Marisa Anderson is an American multi-instrumentalist and composer based in
Portland, Oregon
Portland (, ) is a port city in the Pacific Northwest and the largest city in the U.S. state of Oregon. Situated at the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia rivers, Portland is the county seat of Multnomah County, the most populous co ...
. She is primarily known for playing the guitar, mixing
American primitive guitar
American primitive guitar is a fingerstyle guitar music genre, developed by the American guitarist John Fahey in the late 1950s. While the term "American primitivism" has been used as a name for the genre, American primitive guitar is distinct ...
with various genres from throughout the United States and the rest of the world, and for her largely
improvised
Improvisation is the activity of making or doing something not planned beforehand, using whatever can be found. Improvisation in the performing arts is a very spontaneous performance without specific or scripted preparation. The skills of impr ...
compositions. She has released 10 albums under her own name since 2006, as well as several others with the bands the Dolly Ranchers and Evolutionary Jass Band.
Early life
Anderson was born in Northern California and grew up in
Sonoma.
Her earliest musical memories are of listening to
church music
Church music is Christian music written for performance in church, or any musical setting of ecclesiastical liturgy, or music set to words expressing propositions of a sacred nature, such as a hymn.
History
Early Christian music
The onl ...
and
classical in her mother's car, and
country
A country is a distinct part of the world, such as a state, nation, or other political entity. It may be a sovereign state or make up one part of a larger state. For example, the country of Japan is an independent, sovereign state, while the ...
in her dad's truck including
Doc Watson
Arthel Lane "Doc" Watson (March 3, 1923 – May 29, 2012) was an American guitarist, songwriter, and singer of bluegrass, folk, country, blues, and gospel music. Watson won seven Grammy awards as well as a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. W ...
and
the Oak Ridge Boys
The Oak Ridge Boys are an American country and gospel vocal quartet originating in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. The group was founded in the 1940s as the Oak Ridge Quartet. They became popular in Southern gospel during the 1950s. Their name was change ...
.
She started playing guitar at age ten.
In her teen and young adult years, she took lessons from fellow California guitarist
Nina Gerber
Nina Gerber is an American guitarist who first came to attention when she accompanied singer-songwriter Kate Wolf from 1979 until Wolf's death in 1986.
Gerber was born and raised in Sebastopol, California. In 1975, Gerber was still at high school ...
.
A self-described "weird teenager", she learned about various styles of
folk music
Folk music is a music genre that includes traditional folk music and the contemporary genre that evolved from the former during the 20th-century folk revival. Some types of folk music may be called world music. Traditional folk music has b ...
from different parts of the world – including
British
British may refer to:
Peoples, culture, and language
* British people, nationals or natives of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories, and Crown Dependencies.
** Britishness, the British identity and common culture
* British English, ...
,
African
African or Africans may refer to:
* Anything from or pertaining to the continent of Africa:
** People who are native to Africa, descendants of natives of Africa, or individuals who trace their ancestry to indigenous inhabitants of Africa
*** Ethn ...
,
Appalachian music, and
Mississippi Delta blues – by reading books from
folklorist
Folklore studies, less often known as folkloristics, and occasionally tradition studies or folk life studies in the United Kingdom, is the branch of anthropology devoted to the study of folklore. This term, along with its synonyms, gained currenc ...
Cecil Sharp
Cecil James Sharp (22 November 1859 – 23 June 1924) was an English-born collector of folk songs, folk dances and instrumental music, as well as a lecturer, teacher, composer and musician. He was the pre-eminent activist in the development of t ...
. She attended
Humboldt State University
California State Polytechnic University, Humboldt also known as Cal Poly Humboldt, Humboldt or Cal Poly"Cal Poly" may also refer to California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo, California or California State Polytechnic Universi ...
before dropping out at age 19.
Career
After dropping out of college, Anderson spent about ten years living in her car or in a tent and walking around the US to raise awareness for
environmental issues
Environmental issues are effects of human activity on the biophysical environment, most often of which are harmful effects that cause environmental degradation. Environmental protection is the practice of protecting the natural environment on t ...
