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(photo by: Maia Rosenfeld)
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With her gorgeous cream-and-Kahlua voice, Chicago’s Naomi Ashley is a dazzling performer who brings her songs to startling, vibrant life. When she's singing, she disappears into the song. Her pitch-perfect voice has the ability to convey pitch perfect emotional life. The music she makes is intimate, plainspoken and gorgeously sung — drawing on the American folk, blues and country traditions — which surge with all the contradictory impulses of real, imperfect life. Between songs, she's free-spirited, forthright and very funny, connecting easily with her audience. A born-storyteller, she weaves witty, often hilarious observations and touching stories from her life in Chicago, and as a girl growing up on her parent's farm in Moville, Iowa. Both with her tight Naomi Ashley Band (including fiddle-virtuoso Cathie Van Wert) and as a solo artist, Naomi regularly appears at leading Chicago-area venues, including: Fitzgerald's, SPACE, Schubas and Uncommon Ground. And at major regional venues, including the Acorn Theater in Three Oaks, Michigan. Her popularity and breadth of great material — from double-over funny to double-bourbon heartbreak — make Naomi a versatile and sought-after opener for national acts, including Carrie Rodriguez, Fred Eaglesmith, Paul Thorn, Sarah Borges & the Broken Singles, Cheryl Wheeler and Antje Duvokot. And with the recent release of her haunting masterpiece Another Year Or So — praised by reviewers as "brilliant" and "one of the top five albums of 2007" — her profile continues to grow regionally and nationally. Recently, Another Year Or So garnered a Best New Folk Song of 2009 nomination at the Just Plain Folks Music Awards for the heart-wrenching honky-tonk waltz Linda. Naomi first gained notice with the release of her inaugural CD, the six-song Love and Other Crap in 2001. Recorded in a friend's basement, are shockingly funny, tough and perceptive takes on the insanity of love. Or as one cheerfully addled stalker puts it, "Folks say I'm crazy. I say I'm crazy in love." In 2002, she released her first full-length album Small Town Thing with her country-rock band Naomi Ashley and County Fair. In Small Town Thing Naomi reached back to her rural roots with lyrical narratives described as "being ripped straight from the headlines of small town newspapers and barroom conversations." Also an adept comedic performer, in 2004 Naomi began performing on Chicago's comedy and cabaret circuits as half of the comedy-folk duo Naomi & Ben. Recently expanding her scope to the medium of performance art, Naomi collaborates with celebrated Chicago spoken-word artists — such as poetry slams founding father Marc Smith and acclaimed writer and storyteller David Kodeski — both in the recording studio and in performance. Naomi currently resides on Chicago's northside with husband, bluegrass musician Ben Benedict and their two cats.
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© 2009 Naomi Ashley. All rights reserved.
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Site + Design: ENGAGE:DSN
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Copy by: Al Kammen
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Logo Design: Spilled Ink Press
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This project is partially supported by a Community Arts Assistance Program grant from the City of Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and the Illinois Arts Council, a state agency.
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