Matinee Show: Jo Schornikow, Annie Williams, Moriah Bailey in Acoustic Contact

Annie Williams was born on the borderline where the East meets the West in the Ozark Mountains of Missouri. When she was eighteen she chased a childhood dream to Wyoming. Annie spent six years in Laramie, WY riding bikes and climbing cliffs and singing the songs that eventually brought her east to Nashville. In Nashville, she settled down with her husband Ben and their two dogs. She worked at a country coffee shop and perfected her leather craft. She experimented with diets where you only ate cabbage, and she learned to do flips on the huge trampoline in her backyard. Mostly, though, she tried out different chords and tunings and searched for words that rhymed with the things going on inside her. In 2009, Annie released her first album, An Introduction to Annie Williams - an album that embraces the naivety of her youth. Now Annie's about to come out with her second album, This Mountain. It’s a record you should hear, one that aches for the world as it should be and so rarely is. Annie’s thinking she’ll go west again. Maybe she’ll live on the Rio Grande in a house made of earth. Maybe she’ll wear turquoise rings on her fingers and toes. But wherever she goes, there’ll be a guitar and questions that dress themselves in songs.

Jo Schornikow is an Australian songwriter and multi-instrumentalist. Between 2009 and 2012 she played keyboards and sang in the American band The Shivers. She has worked as an accompanist of Hugh Jackman, Bobby Rydell and Lana Del Rey and contributed keys for the likes of The National, Kelli Scarr, and Phosphorescent (her now partner Matthew Houck).