. Some of this time was spent in Mexico where she was a part of Circo de Manos and performed among the
indigenous peoples
Indigenous peoples are culturally distinct ethnic groups whose members are directly descended from the earliest known inhabitants of a particular geographic region and, to some extent, maintain the language and culture of those original people ...
and
subsistence farmers
Subsistence agriculture occurs when farmers grow food crops to meet the needs of themselves and their families on smallholdings. Subsistence agriculturalists target farm output for survival and for mostly local requirements, with little or no su ...
during the
Chiapas conflict
The Chiapas conflict (Spanish: ''Conflicto de Chiapas'') comprises the 1994 Zapatista uprising, the 1995 Zapatista crisis and ensuing tension between the Mexican state and the indigenous peoples and subsistence farmers of Chiapas from the 1990 ...
in Southern Mexico. She was a member of the country-folk band the Dolly Ranchers from 1997 through 2003, playing on both of their albums and at their four-sets-a-night gig at a cowboy bar in
New Mexico
)
, population_demonym = New Mexican ( es, Neomexicano, Neomejicano, Nuevo Mexicano)
, seat = Santa Fe
, LargestCity = Albuquerque
, LargestMetro = Tiguex
, OfficialLang = None
, Languages = English, Spanish ( New Mexican), Navajo, Ker ...
.
She also worked at Rock Camp for Girls between 2003 and 2011, and contributed to its eponymous book.
She settled in Portland, Oregon, after traveling to the
Pacific Northwest
The Pacific Northwest (sometimes Cascadia, or simply abbreviated as PNW) is a geographic region in western North America bounded by its coastal waters of the Pacific Ocean to the west and, loosely, by the Rocky Mountains to the east. Though ...
for the
1999 Seattle WTO protests
The 1999 Seattle WTO protests, sometimes referred to as the Battle of Seattle, were a series of protests surrounding the WTO Ministerial Conference of 1999, when members of the World Trade Organization (WTO) convened at the Washington State Con ...
.
In Portland, she joined the
improvisational
Improvisation is the activity of making or doing something not planned beforehand, using whatever can be found. Improvisation in the performing arts is a very spontaneous performance without specific or scripted preparation. The skills of impr ...
ensemble Evolutionary Jass Band for six years, recording three albums.
Her first solo album, ''Holiday Motel'', was released by 16 Records in 2006, and earned her a nomination for the OUTmusic Award for Best Female Debut Record. That album was followed by 2009's ''The Golden Hour'' and 2013's ''Mercury'', both released by
Mississippi Records
Mississippi Records is a record store and label. It was founded by Eric Isaacson in 2003 in Portland, Oregon. It also houses a café, equipment repair shop, and the Portland Museum of Modern Art. The Mississippi Records motto is: "Love over gold. ...
; and another 2013 album, ''Traditional and Public Domain Songs'', which was released by
Grapefruit Records. In 2014, she appeared as a guest musician on
Sharon Van Etten
Sharon Katharine Van Etten (born February 26, 1981) is an American singer-songwriter. She has released six studio albums, the latest of which is '' We've Been Going About This All Wrong'' (2022).
Early life
Van Etten was born in Belleville, N ...
's ''
Are We There
''Are We There'' is the fourth studio album by the American singer-songwriter Sharon Van Etten. It was released on May 27, 2014 via Jagjaguwar.
Packaging
Of the lack of a question mark in the album's title, Van Etten said it was "… open ...
'', playing guitar on its first track "Afraid of Nothing". In 2015, she released an eponymous split album with
Bhutan
Bhutan (; dz, འབྲུག་ཡུལ་, Druk Yul ), officially the Kingdom of Bhutan,), is a landlocked country in South Asia. It is situated in the Eastern Himalayas, between China in the north and India in the south. A mountainous ...
