Anny Celsi: News

This on the live show in Conroe, Texas - courtesy of conroenews.com: "Last Saturday night, the Corner Pub hosted Los Angeles singer/songwriter Anny Celsi. This talented young lady has it all as she writes well, sings well, plays guitar well and knows the right people, including Dave Alvin, Randy Weeks, Los Lobos, Rosie Flores and Dwight Yoakum. Anny put on a great show and hopefully she will make Conroe a regular tour stop when she travels the Southwest and the Gulf Coast. And, hey guys, Anny is not bad on the eyes, either!"

Just added - shows in Austin, Texas, along with guitar god Danny B. Harvey.  Danny's played with everyone from Wanda Jackson to Nancy Sinatra, and is a member of the rockabilly trio The Head Cat, along with members of The Stray Cats.  If you're in the neighborhood, be sure to stop in to one of the shows and say Hi!

I've just written a long-ish blog on our tour of Europe (blog page). It's really difficult to sum up a trip like that in words, so much happens over the course of a month that two weeks into it you can barely remember where you were a week ago.  Pictures and movies are still being sorted but I hope to have some up soon. There is some great new live footage up on YouTube and I'll get some links going here.

Next show will be at The Standard in Hollywood, May 18th, with Marc Carroll opening. Details on the Calendar page, please check it out!

Hopefully over the summer we will get some recording happening.  There is also some great live audio from the tour which we might mix into a special 'live in Europe' disk at some point...

Finally, I will get started soon on booking the next tour.  If you're not on my mailing list already, please sign up!  I need to know where you live so we can come see you!

There´s never time on the road to get onto computers and keep things up. But I managed to enter three new shows into the calendar, in Macclesfield and Brighton, so please check the tour schedule.  the shows have been fantastic and we´re having a wonderful time seeing Germany! only two more shows with Roland and we´re off to Ireland.

A few items to share...

First of all, I'll be on tour in Europe along with Nelson Bragg (of the Brian Wilson Band) from February 26 through March 29, with shows in Germany, The Netherlands, Ireland, Scotland and England.  We'll be joined along the way by Roland Wolff (of Riviera), Duncan Maitland (psych-pop sensation out of Dublin) and the Midlands' own powerpop favorite son, Richard Snow.  Full tour schedule is on the calendar page.  Please share this news with all your music-loving friends - and if you want to add your town to our itinerary, please send me a note with a suggested venue - we'd love to come and we do have a few nights open still!

If you want to keep up on the tour as it progresses, I invite you to follow my twitter feed @annycelsi

We have a new single out...!!

produced by Nelson Bragg and featuring Danny McGough on keyboards (Social Distortion, Ramsay Midwood), Eric Heywood on lap steel (Son Volt, The Pretenders, Ray LaMontagne) and Brett Simons on double bass (The Brian Wilson Band).  The song is Hollywood Waltz, written by Peter Holsapple (The DB's, The Continental Drifters and R.E.M.)

You can download the single for free by entering your e-mail address above.

Enjoy!!

OK. NOW we got us an Anny Celsi Tour 2011 of Europe!.....But we're still booking. The Irish pop genius Duncan Maitland travels and plays with us this time around in Ireland, Scotland and England...many gigs have him playing sets of his own promoting his brilliant record: "Lullabies for the 21st Century". We'll join him on harmonies and percussion. Our Dear Pal from Germany, Roland Wolff, from the great pop band Riviera, joins us in Holland and Germany.  England's Richard Snow joins us on special shows in the Midlands. OK...2011! Your starting out alright. PLEASE contact me or Anny Celsi if you've got some gig/show ideas/venues you think we should explore. HOUSE concerts welcome! We want to play your town! We also want you to feed us, give us floor space, coffee w/milk NOT cream and we'll buy the pints and I'll make my famous poached egg recipe! Deal? Done and done.

Cheers! Peace and Love and Happy New Year...Nelson Bragg

The shows are coming together for our next tour!  Check the Calendar page for confirmed dates in The Netherlands, Germany, Ireland, Scotland and England.  There will be more to come as things get nailed down and we fill in the in-betweens.  Tnis is our most ambitious trip ever - we will criss-cross England and be in and out of Heathrow (our old stomping ground!) more times than I care to think about.  Along the way will be joined by musical mates to include Roland Wolff, Duncan Maitland, Richard Snow, Nico Wouters and hopefully many more.

Here in Los Angeles, we haven't anything booked as we seem to be too busy participating in theme shows!  They seem to be springing up all over town as a way to bring together crowds of talented artists to celebrate a genre near and dear to us.  Our favorite is Adam Marsland's 70's night - over the past year we've contributed renditions of Delta Dawn and American Girl (Anny), Maybe I'm Amazed and Any Major Dude (Nelson) and one (perhaps ill-chosen) duet, the three minutes of stupidness known as You're The One That I Want. 

