Local troubadour to host CD release party
Returning to her Pine Island home, singer and songwriter Annie Wenz is throwing a party to celebrate her latest CD. During her travels from Florida to Maine, Wenz took a brief detour to cut “Ride the Sky” and is ready to share it with her island friends and neighbors.
“This is my first lyrical CD in many years, so it will be a huge celebration,” Wenz said. “On this CD, the music runs the gamut from picky acoustic guitar and delicate piano with string accompaniment, to natty rockin’ blues with slide guitar, to the closing chorus of angelic voices questioning, ‘Are we poets or drunkards or incarnate souls waiting for manna to fall from the sky.'”
The CD release party will take place Friday, Nov. 5, from 7-9 p.m. at Koucky Gallery and Gardens in Bokeelia. Those attending will be asked to pay a $20 cover charge per person or $25 per couple, which will entitle them to signed copy of Ride the Sky.
In addition, all are welcome to bring finger foods to share and Little Lilly’s Island Deli will have food for purchase.
Songs on Ride the Sky include titles such as “Hallelujah Rose,” “Lone Coyote” and “Lonely Dog Meets Wandering Gypsy.” However, one of Wenz’s favorite creations is a song call “Play Ball,” with special vocals provided by baseball legend, former Red Sox pitcher Bill “Spaceman” Lee, who will join Wenz’s at the CD release party.
“This will be Bill’s bona-fided musical debut,” Wenz said. “‘Play Ball’ is a song about popcorn kisses, pink cotton candy and old leather gloves slapping hands, and Bill and I have teamed up to set this theme to music.”
Wenz is known internationally as a singer and songwriter and multi-instrumentalist whose diverse music wafts between roots and Americana, blues, folk and Indie acoustic, blending poetry with a vast array of typical and unusual instruments.
Performances have taken Wenz around the globe and she has traveled to more than 25 countries to “bring people together through music and hovering every possible drop of fun out of life.”
Wenz has shared her music with audiences in Pakistan during a concert for earthquake victims at the New Zealand Millennium Celebration, the Kennedy Center and music festivals, house concerts, coffeehouses, art centers and theater productions throughout the United States, Costa Rica, Germany, Sweden, Thailand, Vietnam, Bali and Mexico, to name a few.
Wenz has shared the spotlight with many artists including the Senegalese talking drum wizard, Massamba Djop of Babba Mal’s band, Steppenwolf’s Guy DeVito and London’s Robert Dean, who is the guitarist for Sinead O’Connor.
An instructor, Wenz has taught alongside, “Futureman” Wooten of Bela Fleck and the Flecktones and collaborated with the late Dr. Jeri Nielsen of the “Ice Bound” book and movie and the National Boyd Award winning novelist Robert Macomber.
In addition to Ride the Sky, Wenz has six other CDs to her credit that were produced on her label, “Island Gypsy.” Among her accomplishments, her all instrumental CD “Winds of the World” was chosen as the soundtrack for the feature film, “Gateway to Faeries,” and is also used by yoga and message therapists throughout the world.
Ride the Sky was produced and recorded at Fox Run Studio’s in Sudbury, Massachusetts, and the artwork and jacket design were produced by Pine Islander Nancy Koucky, of NRK Design.
For more information about the Ride the Sky CD release party, call 283-4414 or e-mail annie@anniewinz.com.