-born guitarist Tashi Dorji which was released by Footfalls Records. The year after, she released ''
Into the Light'' on her own label Chaos Kitchen Music. After this, she signed to
Thrill Jockey
Thrill Jockey is an American independent record label established by former Atlantic Records A&R representative Bettina Richards and based in Chicago.
History
Richards started the label in 1992 with $35,000 of family and personal capital, while ...
with whom she has released her four most recent albums, 2018's ''
Cloud Corner''; 2020's ''
The Quickening'', a collaboration with Australian drummer
Jim White; 2021's ''
Lost Futures'', a collaboration with American folk guitarist
William Tyler; and 2022's ''
Still, Here
''Still, Here'' is the tenth studio album by Portland guitarist Marisa Anderson, released September 23, 2022, by Thrill Jockey. The eight-track album consists of six original compositions and two arrangements of traditional songs. Anderson recorde ...
''.
Anderson had a cameo appearance alongside fellow Oregon-based musician
Michael Hurley in the 2018 film ''
Leave No Trace'' where they perform the songs "O My Stars" and "Dark Holler" around a campfire. She has also composed for film, including a score for 2022's ''
A Perfect Day for Caribou'', where her music "subtly accompanies the characters on their physical and inner journeys".
Anderson has toured and played live with numerous artists, including her album collaborators Tashi Dorji, William Tyler,
and Jim White,
as well as
Yasmin Williams,
Giorgos Xylouris
Giorgos Xylouris ( el, Γιώργoς Ξυλούρης, born September 25, 1965), also known as ''Psarogiorgis'' (Greek: Ψαρογιώργης), is a Cretan laouto player and singer.
Xylouris was born into a musical family (his father is Psaran ...
,
Ed Kuepper
Edmund "Ed" Kuepper (born 20 December 1955) is a German-born Australian guitarist, vocalist and songwriter. He co-founded the punk band The Saints (1973–78), the experimental post-punk group Laughing Clowns (1979–85) and the grunge-like Th ...
,
Circuit des Yeux,
Emmylou Harris
Emmylou Harris (born April 2, 1947) is an American singer, songwriter and musician. She has released dozens of albums and singles over the course of her career and has won 14 Grammys, the Polar Music Prize, and numerous other honors, including ...
,
Godspeed You! Black Emperor
Godspeed You! Black Emperor (sometimes abbreviated to GY!BE or Godspeed) is a Canadian post-rock band which originated in Montreal, Quebec in 1994. The group releases recordings through Constellation, an independent record label also located i ...
,
Charlie Parr
Charlie Parr is an American country blues musician. Born in Austin, Minnesota, he spent part of his childhood in Hollandale before starting his music career in Duluth. His influences include Charlie Patton, Bukka White, Reverend Gary Davis, Dave ...
,
Bill Callahan, and
Thurston Moore
Thurston Joseph Moore (born July 25, 1958) is an American musician best known as a member of Sonic Youth. He has also participated in many solo and group collaborations outside Sonic Youth, as well as running the Ecstatic Peace! record label. Moo ...
. She has performed at music festivals including
Big Ears Festival
The Big Ears Festival is an annual music festival in Knoxville, Tennessee, created and produced by AC Entertainment.
History
The festival was founded in 2009 by Ashley Capps, founder of AC Entertainment. The festival was originally organized b ...
,
''
Pitchfork
A pitchfork (also a hay fork) is an agricultural tool with a long handle and two to five tines used to lift and pitch or throw loose material, such as hay, straw, manure, or leaves.
The term is also applied colloquially, but inaccurately, to th ...
''s Midwinter at the
Art Institute of Chicago
The Art Institute of Chicago in Chicago's Grant Park, founded in 1879, is one of the oldest and largest art museums in the world. Recognized for its curatorial efforts and popularity among visitors, the museum hosts approximately 1.5 mill ...
,
Le Guess Who?
Le Guess Who? is a Dutch music festival featuring different music genres: from avant-garde, jazz, hip hop, electronic, experimental, noise rock, indie rock, world music and others. The festival, founded by Bob van Heur and Johan Gijsen, has ...
