Echo WOMEN SHOW
Wanda Johnson
Enthusiastic reviews of concerts and recordings calls her the new voice of soul and blues from South Carolina. Wanda Johnson (1963) has been a musician since the early 90s but she turned to be a full-time singer in the second half of the decade and her debut album was released in 2003. Unlike many of her colleagues she does not contented only with copying her lodestars through the interpretation of blues and soul standards, but she puts her head above the parapet as an author and co-author with her artistic partner, pianist Gary Erwin called Shimp City Slim. Wanda Johnson has three European tours under her belt, numerous USA festival appearances (including Chicago, Pocono, more), and three CDs in worldwide distribution: Call Me Miss Wanda, Natural Resource, and Hold What You Got. Although she is often compared to Irma Thomas or Norah Jones, she sings in her completely unique style and the reviewers of her performance at the Chicago Blues Festival in 2007 called her the biggest surprise of the key event in the annual blues festivals. A year later she toured with great success at Blues Alive in Šumperk and this success has predetermined her to return to this year´s Echo Blues.
Petra Börnerová Duo
Born in Bílina, Petra has sung and played with several rock and blues bands since 2005. Together with her husband Tomáš Bobrovnický, a well-known Slovakian drummer (ex-Bluesweiser etc.) and a manager, she has worked with top Hungarian musicians. At the end of the first decade of the century, Petra Börnerová managed to start her own band, where Slovak guitarist Miloš Železňák plays a big part, and she has also expanded her singing from the orthodox blues towards songwriting with elements of jazz, folk and chanson. Nevertheless, the blues foundations are still present in her music. A byproduct of Petra Börnerová Band is the intimate Peter Börnerová Duo, where the singer plays also the accordion and her husband Tomáš Bobrovnický has changed the drums for the guitar. The duo´s repertoire is based on standard folk-blues songs, which are complemented with own music.
Jana Ružičková & Cross The Line
Jana Ružičková entered the world of culture originally as a theater actress. Since the second half of 90s she has been slowly entering the top of Slovak blues singers. In 1997 as a front woman in the band The Dorm Blues she was voted the new artist of the year by Slovak Blues Society. At that time she also sang with one of the most prominent bands of that time, The Blues Mother In Law. At the beginning of the new century, she founded the band Blues House in her native town Trnava, which she presented in 2004 and 2005 at Blues Alive as the winner of the Blues Aperitiv. In 2008 she started a new band called Cross The Line, which she has been singing with until now. Last year Jana successfully contributed to the seventh part of the sampler Blues Society, where she sang songs by Ana Popovic, Keb 'Bo'a and Scott Henderson in a specific way.
Rosie Ledet & The zydeco Playboys
If the Allman Brothers went zydeco they would probably sound like Rosie Ledet“, wrote one critic in New York Times some time ago. Although Mary Rosezla Bellard Ledet, which is her original name, was in an environment, where zydeco was heard, she took little interest in the music at the time. It was when she was much older that she first got fascinated with this typical Creole music style. She learned the accordion watching her husband play. She had her first concerts with his band. Her name entered the professional zydeco scene in 1994 with her debut album Sweet Brown Sugar, which was produced by a respected veteran zydeco producer Mike Lachney a/k/a DJ Bad Weather.
Her position in zydeco scene has been, of course, facilitated by her gender - this style boasts only a handful of female musicians, especially excellent accordion players, well-known singers and moreover talented authors, who have written much of the repertoire in the native Creole language. Not surprisingly, Rosie Ledet has astonished not only the experts, who have awarded the band with a many titles since 90s, but also the visitors to prestigious shows, in the lead with the most famous one, the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival.
