Musician, singer, songwriter and producer Joan Wasser collaborated with musician/ singer Benjamin Lazer Davis on a pop album inspired by African rhythms. The duo brings the Let it Be You tour to Limerick this week …
JOAN As Police Woman (Joan Wasser to her relations) has made music since picking up the violin in her early school days. She trained in classical piano and violin at Boston University and performed with the college’s Symphony Orchestra.
A love of pop music and creating something new led the musician to work and improvise with indie bands and to join The Dambuilders in 1994. Her ambition was to “bridge the gap” between the guitar and the bass in the band by playing violin aggressively and loud.
Joan has improvised and played with artists as diverse as Elton John, Elvis Costello, Anthony and The Johnsons, Rufus Wainwright, Sparklehorse, David Sylvian and Brian Molko (Placebo).
Wasser was in a relationship with singer/ songwriter Jeff Buckley (who released the album ‘Grace’ and sang perhaps the definitive version of Cohen’s ‘Hallelujah’) for three years when he lost his life in an accidental drowning in 1997.
Coming to terms with the loss, Joan made the album ‘Debt & Departure’ with the band Those Bastard Souls. Bringing together the remaining members of Jeff Buckley’s band she formed Black Beetle who recorded an album that remains unreleased.
In 1999 she contributed her violin playing to the Mercury Prize-winning album, ‘I Am a Bird Now’ by Antony and the Johnsons and later joined the group.
Since 2004 she has released her solo material as Joan As Police Woman. The debut album ‘Real Life’ got rave reviews for its pensive and gentle magical journey, “always erring on the side of lovely understatement” (The Guardian).
The flowing blues of ‘We Don’t Own It’ and ‘The Ride’ still feature in her set today.
The name of her project is inspired by 1970s’ cop show called Police Woman, starring Angie Dickinson, after a friend of Joan told her that her looks channelled her “inner Angie Dickinson”
The current Joan as Police Woman album is a collaborative project with indie-soul singer Benjamin Lazar Davis.
Davis is a member of several bands including Okkervil River and Cuddle Magic and travelled to West Africa to study drumming techniques
Joan worked on Damon Albarn’s Africa Express project in Ethiopia and when Davis and Wasser met in 2013, they discovered their mutual interest in Central African Republic Pygmy music.
Subsequently Davis co-wrote, recorded, co-produced and tours ‘Let It Be You’.
Expect to hear lots of indie pop perfection from the album ‘Let It Be You’ and some re-imaginings of Joan Wasser’s back catalogue when Joan as Police Woman and Benjamin Lazer Davis play Dolan’s this Tuesday March 14.
