Jolie Holland, Neko Case, Gillian Welch, Joanna Newsom, Iron and Wine, and Rufus...

• Joanna Newsom Tours Australia

  Tiny Mix Tapes - Found Oct. 26, 2009 On the Next TMT Celebrity Gossip Report: Is Celebutant Harp Starlet Joanna Newsom (A) Returning to Public Performance with a Short Tour of Australia

• Lightweight music with a heavyweight punch

  Metro.co.uk - Found 15 hours ago The elfin quality of Arnalds's voice is reminiscent of Joanna Newsom and her lithe, finger-picking guitar style is delicately supplemented by...

• Up and coming: Ruby Throat

  The Scotsman - Found 21 hours ago Her breathy little girl persona is no more pretentious than Joanna Newsom but, at a run of 500 copies, Ruby Throat's second album, Out Of A...

• The Five | Albums engineered by Albini

  Louisville Courier-Journal - Found Nov. 20, 2009 (What, no room for Silkworm or Jawbreaker or Joanna Newsom or Palace or ?) 1. The Wedding Present, ?Seamonsters.? This is the opus by...

• He brings new meaning to New Age

  Boston Globe - Found Nov. 19, 2009 ... tour diary than a documentary, captured Banhart on the road with fellow freak-folk, er, New Age artists Joanna Newsom and Vetiver in 2004. Its... A master of mixing: Music and worlds - Philadelphia Inquirer A master of mixing: Music and worlds - Philly.com Explore All

  Boston Globe

• Weekly Special #180b: Ivana XL, live at The Outpost, 11.21

  The Deli Magazine - www.thedelimagazine.com - Found Nov. 18, 2009 The sparse, almost haunted songs sound like something Joanna Newsom might produce if she spent an entire winter in the house from "The Shining...

• Papa M performing full album three times (dates) - tonight in NYC w/ ...

  brooklynvegan - Found Nov. 18, 2009 Kevin Barker , who has also been known to collaborate with Joanna Newsom, Devendra Banhart, Vashti Bunyan, and Antony and the Johnsons among...

• mr. Gnome brings surreal sounds from Josh Homme's studio

  SF Weekly - Found Nov. 17, 2009 It contains elements of PJ Harvey, Cocteau Twins, and Sonic Youth, as well as warbly songstresses Joanna Newsom and Cat Power's Chan Marshall.

Joanna Newsom extracted from Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia, distributed under the GNU Free Documentation License

Joanna Newsom
Joanna Newsom at the Sasquatch Music Festival, Washington. May 2005. 2005. Photo Shawn Anderson.
Background information
Born	Joanna Caroline Newsom January 18, 1982 (1982-01-18) (age 27) in Nevada City, California
Origin	United States
Genres	Experimentalcitation needed New folk1 Freak folkcitation needed
Instruments	Harp Piano Harpsichord
Labels	Drag City

Joanna Newsom (born January 18, 1982) is an American harpist, pianist, and singer-songwriter from Nevada City, California.

Contents 1 Career 2 Style 3 Collaborations 4 Personal life 5 Discography 6 Licensing of songs 7 References 8 Interviews 9 External links

Career

Newsom was first taught to play the Celtic harp by a local teacher in Nevada City. Later on she switched to the pedal harp and started composing.

Newsom studied composition and creative writing at Mills College, Oakland, California.

After touring with Will Oldham, she was quickly signed to Drag City and released her debut album The Milk-Eyed Mender in 2004. Shortly thereafter, Newsom toured with Devendra Banhart and Vetiver and made an early UK appearance at the Green Man Festival in Wales, returning to headline in 2005 and 2007, respectively.

Newsom's work has become prominent on the indie scene, and her profile has risen, in part due to a number of live shows and appearances on Jimmy Kimmel Live on ABC.

Her second album Ys was released in November 2006. The album features orchestrations and arrangements by Van Dyke Parks, engineering from Steve Albini, and mixing by Drag City label-mate Jim O'Rourke. On a road trip, Bill Callahan recommended she listen to the album Song Cycle by Parks, which led to his being chosen to arrange her work on Ys.

Having sporadically debuted new songs at her concerts since the fall of 2007, on March 28, 2009, Newsom performed over two hours of new material at a "secret" concert in Big Sur, California with fellow Nevada City singer-songwriter Mariee Sioux, under the pseudonym The Beatles's. Those in attendance reported that about one-third of her new material was played primarily on piano, with a backing arrangement of banjo, violin, guitar and drums.²

Since early 2007 she has also been known to perform a solo harp version of the Robert Burns poem Ca the yowes tae the knowes.³

Several of the songs on The Milk-Eyed Mender have been covered by her peers: "Bridges and Balloons" was covered by the Decemberists on their 2005 EP Picaresqueties. "Sprout and the Bean" has been covered by The Moscow Coup Attempt and Sholi. "Peach Plum Pear" has been covered by Final Fantasy (Owen Pallett) on the 2006 EP Young Canadian Mothers, as well as by Straylight Run. M Ward has played "Sadie" on his live shows.⁴

In 2009, she appeared in the music video for the song "Kids" by the group MGMT.⁵.

