Beacon
Out now!
These songs have California in their blood. All of them written in this new city, on a new journey, in a new climate, home, community. They were written to process these huge transitions — transition of place, and into motherhood.
— Anna Vogelzang
The feeling of embodying a transient physical state while living in new surroundings was the origin of Anna Vogelzang’s latest album, Beacon, co-produced with Tyler Chester. The group of songs was born from both places of unknowing, and ultimately proved itself inspired by the West Coast ether. Beacon is Vogelzang’s seventh studio album and celebrates the momentum of surrendering to the unknown, a feeling she knows intimately from her time in L.A . Her music transcends place by acknowledging the true illuminating source of soul and sound: people and self.
If life is more about the journey than the destination, Anna Vogelzang has proven herself the emerging musical force behind this age-old belief. Anna — a melody-driving, songwriting, multi-instrumentalist — has spent her formative years spread across the country, learning the musical languages of the Midwest, West Coast, New England and all that lies in between. Building community from coast to coast, she has traveled with home on her fingertips, her music peppered with flavors of nostalgia and perpetual motion.
A lifetime of transient living and rigorous touring shaped Anna’s music, and developed her sound into a wide palette of imagistic gritty landscapes, ranging from the “warm, engaging folk-pop” (Relix) of her 2014 EP, Driftless, to the “wide expansive sound” (Magnet Magazine) of her most recent release, Hiker (2016). Pop Matters praised her 2012 release, Canary in a Coal Mine, saying that the album’s “exquisite lyrical craftsmanship evok[es] everyone from Regina Spektor to Ani DiFranco, shifting between delicate lilt and evocative howl at will.” Her upcoming album, Beacon (2019), features Los Angeles mainstays Jay Bellerose (T. Bone Burnett, Aimee Mann), Mai Bloomfield (Jason Mraz, Sara Bareilles), Tyler
Chester (Jackson Browne, Andrew Bird), Adam Levy (Norah Jones, Vulfpeck), and is mixed by long-time collaborator Todd Sickafoose (Ani DiFranco, Anais Mitchell). Co-produced by Chester, Beacon is Anna’s seventh studio album.
In 2012, Anna founded Wintersong, an annual charity show in Madison, WI that has raised over $34,000 for Second Harvest Foodbank of Southwest Wisconsin. For nearly a decade, she has taught at Girls Rock Camps across the country,youth-centered arts and social justice organizations teaching empowerment through music. Upon moving to L.A. in 2016, Anna co-founded the weekly songwriting group, “Song Salon,” with guitarist Adam Levy, which sparked a movement of residencies, live shows, and albums throughout the local musical landscape. Anna has been involved with the International Girls Rock Alliance, and in 2017 joined the LA College of Music’s songwriting faculty. Her efforts and approach to music are rooted in the belief that communal experience heightens the creative process, and that collaboration serves to remind us that the truest sense of home is within ourselves.
P R E S S
just released | New Album
Beacon
