Kristin Andreassen
Kiss Me Hello

An album of uncommon grace and candor, Kiss Me Hello pulls together the many threads that have made up the wonderfully frayed existence of Kristin Andreassen – songwriter, vocalist, multi-instrumentalist, and dancer.

Kristin is best known as a member of the respected "all g'Earl" stringband Uncle Earl and also as one-third of the "folk noir" vocal trio Sometymes Why. Those who follow the folk festival circuit will remember her clogging with Footworks Percussive Dance Ensemble. And die-hard fans will even know her from The Jolly Bankers, whose quirky albums have achieved cult status in the "old-time underground."

Now after years of collaborative projects, Kiss Me Hello is Kristin's first solo album. It is a snapshot capturing her gift for applying freewheeling folk processes to original songs that are unmistakably contemporary, and it provides a window onto her unique contribution to her other bands as well. Sly and subversive on one hand, winningly accessible on the other, Kristin seems at home everywhere she lands.

More about Kristin

A Portland, Oregon native, Kristin's journey from high school to her current abode in Boston has twisted across a decade and a continent. She has been an Amtrak sleeping car porter, a student of history (McGill University), a journalist, an economic development project officer on Cape Breton Island (Nova Scotia), and she even spent two winters in the Canadian arctic (Arviat) as an Internet tech for a group of Inuit youth and elders making a local history web site.

Somewhere between Cape Breton Island and Hudson Bay, Kristin fell in love with folk music. Both places have strong square dance traditions and she found herself neglecting her day job for late-night dances and kitchen stepdance lessons. This eventually led her to West Virginia to study clogging. From there she "turned pro" and began touring with Maryland's Footworks Percussive Dance Ensemble.

Kristin threw herself into learning how to dance – Karate Kid style. She moved to an old farmhouse which past and present artist residents had named "The Ranch." There she literally woodshedded on a dozen Footworks dance routines. She cleaned up a broken-down tour bus in the yard and made it her bedroom. And that winter she wrote her first song ("Like the Snow"), set to the accompaniment of a lone snow shovel. Suddenly her childhood choir and piano lessons (with her grandma) came into play, and this album began to take shape.

More about Kiss Me Hello

At The Ranch, Kristin and her housemates hosted dozens of touring musicians. It's from the Ranch guest list that she recruited the band for Kiss Me Hello. Producer Mark Schatz (bassist for Nickel Creek and for innumerable classic bluegrass & old-time albums) was Musical Director for Footworks, where he and Kristin met. But he also was also a frequent Ranch visitor, known to make grilled cheese sandwiches at dawn after all-night music parties.

Between Kristin and Mark's shared dance company experience and Mark's skill at digging a deep groove in a band arrangement, this album takes what could have been another "girl-with-guitar" singer/songwriter record to a unique place.

Kiss Me Hello opens with the sound of four hands playing pattycake on the song "Crayola Doesn't Make a Color for Your Eyes." Written in a time when Kristin was teaching dance at grade schools, "Crayola…" contains the delight of a playground rhyming game. Kristin and co-writer Megan Downes snagged the 2007 Grand Prize for Children's Song of the Year in the John Lennon Songwriting Contest for this song – though its appeal is more universal than the category may suggest.

Dance rhythms turn up again in Kim Jones' (Footworks) tap solo juxtaposed with Kristin's barefoot waltz clog on "Dancin' In My Sleep," in the sound of boots walking on "Fly," and in the Cajun triangle on the "dance re-mix" of  "Pale Moon," (which was also heard as the title-producing cut of Uncle Earl's 2005 album She Waits for Night). On "Faith," the closing song of the album, Kristin dances an Irish jig.

Another key rhythmic force behind the project is Scott Senior, percussionist with The Duhks. Senior is a versatile drummer who brings his cajon and his Latin rhythmic sense to "Just Another Song About Molly Brown," and then a languid sizzle cymbal on "Heat." Baltimore drummer Frank Russo takes over on the rock-pop "Jump Start My Heart" and the bluesy "My Crazy."

Also lending their talents to the album are Sometymes Why cohorts Aoife O'Donovan (Crooked Still) and Ruth Ungar (The Mammals), who provide velvety harmonies on many numbers, with O'Donovan also contributing some pointillist piano. Other musicians include Danny Knicely (Virginia jamgrass legend of Magraw Gap and David Via & Corn Tornado), Rushad Eggleston (Crooked Still), Eric Merrill (The John Whelan Band), Oliver Steck (Slaid Cleaves), Sara Watkins (Nickel Creek), and one-time Elvis sideman Del Puschert on saxophone.

A lot has changed since Kristin started writing the songs for this album. She's now made a name for herself in two of the premier folk groups of her generation. Uncle Earl has become a major festival draw in the U.S. and abroad, and has worked with producers Dirk Powell (of Balfa Toujours and Cold Mountain) and John Paul Jones of Led Zeppelin. Her band Sometymes Why toured Ireland this spring and has opened last winter for Chris Thile & the How to Grow a Band.

The songs on Kiss Me Hello unfold like a series of postcards from this journey. They arrive in your mailbox unexpectedly, without a commercial release date, without any specific tour or t-shirt to promote. Just hoping you might listen, enjoy, and pass the news to a friend.

Find links to photos & lyrics at www.myspace.com/kristinandreassen.

Primary Media Contact
Jim Walsh
Big Hassle
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