With music rooted in country, bluegrass and gospel, the three women in Angel Band spread their vocal wings and soar on [title]With Roots & Wings[/title], their first CD for Appleseed.

Their flight is breathtaking - founder/leader Nancy Josephson, Jen Schonwald and Kathleen Weber all possess wonderfully individual lead and harmony voices that combine in "boisterous, sad, sweet, goofy, glorious and angelic noise," as they describe it. Their love of the sound three female voices make together is at the center of the group. The chord rules the day; when all three voices hit "it," the hair on the back of your neck will rise. The trio's superb backing quartet ("Chum"), which includes Nancy's husband, Grammy-nominated virtuoso roots guitarist/multi-instrumentalist David Bromberg, provides equally uplifting accompaniment on a dozen alternately lively and moving original songs (by Josephson and Chum fiddler/guitarist Bobby Tangrea, separately and in collaboration) and a lovely version of Chip Taylor's country-pop standard, "Angel of the Morning." The rich mixture of voices, guitars, fiddle, mandolin, and other instruments was supplemented and produced by legendary Texas pedal steel guitarist and producer Lloyd Maines (Dixie Chicks, Jimmie Dale Gilmore, many others).

The two-year-old Angel Band has been performing mostly as the opening act and backing vocalists for Bromberg in the last few years as he's emerged from a 20-year performing and touring hiatus. Their singing and high-spirited, sassy, brassy onstage presentation have delighted audiences at Merlefest, Bonaroo, the Philadelphia Folk Festival, and elsewhere, and astounded Linda Ronstadt when they sang with her on several occasions: "I love Angel Band's harmonies, wonderfully strong voices, and beautiful songs!" she proclaimed.

On With Roots & Wings, after an opening Haitian Vodou (voodoo) incantation to open the door between the earthly and spirit worlds ("Hey Papa Legba"), the Angels stake their claim to Americana territory with the fiddle-led Cajun two-step "I'll Sing This Song for You." Equally boisterous are "I'm Coming Home to You" and the album's infectious closer, "Jump Back in the Ditch." "We Are Shepherds" is a protective hymn with lyrics by Josephson in response to President Bush's troop "surge." Other standouts: "Place of Grace," sung by Schonwald, about a couple staying together for the sake of their children; "Drown in the Fountain of Good," a slow gospel blues eerily ornamented Bromberg's mournful National steel guitar and Maines' distorted pedal steel; "Moon Over Montgomery," a sad portrait of the working class; and "Cold Lonesome Down in Blackbird Creek," a very blue bluegrass lament sung by Weber.

1. Hey Papa Legba 1:17
2. I'll Sing This Song For You 3:17
3. Place Of Grace 4:07
4. Drown In The Shadow Of Good 5:17
5. Cold Lonesome Down In Blackbird Creek 4:10
6. Hold Me Angel 2:48
7. Moon Over Montgomery 4:10
8. I'm Coming Home To You 3:30
9. Do Not Stand At My Grave And Weep 3:38
10. Patron Saint Of Opportunity 3:21
11. We Are Shepherds 4:11
12. Angel Of The Morning 3:41
13. Jump Back In The Ditch 3:28

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0016GLZE2/?tag=imwan-20

Here's the press release:

Angel Band coalesced from a series of jam sessions led by "head Angel" Nancy Josephson's husband, the renowned roots musician/vocalist David Bromberg, after the couple had been lured to Wilmington, Del., in 2002 to serve as the town's "artists-in-residence." Bromberg had virtually retired from recording and toured only occasionally in the preceding 20+ years; he spent the '80s and '90s in Chicago learning how to make violins. When David and Nancy moved to Wilmington, he initiated regular weekly blues and bluegrass jam session nights as a low-key return to making music. Nancy stayed home to work on her mixed media sculptures until David persuaded her to drop in at on bluegrass night. A family of musicians she met and sang with that night became her first line-up of Angel Band.

Josephson was no musical rookie. With musical influences ranging from The Monkees and The Supremes to bluegrass and country, she sang her way through school, forming garage bands and girl groups "with anyone who was cool." She eventually learned to play stand-up bass and helped form the all-girl bluegrass group, the Buffalo Gals, in upstate New York, staying with them from 1972 to 1976. Her next stop was California, to live with Bromberg, whom she'd met in 1970. For the next several years, she performed with a number of well-known bluegrass and "new grass" performers, including Peter Rowan and the Free Mexican Airforce, Laurie Lewis and Kathy Kallick (of the Good Ol' Persons), and even The David Bromberg Big Band.

After David and Nancy moved to Chicago in 1980, David studied violin making while Nancy started singing commercial jingles and, with some of her fellow jingle-singers, formed The Annettes, with Nancy the sole white, Jewish female in the otherwise African-American women's choir. After a couple of years, during which Nancy also toured with Arlo Guthrie, the choir disbanded and Nancy switched her attention to visual arts and to raising two young children.

The Brombergs moved to Wilmington, David opened a violin retail and repair shop, and both "retired" musicians started to play music again. Nancy and early Angel Band configurations recorded two self-released CDs of country/bluegrass-flavored songs written by others, with Chum (Bromberg on guitars, Bobby Tangrea on mandolin and guitar, Bob Taylor on bass, and Jeff Wisor as fiddle; Nate Grower currently tours as the group's fiddler) settling in as their backing band on 2004's Beautiful Noise. David casually started cutting solo acoustic blues tracks at the local Grand Opera House venue and studio. Those recordings, produced by Nancy, became Try Me One More Time (Appleseed), a hugely praised Grammy finalist for "Best Traditional Folk Recording of 2007." (Nancy had previously co-produced Beautiful Noise with Chum soundman and honorary member Marc Moss; Nancy co-produced three tracks on With Roots & Wings with Lloyd Maines, and Moss served as engineer.) So the violin maker and the sculptress returned to their lives in music.

With David's appetite for touring rewhetted, the current Angel Band line-up, together for the last year and a half, became his opening act and backing singers, with a great new CD and an expanding schedule of upcoming shows on their own:

There's the band's leader and founder (and resident student, practitioner, and chronicler of Haitian Vodou), Nancy Josephson, who sings high harmonies and lead vocals. She not only authored a recent book, Spirits in Sequins: Vodou Flags of Haiti (Schiffer, 2007) but has blossomed as a songwriter, with full or shared writing credits on ten of the songs on With Roots & Wings. As she modestly told Sing Out! magazine last summer, "Way stupider people than me have written really good songs, so I figured, `Why not?'"

Jen Schonwald, who sings low harmonies as well as lead vocals, was raised in a musical family in which her parents and step-father sang traditional folk songs, and she's been performing since the age of 12. Jen spent six years in the Philadelphia-based Full Frontal Folk group as vocalist and guitarist and also sang on recordings by singer-guitarist Pat Wictor. She co-wrote the spunky "Patron Saint of Opportunity" with Nancy on the new Angel Band CD.

The newest and youngest Angel is Kathleen Weber (middle harmonies, lead vocals), who has performed for more than 20 years in numerous choirs and bands, including the Moravian Women's Choir and, most recently, as a member of the reggae/rock Los Manatees in Pennsylvania's Lehigh Valley.