Also in 2009, she was reportedly working on her new album in Tokyo⁶ and has since completed the album⁷.

Style

	"Emily" (2006) 30 second sample of Emily from Ys
Problems listening to this file? See media help.

Although her harp playing is not completely divorced from conventional harp techniques, she considers her style distinct from that of classically focused harpists.^{citation needed} Joanna has also spoken out against the role of classical harpists, and considers many harpists to be "artless."⁸ She has been strongly influenced by polyrhythms, used by West African kora players.⁹ Her harp teacher, Diana Stork, taught her the basic pattern of four beats against three, which creates an interlocking, shifting pattern that can be heard on Ys, particularly in the middle section of "Sawdust & Diamonds."^{citation needed} The media have sometimes labeled her as one of the most prominent members of the modern psych folk movement, although she does not acknowledge ties to any particular musical scene.¹⁰ Her songwriting incorporates elements of Appalachian music, avant-garde modernism, and African kora rhythms.^{citation needed}

Newsom's vocal style (in the November 2006 issue of The Wire she described her voice as "untrainable") has shadings of folk and Appalachian shaped-note timbres. Newsom has, however, expressed disappointment at comments that her singing is "child-like."¹⁰

Collaborations

Alongside her solo material she has played on records by Smog, Vetiver, Nervous Cop, The Year Zero, Vashti Bunyan, Moore Brothers, Sydney Symphony Orchestra and Golden Shoulders and played keyboards for The Pleased.

Personal life

Newsom's family includes her brother Pete, a fellow musician, and sister Emily, an astrophysicist who inspired her song "Emily" (and contributed backing vocals). Newsom is a distant cousin of San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom.¹¹ As of last notice, she was dating Andy Samberg, a cast member of Saturday Night Live.¹²

Discography

Albums

• The Milk-Eyed Mender (Drag City, 2004)
• Ys (Drag City, 2006) UK #41¹³

Early unofficial recordings

• Walnut Whales (self-released, 2002)
• Yarn and Glue (self-released, 2003)

EPs

• Joanna Newsom and the Ys Street Band (Drag City, 2007) UK #135¹⁴

Singles

• "Sprout and the Bean" (Drag City, 2004)

Contributions on compilations

• The Golden Apples of the Sun (Bastet, 2004) With the song "Bridges and Balloons" (Originally released on The Milk-Eyed Mender)

Bands, Collaborations and Guest Appearances

• Golden Shoulders - Let My Burden Be (Doppler, 2002)
• The Pleased - One Piece From The Middle (self-released, 2002)
• The Pleased - Don't Make Things (Big Wheel Recreation, 2003)
• Nervous Cop - Nervous Cop (5 Rue Christine, 2003)
• Vetiver - Vetiver (Dicristina Stair, 2004)
• Smog - A River Ain't Too Much To Love (Drag City, 2005)
• Vashti Bunyan - Lookaftering (Fat Cat Records, 2005)
• RF & Lili De La Mora - 'Eleven Continents' (Rowing At Sea / Time Release Records, 2007)
• Moore Brothers - 'Aptos' (American Dust, 2009)

Licensing of songs

• In 2004, "Peach, Plum, Pear" played over the credits of the animated short City Paradise.
• In 2004, "This Side of the Blue" was used on a British television commercial for Orange SA.
• In 2006, Newsom's song "Sprout and the Bean" was featured in a Melbourne tourism commercial.
• In 2007, "Clam, Crab, Cockle, Cowrie" was used in the PBS documentary Following Sean.
• In 2007, "Clam, Crab, Cockle, Cowrie" was sung by an aspiring musician in the film Great World of Sound.
• In 2008, "Sprout and the Bean" was featured in the film The Strangers.
• In 2008, "Clam, Crab, Cockle, Cowrie" was used in a television commercial for HSBC.
• In 2008, "The Book of Right-On" was used in a MTV ad for sexual care and education.
• In 2009, "The Book of Right-On" was licensed for the end credits of the Mexican/Italian film The Best of Feelings
• In 2009, "Sprout and the Bean" was used in a Victoria's Secret Bra commercial.
• In 2009, the harp intro of "Cosmia" was used in the Louis Theroux documentary "A Place for Paedophiles."
• In 2009, "Sprout and the Bean" was used in a tourism ad for Melbourne, Australia.

References

Interviews

• SFburning (May 2003)
• Tiny Mix Tapes (September 2004)
• KCRW (February 2005)
• The Guardian (October 15, 2006)
• The Wire (November 2006)
• Pitchfork (November 20, 2006)

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Joanna Newsom

• Official page at Drag City
• Drag City