Page 68 - Sonoma County Gazette - August 2017

Work With Me, Annie
If you missed Annie Sampson at Ives Park last summer, you’ re getting another chance on Aug. 16. Backed by two of Sonoma County’ s nest – guitarist Gary Vogensen and drummer Gary Silva – with three others, on guitar, bass, and trumpet,
Sampson, born on 250 acres in
rural Louisiana, is the youngest
of 12 children in a highly musical
family. “My family sang at
home all the time,” she says
during a recent interview. Her
sisters sang gospel on the radio.
Sampson has been living in the
San Francisco area since age
ten, currently in Concord, and
is now retired from teaching
special education. During San
Francisco’s cultural revolution of
the 1960s -70s, she lived near the
Haight/Ashbury, and describes
going to “all the shows” at the
Fillmore plus concerts in Golden
Gate Park, adding “It was the
most wonderful time.”Hearing
about an audition in 1969 for
the rock musical “Hair” at
San Francisco’ s American
Conservatory Theater, she made
the cut, taking on a lead role as Abraham Lincoln. Over the course of three years “I never missed a show,” she says. By 1972, Sampson had graduated from the oor of the Fillmore to the stage, singing with the rock n’ roll band Stoneground, which had 11 members early on, including several female vocalists. Legendary deejay Tom Donahue co-produced their rst studio album and took them
on a European tour. While there, they recorded part of the soundtrack for the lm, Dracula A.D. 1972. “We played behind the action, a la carte,” she says. Sampson would remain with Stoneground until 1984, including shows at Oxford University and the Olympia Theatre in Paris.
Sampson has been writing songs since the Stoneground days, some with
her sister, and has her own record label, Sweet Potatoe, which released her last album, “Under the Moon.”A new release is in the oven. Currently, in addition
to her own band, active since the mid -‘80s, she’s a member of the highly successful Blues Broads, a coterie that also includes veterans Angela Strehli, Tracy Nelson, and Dorothy Morrison. The group originated with annual get -togethers, organized by Strehli, at Marin’ s Rancho Nicasio. About six years ago, they decided “to put this on the road,”Sampson says. Going back, she’ s also performed with Bonnie Raitt, Boz Scaggs, Steve Miller, Elvis Costello, Jerry Garcia, and local icon, Occidental’ s Nick Gravenites. As if that isn’t enough,
she once played with Chuck Berry and Elvin Bishop at Stanford, and sang the blues classic “Key to the Highway” with Freddie King at a ‘70s concert hall, the Armadillo World Headquarters in Austin, repurposed from an old National Guard armory building by what has been described as “a loose collective of hippies, free spirits, and dreamers.”At Ives Park, Sampson will be singing an excruciatingly powerful version of Dylan’s “It’ s All Over Now, Baby Blue.” Rumors that Dylan will be joining her onstage are greatly exaggerated.
she’ ll be performing her own brand of rock n’ roll, R&B, and gospel.
68 - www.sonomacountygazette.com - 8/17