, and
Moogfest
Moogfest is a music and technology festival held annually or bi-annually in Durham, North Carolina that honors engineer Robert Moog and his musical inventions.
This multi-day, multi-venue event hosts artists and audiences from throughout the w ...
. She also performed on
NPR Music
NPR Music is a project of National Public Radio, an American privately and publicly funded non-profit membership media organization, that launched in November 2007 to present public radio music programming and original editorial content for music ...
's
Tiny Desk Concerts
Tiny Desk Concerts is a video series of live concerts hosted by NPR Music at the desk of ''All Songs Considered'' host Bob Boilen in Washington, D.C.
The first Tiny Desk Concert came about in 2008 after Boilen and NPR Music editor Stephen Thom ...
series in 2014, mostly playing songs from ''Traditional and Public Domain Songs'' and ''Mercury''.
Style
Anderson's music has been described as falling into the
American primitive guitar
American primitive guitar is a fingerstyle guitar music genre, developed by the American guitarist John Fahey in the late 1950s. While the term "American primitivism" has been used as a name for the genre, American primitive guitar is distinct ...
style introduced by
John Fahey in the 1960s, as well as being called a "neo-
Americana
Americana may refer to:
*Americana (music), a genre or style of American music
*Americana (culture), artifacts of the culture of the United States
Film, radio and television
* ''Americana'' (1992 TV series), a documentary series presented by J ...
guitar outsider". She mixes in influences from various other genres such as
gospel
Gospel originally meant the Christian message ("the gospel"), but in the 2nd century it came to be used also for the books in which the message was set out. In this sense a gospel can be defined as a loose-knit, episodic narrative of the words an ...
, country, Appalachian folk and blues,
jazz
Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with its roots in blues and ragtime. Since the 1920s Jazz Age, it has been recognized as a major ...
,
circus music
Circus music (also known as carnival music) is any sort of music that is played to accompany a circus, and also music written that emulates its general style. Popular music would also often get arranged for the circus band, as well as waltzes, fox ...
,
minimalism
In visual arts, music and other media, minimalism is an art movement that began in post–World War II in Western art, most strongly with American visual arts in the 1960s and early 1970s. Prominent artists associated with minimalism include Don ...
,
electronic
Electronic may refer to:
*Electronics, the science of how to control electric energy in semiconductor
* ''Electronics'' (magazine), a defunct American trade journal
*Electronic storage, the storage of data using an electronic device
*Electronic co ...
,
drone
Drone most commonly refers to:
* Drone (bee), a male bee, from an unfertilized egg
* Unmanned aerial vehicle
* Unmanned surface vehicle, watercraft
* Unmanned underwater vehicle or underwater drone
Drone, drones or The Drones may also refer to:
...
, and
20th century classical,
while also including
global
Global means of or referring to a globe and may also refer to:
Entertainment
* ''Global'' (Paul van Dyk album), 2003
* ''Global'' (Bunji Garlin album), 2007
* ''Global'' (Humanoid album), 1989
* ''Global'' (Todd Rundgren album), 2015
* Bruno ...
influences such as
Tuareg
The Tuareg people (; also spelled Twareg or Touareg; endonym: ''Imuhaɣ/Imušaɣ/Imašeɣăn/Imajeɣăn'') are a large Berber ethnic group that principally inhabit the Sahara in a vast area stretching from far southwestern Libya to southern A ...
and
Latin music
Latin music (Portuguese language, Portuguese and es, música latina) is a term used by the music industry as a catch-all category for various styles of music from Ibero-America (including Music of Spain, Spain and Portuguese music, Portugal) ...
on ''Cloud Corner'' and
flamenco
Flamenco (), in its strictest sense, is an art form based on the various folkloric music traditions of southern Spain, developed within the gitano subculture of the region of Andalusia, and also having historical presence in Extremadura and ...
on ''Still, Here''. Her music is also referred to as
experimental
An experiment is a procedure carried out to support or refute a hypothesis, or determine the efficacy or likelihood of something previously untried. Experiments provide insight into cause-and-effect by demonstrating what outcome occurs when ...
on some albums.
