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"THE GREATEST BAND YOU'VE NEVER HEARD OF." THAT’S
EDDIE FROM OHIO,
It’s the first collaboration for the Washington, DC band—Julie Murphy Wells (vocals), Robbie Schaefer (guitar), Michael Clem (bass), Eddie Hartness (drums)--with producer Lloyd Maines, (Natalie's father, who won a Grammy® Award in 2002 for co-producing The Dixie Chicks’ multi-platinum HOME album). THIS IS ME has all the main ingredients that the band’s known and loved for: spectacular harmonies, crisp instrumental performances, and songs that range from thoughtful to joyful, from the ridiculous to the sublime. The characters they create--the weary but tenacious Irishwoman on "Baltimore," the wife who has become a stranger to her husband on "Clear and Present Danger," the precociously restless seven-year-old on "Fly"--come alive. The places they evoke--"Independence, Indiana," just beyond the reach of innocence--feel real. The instrumental textures are bolder, more varied, maybe riskier, and in the end more illuminating than on any other Eddie From Ohio release. "Things we shied away from in the past--electric guitars, drum sets, even me jumping from the acoustic to the Precision bass--didn't scare us off this time, as long as they served the song," bassist Michael Clem explains. "To be honest, a lot of that comes from working with Lloyd. It's the mark of his genius to help us embellish our sound, rather than cover it up. And that gave us an adrenaline push like we've never had before." In touring news, the band will head out on an extensive tour of the U.S. starting September 30 in Charlottesville, VA and will include a special hometown concert at the Birchmere in Alexandria, VA on October 19 to celebrate the album’s release. The trek isn’t set to end within a month or two, either. They’ve already got shows booked well into 2005, so fans won’t have to worry about missing an opportunity to catch their engaging live show. Eddie From Ohio—whose name stems from an odd nickname a girlfriend had given to drummer Eddie Hartness, who is not from Ohio but from Northern Virginia (as is the rest of the band)--is one of the great independent success stories in today’s music scene. Since forming in 1991, they’ve put out eight critically acclaimed albums (which have each sold over 30,000 copies; over 100,000 to date); they consistently have played over 100 shows per year across the U.S.; they’ve been invited to perform at various prestigious festivals including Telluride Bluegrass, Philly Folk Falcon Ridge Folk Festival (Hillsdale, NY), Folks Festival (Lyons, CO and City Stages (Birmingham, AL); they’ve shared the stage with Rosanne Cash, Arlo Guthrie, Roger McGuinn, Los Lobos, Collective Soul and even the Posies among many others; they’re six-time award winners as “Best Contemporary Folk” band at the Annual Washington Area Music Association’s Wammie Awards; they’ve been voted as “Best Washington, DC Based Band” by the Washington Post and the Washingtonian magazine numerous times; and listeners of WUMB-FM recently voted the band as one of the Top Folk Acts of the past 20 years. After the tragic events of September 11, within a month’s time, Eddie From Ohio recorded and released a special fundraiser EP, 9eleven Relief, which raised over $30,000 through Internet and show sales only, for a local DC/VA Pentagon victim relief fund. "The greatest band you've never heard of." (US Air's Attache) "…smart, quirky songs that goose the imagination." (Entertainment Weekly) "…the darling of the East Coast singer/songwriter scene, employing instrumentation that crosses the musical spectrum, a superb flair for cliché-free melodies, and the stunning voice of Julie Murphy Wells." (Billboard) That’s just a sampling of the enormous amount of critical praise the band has received over the years. And in a live review of a 1999 show, the Boston Globe raved: “Their sound is infectious folk-pop, spiced with jazz, ska, rock, and Latin flavors. The harmonies are smooth and complex, but their forte is rapid-fire satires that are wickedly clever but never mean. Their humor is cut from the finest Marx Brothers cloth, but more Harpo’s soft flannel then Groucho’s tough tweed…This band is a fast-bubbling underground phenomenon, making legions of new ‘Edheads’ everywhere they go.” Here are the confirmed tour dates (all are subject to change):
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