British Invasion Night was fun - we trotted out our versions of To Sir With Love, For No One and Waterloo Sunset.  And a night of original Christmas songs inspired me to write Christmas in the Pines (see below).

Coming up in January, Brill Building Night and an evening of Elton John songs hosted by Adam Marsland.   Who knows what further silliness the year will bring?

Watch the video of American Girl, live at Adam's 70's show, on my Youtube channel: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gVuNiHLQHjA

My friend Rich McCulley was hosting a night of Christmas songs at the Cinema Bar in Culver City.  "But all the songs have to be original," he said.  I love Christmas music - Phil Spector's Christmas album is in my Top Ten, and that's all-time, not just holiday music - but I've never been able to write anything about the holiday that made sense.  But I did find inspiration - you can read about it in the notes to the song - and came up with something that really spells it out for me.  As soon as I wrote the song I knew we had to record it and get it out for the holidays.  It took just a couple of days in the studio.  Nelson and I played the acoustic guitars and sang the harmonies.  He added sleighbells (of course) and glock (a nod to my favorite producer, mentioned above).  Paul Lacques of I See Hawks in L.A. stopped by to play lap steel, and my old compadre Carl Byron put down the accordion (...we walk through dirty streets...)  The song was done and mastered in a week, and we even managed to throw together a slide show that shows everything I really love about Christmas.  Don't know who most of those people are, but the kids are cute and they're having the kind of fun everybody should have on this holiday.  Enjoy!

I'm starting to build our next tour of Europe, starting with a venue we were very sorry to miss out on last time - The Stables in Boskoop, hosted by Johnny Verger (aka Hans Koster).   After we finally made it over to Holland via the Stena Line, and were able to pick up our tour in Leiden, Hans was sweet enough to come to our show just to tell us how much he missed us!  We start there on February 26th, and there are more shows booked so far in Haarlem and Enschede (The Netherlands), Osterbruck (Germany), and Cavan (Ireland).  Bookings are underway for Dusseldorf, Glasgow and a number of cities in England.  Please check in on our tour schedule, and if you have suggestions for venues shoot me an e-mail - we'd love to play in your town!

Once again, we'll be joined at the Holland/Germany shows by Roland Wolff of Riviera (brother to Julia Wolff and brother-in-law to our own dear Probyn Gregory!).  Roland's skills as an accompanist on 6 and 12-string guitar, melodica and vocals really made those shows special for us.  This time he has promised to bring his banjo as well!  In Ireland, Scotland and England we will also be inviting our very amazing and talented friends to join us, so we can promise a unique show every night!

Meanwhile, Nelson is pushing ahead with his next solo album - what I have heard so far is fantastic.  And we're also at work on an album of duets that we hope to have in hand for the next tour.  So much music to do, so many places to visit!

It took some time, and a struggle with Windows Moviemaker, but I've just finished putting together a video that will give you a taste of our recent tour experience. Come along on a virtual joyride from Heathrow Airport to the backstreets of Haren, Belgium. Madness meets music....enjoy!

As you may have heard, our last Tangle-Free Tour of Europe ended up being a little - well, tangled.  We landed at Heathrow Airport on April 15^th, the day of the Eyjafjallajökull Volcano eruption, and spent the next several days knocking around London, trying to find a way to reach our gigs on the continent.  Sadly, several shows had to be canceled, but once we did reach our destination (via the Stena Line Ferry), the venues were fantastic, the food delicious, the people we met especially lovely.  The experience was challenging, sometimes stressful, but ultimately a testament to the community of music, the kindness of strangers and the value of grace under pressure.

Not to be daunted, I’m undertaking booking our next European tour, aiming for stops in The Netherlands, Belgium, Germany and the UK, beginning in February 2011.  No volcanoes allowed!  Once again, Nelson Bragg and I will be joined by the fantastic Roland Wolff of Riviera.  Please let me know if you have any suggestions for venues; we would love to come to your town!  If you’re not on the e-mail list, please join now so we can keep you posted on the dates near you.

This is my brand new website! It has many more features than my old site, and should be easier to navigate and easier for me to update. Please sign up for my e-mail list if you're not on it already, and feel free to leave a note on how you like the new site and what I can do to improve it.

WEBSITE-ONLY OFFER - Altho I'd still like you to purchase CDs from my online partners to give them all some love, you can now buy two very cool Souvenir Posters directly from this website through PayPal.  I'll even autograph them for you!  You'll find them on the 'Buy' page, take a look!

ALSO...currently planting seeds for the next tour of Europe/UK - this will come about in February/March of next year, so keep in touch...!

Thanks! Anny