She is known to
improvise
Improvisation is the activity of making or doing something not planned beforehand, using whatever can be found. Improvisation in the performing arts is a very spontaneous performance without specific or scripted preparation. The skills of impr ...
music rather than compose it on many of her recordings, including the entirety of her album ''The Quickening''.
On the subject, she has said she likes "to think about improvisation as a conversation" and that it's "really just an art at being literate and expressive no matter what language you are in... I am trying to be very present with the music and to make my intention realized with every performance."
When asked in an interview how she got into improvisation, she said she grew up playing classical music where "there's a boss. What's on the page is the boss. What the composer intended, that's the boss. In classical music, you're not your own boss ever." She said that's fine and that she's not opposed to structure, but that "in the creative process, I like to be free. Once it's the performance, there's room for all of it in my music. Some things I do exactly the same, and that's its own fun thing, is to adhere to that. Some things I do differently. In performance, what changes is the dynamic in the room."
Equipment
Anderson's main instrument is guitar, both acoustic and electric, but she has also employed other instruments across her albums such as
lap steel guitar
The lap steel guitar, also known as a Hawaiian guitar, is a type of steel guitar without pedals that is typically played with the instrument in a horizontal position across the performer's lap. Unlike the usual manner of playing a traditional ...
,
pedal steel guitar
The pedal steel guitar is a Console steel guitar, console-type of steel guitar with pedals and knee levers that change the pitch of certain strings to enable playing more varied and complex music than any previous steel guitar design. Like all s ...
, and
Wurlitzer electronic piano
The Wurlitzer electronic piano is an electric piano manufactured and marketed by Wurlitzer from the mid-1950s to mid-1980s. Sound is generated by striking a metal reed with a hammer, which induces an electric current in a pickup. It is conceptu ...
on ''Into the Light'';
and
charango
The charango is a small Andean stringed instrument of the lute family, from the Quechua and Aymara populations in the territory of the Altiplano in post-Colonial times, after European stringed instruments were introduced by the Spanish during c ...
and
requinto guitar
A requinto guitar is a smaller version of a classical guitar, with a scale length between 52-54cm. It is tuned a fourth higher than a standard classical guitar, to A2-D3-G3-C4-E4-A4. They often, but not always, have a cutout to reach the higher ...
on ''Cloud Corner''. Her instrument collection also includes a
Dobro
Dobro is an American brand of resonator guitars, currently owned by Gibson and manufactured by its subsidiary Epiphone. The term "dobro" is also used as a generic term for any wood-bodied, single-cone resonator guitar.
The Dobro was originally ...
from the 1930s, a
terz guitar
An organ stop can mean one of three things:
*the control on an organ console that selects a particular sound
*the row of organ pipes used to create a particular sound, more appropriately known as a ''rank''
*the sound itself
Organ stops are sorte ...
, a
nylon-string parlor guitar
Parlor or parlour guitar usually refers to a type of acoustic guitar smaller than a Size No.0 Concert Guitar by C. F. Martin & Company. ''Mottola's Cyclopedic Dictionary of Lutherie Terms'' describes the term as referring to "any guitar that is ...
, a custom Warmoth
Telecaster
The Fender Telecaster, colloquially known as the Tele , is an electric guitar produced by Fender. Together with its sister model the Esquire, it is the world's first mass-produced, commercially successful Les Paul had built a prototype solid bod ...
with
Lollar
Lollar is a town in the district of Gießen, in Hesse, Germany. It is situated on the river Lahn, 7 km north of Gießen
Giessen, spelled Gießen in German (), is a town in the German state (''Bundesland'') of Hesse, capital of both the d ...
P-90
guitar pickups
A pickup is a transducer that captures or senses mechanical vibrations produced by musical instruments, particularly stringed instruments such as the electric guitar, and converts these to an electrical signal that is amplified using an instru ...
