Annie Gallup

Dirty Linen

This is an excerpt from the print edition of Dirty Linen #136 (June/July 2008).
The full article is in the magazine, available on newsstands, by subscription, and at the Dirty Linen webstore.

Annie Gallup

A Character Playing Herself

by Tom Nelligan

Many contemporary songwriters devote much of their work to explaining themselves to the world; Annie Gallup said with a smile that she writes, instead, to explain the world to herself. Maybe that's the key to her unique music. Across seven albums, it consistently comes from some highly imaginative place, flashing vivid pictures of people in the midst of adventures and misadventures, largely of the romantic sort. They're portrayed through intricate, intelligent lyrics set to melodies and arrangements that shift from pensive acoustic narrations through touches of country blues and seductive jazz to smart beat poetry.

A slim, wide-eyed woman with a knowing smile and a soft, breathy voice, Gallup creates fascinating characters who are often flawed but still alluring, a cast of restless lovers and reckless dreamers who are running away or coming back or sometimes just happy to be where they are. Her songs can be edgy or sensual, urgent cries or quiet meditations. Some are spoken narratives that follow the rapid pulse of her guitar. There are wonderful flights of whimsy, too, on subjects ranging from mysterious circus magicians to talented cross-dressing dogs. "Sometimes I crack myself up!" she cheerfully admitted.

Gallup grew up in Ann Arbor, Michigan, a university city that is home to a flourishing music-and-arts community, where as a girl she witnessed the cultural transformations of the 1960s and discovered folk music at the Ark. Her parents both worked in creative professions, her mother an artist and printmaker and her father a woodworker. As a child she studied dance and later worked with a local dance company as both a dancer and choreographer. She started playing guitar at age 10, and began trying to copy licks from her favorite Doc Watson and Mississippi John Hurt records, absorbing country blues influences that still turn up in some of her music decades later.

[cover #136]