Alexis Marceaux National Album Release Show

August 26 The Allways Lounge Doors 9pm/Stage 10pm
Orange Moon Official National Release – August 23, 2011

It’s fitting you might have caught a glimpse of Alexis Marceaux on Treme, HBO’s pantheon to New Orleans musicians. The soulful young artist is a lifelong New Orleanian, with credentials that best that of the cast. Her father is a local musician, and Alexis not only grew up surrounded by artists via rehearsals and sessions in the house; she also attended New Orleans Center for the Creative Arts (alumni include Harry Connick Jr. and Wynton Marsalis), and sang in the St Bernard Parish Choir. Now, the 22-year old is releasing her second album, Orange Moon on August 23, 2011. Under the tutelage of Polyphonic Spree’s Rick Nelson and producer Sam Craft, Alexis drew an all-star cast, 25 of NOLA’s finest musicians of every genre, for an album that is big and lush — yet finessed with restraint and space.

On the cinematic title track, Marceaux’s classically trained alto soars and dips with a brass section featuring Bonerama’s Craig Klein, Big Sam’s Funky Nation’s Sam Williams, and a host of other New Orleans horns, making it one part jazz, one part funk and indie rock. The song is one part testimony to a friend’s battle with cancer and another battle – the one to rebuild after her family lost everything in Katrina. With “Wishing Well,” she tackles the more recent oil spill – only told from the point of view of Louisiana’s state bird, the Pelican. On the song”Brains,” featured in Starbucks stores now, orchestral backing with pop-flavored hand claps lighten up the searching lyrics, “Brains are scattered on the ground, are scattered all around and I can’t find my eyes.”