, and a
Gibson ES-125
The Gibson ES-125 is an archtop, hollow body electric guitar model that was produced by the Gibson Guitar Corporation.
Model history
Introduced in 1941 as the successor to the ES-100, the ES-125 was an entry-level archtop electric guitar. It had o ...
from the early 1940s.
Discography
Solo
Albums
* ''Holiday Motel'' (2006, 16 Records)
* ''The Golden Hour'' (2009,
Mississippi
Mississippi () is a state in the Southeastern region of the United States, bordered to the north by Tennessee; to the east by Alabama; to the south by the Gulf of Mexico; to the southwest by Louisiana; and to the northwest by Arkansas. Miss ...
)
* ''Mercury'' (2013, Mississippi)
* ''Traditional and Public Domain Songs'' (2013,
Grapefruit
The grapefruit (''Citrus'' × ''paradisi'') is a subtropical citrus tree known for its relatively large, sour to semi-sweet, somewhat bitter fruit. The interior flesh is segmented and varies in color from pale yellow to dark pink.
Grapefruit is ...
)
* ''Tashi Dorji / Marisa Anderson'' (2015, Footfalls) (with Tashi Dorji)
* ''
Into the Light'' (2016, Chaos Kitchen)
* ''
Cloud Corner'' (2018,
Thrill Jockey
Thrill Jockey is an American independent record label established by former Atlantic Records A&R representative Bettina Richards and based in Chicago.
History
Richards started the label in 1992 with $35,000 of family and personal capital, while ...
)
* ''
The Quickening'' (2020, Thrill Jockey) (with
Jim White)
* ''
Lost Futures'' (2021, Thrill Jockey) (with
William Tyler)
* ''
Still, Here
''Still, Here'' is the tenth studio album by Portland guitarist Marisa Anderson, released September 23, 2022, by Thrill Jockey. The eight-track album consists of six original compositions and two arrangements of traditional songs. Anderson recorde ...
'' (2022, Thrill Jockey)
Singles
* "Into the Light" (2016, ''Into the Light'')
* "He Is Without His Guns" (2016, ''Into the Light'')
* "You'd Be So Nice to Come Home To" (2020, with
Tara Jane O'Neil
Tara Jane O'Neil (born November 22, 1972) (surname sometimes written as "ONeil"; sometimes credited as TJO) is an American multi-instrumentalist, songwriter, audio recording engineer, and visual artist based out of Los Angeles, California, Unite ...
)
* "The Lucky" (2020, ''The Quickening'')
* "Gathering" and "Pallet" (2020, ''The Quickening'')
* "Lost Futures" (2021, ''Lost Futures'')
* "Hurricane Light" (2021, ''Lost Futures'')
* "At the Edge of the World" (2021, ''Lost Futures'')
* "Waking" (2022, ''Still, Here'')
* "
La Llorona
''La Llorona'' (; "The Weeping Woman" or "The Wailer") is a Hispanic-American mythical vengeful ghost who is said to roam near bodies of water mourning her children whom she drowned.
Origins
Early colonial times provided evidence that the lore ...
" (2022, ''Still, Here'')
* "The Fire This Time" (2022, ''Still, Here'')
With the Dolly Ranchers
* ''Ten O'Clock Bird'' (2000, Chaos Kitchen)
* ''Escape Artist'' (2002, Chaos Kitchen)
With the Evolutionary Jass Band
* ''Change of Scene'' (2006, Community Library)
* ''What's Lost'' (2007, Mississippi)
* ''Pure Light'' (2009, Jaffe)
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Anderson, Marisa
Living people
21st-century American women guitarists
Guitarists from California
Musicians from Portland, Oregon
Guitarists from Oregon
American folk guitarists
Americana musicians
American women environmentalists
Thrill Jockey artists
Year of birth missing (living people)
California State Polytechnic University, Humboldt alumni
People from Sonoma, California
American women film score composers