The Banjo Babes are back, as we’re sure you knew they would be, with a new calendar for 2019 and an accompanying audio CD full of new music by the women of the banjo.
Each year since 2014, Erin Inglish has produced this year-end project, using high quality photos of female banjo artists, to complete the calendar. These are not cheesecake images like you might have once seen on the brake shop walls back in the day, but elegant portraits conforming to the theme of each year, featuring a different picker each month.
Erin’s calendar is a collaborative effort among the many banjo gals, with each getting the chance to share in the proceeds by selling them at their various shows and on their web sites. The ladies also contribute an audio track for the CD, which they also have the opportunity to sell.
Banjo Babes is meant as a way for consumers to discover musicians they might not have encountered otherwise, and to dispel the canard that “ladies don’t play the banjo.” Both old time and three finger banjo are included.
For 2019, the theme is Solidarity Sisters, and all the photos are reproduced in black & white.
Featured artists include:
- January – Teri Quinn
- February – Grace Van’t Hof (Cryin’ Time, Della Mae, Bill & the Belles)
- March – Melody Walker (Front Country)
- April – Gayle Skidmore
- May – Samm Bones
- June – Moira Smiley
- July – Eleanor Underhill (Underhill Rose)
- August – Emily Dowden
- September – Eliza Mary Doyle (The Dead South)
- October – Laurie Michelle Caner (Hey Mavis)
- November – Jes Raymond (The Blackberry Bushes Stringband and Jes and Jakob)
- December – Michelle Canning
- Featured Artist – Cera Impala (The New Prohibition, The Blackberry Bushes, Dark Green Tree, and the Bevvy Sisters)
- Featured Artist – Evie Ladin (Evie Ladin Band)
- Cover Artist – Anielle Reid
- Project Curator – Erin Inglish
Orders can be placed now online, with product shipped on December 17, in time for Christmas giving. The Banjo Babe site allows you to order just a calendar, a calendar and a CD, a calendar and a download… you get the picture. Plus T-shirts, stickers, multi-year calendar packages, and the like.
Check out all the 2019 artists, and sample their music, on the site.
