Audrey Auld

Audrey Auld, a singer and songwriter, entered the world in Australia before spending her childhood in Tasmania’s rural bush, where television and radio remained absent. Dance studies and classical violin came next within a household steeped in music, her father at the jazz piano and her stepfather fronting a jazz band. Before reaching adolescence she shifted to town life and absorbed the popular music of the seventies, turning to punk rock as a teenager. In Sydney she trained as an actor, then transitioned into video and film projects, devoting six years to animation. Leaving the city behind, she began performing country music and, after returning to Sydney, continued to sing, joining an a cappella ensemble directed by Tony Backhouse. She soon assembled her own vocal group, the Cowbelles, and later appeared with the Harmony Grits and Audrey & the Rhythm Wranglers.

In search of a producer for her solo songwriting work she met Bill Chambers of the Dead Ringer Band—father of Kasey Chambers—and the pair recorded a four-song EP issued in 1997. Their next project, the 1998 album Looking Back to See, presented traditional country duets on their own Reckless Records label and was credited to Bill & Audrey. Auld followed with the solo album The Fallen, written and recorded in 2000; once it secured American distribution she toured the United States in 2001. Her second solo album, Losing Faith, appeared in 2003. That same year she married, moved to America, and settled in the Northern California town of Bolinas. The live album Texas arrived in 2004, the first release to carry her married name, Audrey Auld Mezera. A December 2005 concert with guitarist Nina Gerber was captured for the double-CD live set In the House, issued in May 2006. Her third solo studio album, Lost Men and Angry Girls, followed in February 2007.