Biography
Based in Portland, guitarist and composer Marisa Anderson has followed a winding and wide-ranging path that includes stints with country-folk group the Dolly Ranchers and improvisational unit Evolutionary Jass Band, as well as standout solo work such as the 2013 guitar album Mercury, which earned widespread critical acclaim. Far from linear, her trajectory has encompassed environmental and social activism across the U.S. and Mexico, a long tenure teaching at the Rock Camp for Girls during the late 2000s, and a sequence of distinctive solo releases that fuse American traditional forms including blues, gospel, country, folk, and jazz with circus music, minimalism, electronic music, drone, 20th century classical, and improvisation. Late in the 2010s she joined the Thrill Jockey roster, issuing among other projects the 2020 collaboration The Quickening with drummer Jim White and the 2021 set Lost Futures with guitarist William Tyler. The spare, reflective solo album Still, Here appeared in 2022, followed in 2023 by her score for filmmaker Jeff Rutherford’s A Perfect Day for Caribou. Anderson and White then unveiled the duo recording Swallowtail in 2024.
Originally from Northern California, Anderson’s earliest musical impressions came from church services, classical pieces played in her mother’s car, and country heard in her father’s truck. She began playing guitar at age ten, left college at 19, and moved to Portland in 1999. During the early ’90s, as an environmental activist, she lived for a time in her car or a tent while joining a hundred others on a cross-country walk to highlight environmental concerns. She also participated in Circo de Manos and performed for indigenous communities and subsistence farmers amid the Chiapas conflict in southern Mexico.
Her initial band affiliations included membership in the Dolly Ranchers from 1997 to 2003, during which she appeared on both of their albums. Between 2003 and 2011 she worked at Rock Camp for Girls and contributed to its self-titled book. She spent six years in the fully improvisational Evolutionary Jass Band, recording three albums with the group.
Her debut solo effort, Holiday Motel, came out in 2006 on 16 Records and received an OUTmusic Award nomination for Best Female Debut Record. In 2009 she issued the entirely improvised The Golden Hour on Mississippi Records; its twelve guitar or lap steel pieces were captured on four-track tape. The solo guitar album Mercury followed in 2013, again on Mississippi Records, earning international praise and appearing on numerous year-end lists in print and online. That same year she released Traditional & Public Domain Songs via Grapefruit Records. With her rising visibility, Anderson’s concerts and festival dates across Europe and the United States frequently sold out.
She contributed as a featured guest to Sharon Van Etten’s 2014 album Are We There?, and in 2015 she and Tashi Dorji issued a split LP on Footfalls Records. Her fourth album, Into the Light, arrived in June 2016 on her own Chaos Kitchen Music imprint. Performing on guitars, lap steel, pedal steel, and electric piano, she described the recording as “an imaginary soundtrack for a science fiction western.” After signing with Thrill Jockey she returned with the textural, expansive Cloud Corner in summer 2018. Her music has appeared on multiple soundtracks, among them Smokin’ Fish, For the Love of Dolly, Girls Rock, and Gift to Winter. In an inspired partnership, Anderson joined Australian drummer Jim White (Dirty Three, Xylouris White) in Mexico City to record a set of improvised pieces issued in May 2020 as The Quickening. While that album highlighted her more rugged and spontaneous approach, the 2021 guitar-duet project Lost Futures with William Tyler featured more articulate and gently pastoral arrangements. Returning to solo work, Anderson produced one of her most introspective and solitary collections yet with 2022’s Still, Here. Recorded, produced, and performed entirely alone, the album unfolds like a real-time sonic journal of continuing reflections and personal moments.
The following year she delivered her first film score, written for director Jeff Rutherford’s A Perfect Day for Caribou, whose story follows an estranged father and son navigating a day of searching for family amid discord and grief. Late in 2022 she and White also tracked the duo album Swallowtail ahead of touring; engineered by Nick Huggins in the Australian coastal town of Point Lonsdale, Victoria, the set was released by Drag City in May 2024.
Originally from Northern California, Anderson’s earliest musical impressions came from church services, classical pieces played in her mother’s car, and country heard in her father’s truck. She began playing guitar at age ten, left college at 19, and moved to Portland in 1999. During the early ’90s, as an environmental activist, she lived for a time in her car or a tent while joining a hundred others on a cross-country walk to highlight environmental concerns. She also participated in Circo de Manos and performed for indigenous communities and subsistence farmers amid the Chiapas conflict in southern Mexico.
Her initial band affiliations included membership in the Dolly Ranchers from 1997 to 2003, during which she appeared on both of their albums. Between 2003 and 2011 she worked at Rock Camp for Girls and contributed to its self-titled book. She spent six years in the fully improvisational Evolutionary Jass Band, recording three albums with the group.
Her debut solo effort, Holiday Motel, came out in 2006 on 16 Records and received an OUTmusic Award nomination for Best Female Debut Record. In 2009 she issued the entirely improvised The Golden Hour on Mississippi Records; its twelve guitar or lap steel pieces were captured on four-track tape. The solo guitar album Mercury followed in 2013, again on Mississippi Records, earning international praise and appearing on numerous year-end lists in print and online. That same year she released Traditional & Public Domain Songs via Grapefruit Records. With her rising visibility, Anderson’s concerts and festival dates across Europe and the United States frequently sold out.
She contributed as a featured guest to Sharon Van Etten’s 2014 album Are We There?, and in 2015 she and Tashi Dorji issued a split LP on Footfalls Records. Her fourth album, Into the Light, arrived in June 2016 on her own Chaos Kitchen Music imprint. Performing on guitars, lap steel, pedal steel, and electric piano, she described the recording as “an imaginary soundtrack for a science fiction western.” After signing with Thrill Jockey she returned with the textural, expansive Cloud Corner in summer 2018. Her music has appeared on multiple soundtracks, among them Smokin’ Fish, For the Love of Dolly, Girls Rock, and Gift to Winter. In an inspired partnership, Anderson joined Australian drummer Jim White (Dirty Three, Xylouris White) in Mexico City to record a set of improvised pieces issued in May 2020 as The Quickening. While that album highlighted her more rugged and spontaneous approach, the 2021 guitar-duet project Lost Futures with William Tyler featured more articulate and gently pastoral arrangements. Returning to solo work, Anderson produced one of her most introspective and solitary collections yet with 2022’s Still, Here. Recorded, produced, and performed entirely alone, the album unfolds like a real-time sonic journal of continuing reflections and personal moments.
The following year she delivered her first film score, written for director Jeff Rutherford’s A Perfect Day for Caribou, whose story follows an estranged father and son navigating a day of searching for family amid discord and grief. Late in 2022 she and White also tracked the duo album Swallowtail ahead of touring; engineered by Nick Huggins in the Australian coastal town of Point Lonsdale, Victoria, the set was released by Drag City in May 2024.
Albums
Swallowtail
2024
Music From ‘A Perfect Day For Caribou’
2024
Still, Here
2022
The Quickening
2020
Cloud Corner
2018
Traditional and Public Domain Songs
2017
Into the Light
2016
The Music of the Future as Played by the Machines of the Past
2015
Mercury
2014
The Golden Hour
2011
Holiday Motel
2005
Singles
