Lauren was a member of the Washington Squares, a wonderful retro-folk trio based out of New York City that were around in the late 80s. I caught them when they played at the late lamented Town Pump. They brought along ex-Television drummer Billy Ficca to round out the sound, and it was a great night. I loved their whole approach, so when she came back to the west coast in 1999 as part of a duo with Dave Rave, I ended up playing with them.
A few years after that I did a bunch of dates with Dave right across Canada, but by then he was solo.
As a songwriting musician, Lauren Agnelli has explored the many facets of American popular music throughout her wide-ranging career, writing and co-writing hundreds of songs, recording dozens of cds. In her home town of Chester, CT, in 2010, Lauren writes and performs with the Small Town Concert Series that she co-founded with her husband, Matthew Male, in 2007. She also performs solo, with co-writer Dave Rave, and with Amalgamated Muck, a roots/country/folk group. She began her musical and writing career in NYC in the late ‘70’s working for the Village Voice and Creem Magazine as rock writer Trixie A. Balm. Then, she wound up co-founding Nervus Rex, a fixture at New York’s CBGB’s. Later she helped ignite an 80s folk revival with the Grammy-nominated Washington Squares. In the 1990s she formed the melodic Agnelli & Rave with Dave "Rave" DesRoches. Meanwhile, she also recorded with nuclear polka musical geniuses and two-time grammy winners Brave Combo for an inspired 1996 torchy yet musically multistyled release, Kiss of Fire. With her 2004 solo effort, Love Always Follows Me, Lauren Agnelli drew upon her many musical styles to present new and classic torch songs that revealed more of the many sides of love for the “hopeful, not hopeless” romantic. In fact, her clear-eyed optimism and belief that the best is yet to come (if not here already) remains a true Lauren Agnelli trademark. In 2010, she is working on completing a new collection of original songs in the Americana vein, produced by Dave Rave.
Visit the Official Lauren Agnelli Website