Singer/songwriters are everywhere these days, and that’s a wonderful thing. Sisters and brothers are doing it for themselves, putting out CDs on home-brewed or micro-brewed labels and finding better living on the internet. Noe Venable, a Bay Area tunestress who’s dubbed after the poetic-sounding Noe Valley, is one of those. But there’s a difference with her music, as you can hear on her live album, Down Easy, on the Petridish label, (proceed to www.noevenable.com). Or hear her live and in person at SOhO next Thursday, when she plays with her trio on a double bill with fellow Bay Area music scene-maker, drummer Scott Amendola and band. Venable steers just outside the usual folk chord map and draws on her collaborators, violinist Alan Lin and bassist Todd Sickafoose, to provide colorful, textural asides instead of the usual stuff. In other words, she’s not usual. She’s sweet, sad, and slightly odd, in refreshing, artful ways. Her album closes on its highest note, with the long waltzing sigh of the title track. It sinks into the moonrise in a languid 3/4 swaying motion...
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