Awful Purdies Bio: This all-female quintet is an eclectic collection of musicians who banded together out of the shared experiences of creating music across genres and being female in a male-dominated industry. All singers and multi-instrumentalists, they purdify every original and borrowed song they meet. Purdify — v. To give something the property of being created and/or modified by the all-female group Awful Purdies, especially songs. See also “psycho-folk” and “new folk.” History and more: Formed in the summer of 2006 Awful Purdies is a 5 piece all female band featuring Katie Roche on accordion, whistles and percussion, Nicole Upchurch on banjo, Katie Burnes on cello, Sarah Cram on guitar and percussion and Marcy Rosenbaum, on guitar and mandolin. All singers and songwriters, the Awful Purdies original music is as diverse as the backgrounds of the women in the group. To say they play one genre of music would be wrong, but to say that they play their kind of music would only be a start. From Upchurch's story telling tunes, to Cram's confessionals and Roche's word-heavy tangential songs to Rosenbaum's a capella testimonials and Burnes string compositions the Awful Purdies are always a surprise. But the one thing that remains consistent for the band is the importance of telling a story and the careful crafting that goes along with that. Songs will go through countless revisions in pursuit of the version that sounds most like the Awful Purdies. According to cellist Katie Burnes, “So there’s water purification, and we have ‘Purdification,’ ” . Founded by former members Amy Finders and Annie Savage, Awful Purdies was the answer to the question, "Is there a musical life for women after children, family and career?" Former member Gabrielle Kouri also serves as a ghost songwriter for the group, lending such tunes as "Mechanical Ditch Digger" to the bands repertoire. The Awful Purdies self titled debut was released on 9-9-9. Starting in 2011 the Awful Purdies are working on their second release with producer Pete Becker of Tuff City Records. HIATUS will be released sometime in 2012. The album is called HIATUS for gersh sakes, it would be silly to nail down a release date at this point. Instead, as Dave Moore says, we're gonna "take our time and doing it right." |
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