Angie Pepper, Another Place, Another Time.

Res Ipsa Loquitor

Little is known about the true origins, age, or name of Angie Pepper. Her first known appearance was at the side of a dirt road in an old milk can, where she had been abandoned. A poor sharecropper happened by in his battered truck, stopped to get the can, and found the baby. Taking pity on the nearly dead infant, she was taken to the cabin and nursed back to health.

As an adopted child growing up in the rural Mississippi saltwater flats east of the delta, she experienced both the joys and the extreme hardships of life among the descendants of plantation slaves in the Deep South. She first sang field hollers, learned while carrying baskets of fried chicken to the workers at lunch time. Later, along with her sisters, she sang old time gospel in the Negro Baptist Church. Hours spent behind the church, singing what the parishioners later branded "Devil's Music", resulted in both the cultivation of a unique voice, as well as removal from the choir.

The only remaining venues of the day, were the smokey juke joints, whose price for admission, was sin. Pepper's voice, often angelic, but occasionally devilish, spared her the miseries suffered by others of the region. It was an original voice, forged in the fires of hard times, smoke and corn squeezings, and mellowed with the love of her family and community. It was near this time, although it can't be sure, that Pepper's left hand was mangled in an accident down at the local mill. Gnarled and twisted, the hand was then utilized to play the guitar, in an overhand fasion, by gripping a rusty fish knife, and scraping it along the strings.

Realising that she had come to the end of the possibilities of the region, she took up with a railyard hobo and together they made their way to the west coast. They said goodbye on the docks one night, both agreeing it was best. Hopping a freighter to Manila, she found work singing for sailors and Marines in the nightclubs of Olongapo ... a place featuring more than 2000 bars on on island of less than one square mile area.

After being sold to a Chinese white slaver and drug runner, she managed a harrowing escape, jumping overboard from the Asian ganglords 120 foot yacht in the shark infested waters off the greater Celebes. Picked up by a passing refugee junk, she made landfall in Darwin with a forged Singapore passport. Befriended by wandering aborigines, she learned how to live off the land.

Angie eventually headed south, hitching rides down the coast, and hid out for a while in the tough steel mill town of Newcastle. There she fronted several blues bands, including "Thee Electric Jug", and moonlighted as a jazz dancer in a Beefheart cover band calling themselves "Veterans Day Poppy". Moving 100 miles down the coast to Sydney, she sang with the Passengers, winning a prominent media award for best new female vocalist in 1979.

The Passengers represented a major landmark in the development of Angie's style, which had veered into a unique blend of sixties girl group attitude and elements of the punk revolution. Following the Passsengers was an alliance with Deniz Tek, recently exiled from the demise of Radio Birdman, in the Angie Pepper Band. During subsequent touring and recoording, Angie's Delta roots returned to the fore, with original Cedell Davis style electric blues shouts like "Beyond The Urals" and cover versions of James Brown's "Why Did You Take Your Love", Beefheart's "Long Neck Bottles" and the acid rock lamentations of Joe Byrd and the Field Hippies "You Cant Ever Come Down" from the experimental American Metaphysical Circus album.

Legend has it that at these session she refused to sing unless one of Hubert Sumlin's socks was used for a mike shield. After cancellation of the half finished album for no given reason, she and Deniz went to America. After a hard cold winter in the brutal Cass Corridor of Detroit, and being tired of freezing, they made their way back down to the deep south. ""Little Angie Pepper" had come full circle.

After hanging out at a "Wes and the Wranglers" gig in Daleville Alabama, Angie once more wandered west. Again in Mississippi, she found the grave of her adopted parents. Laying a wreath of flowers upon the modest stones, she walked off into the mists of the delta swamps, and into mystery.. Angie disappeared from the face of the earth and was not to be heard from in the music scene for another 20 years.

Around the turning of the millenium, Citadel Records released "Its Just That I Miss You", a compilation of eight studio demos from the Passengers and five tracks from the APB sessions ... tapes unearthed by Deniz in a sold out studio in Sydney, taken to Montana and remixed. It was a portent of more good things to come. Now Angie Pepper has reappeared on the music scene, with a new album of raw vitality and unearthly beauty, combining all of the influences of her amazing life into ten eternally memorable songs.

The new Angie album, entitled "Res Ipsa Loquitor" (translated from the latin,"the thing speaks for itself".....) was recorded, edited, and mixed over a five year period, self financed and owing no debt to any person or company. Produced at DWS Systems and Gods Little Ear Acre in Montana, musicians came from from around the world, and under the loving care of Deniz and the generous guidance of producers Dave Weyer and Ron Sanchez, the new Angie album came into being. It is scheduled for release in September on Career Records in America, and Citadel Records in Australia.

The incredible saga of Angie Pepper continues on .... yeah, on!