Star Anna

Star Anna, a Pacific Northwest singer and songwriter, fuses the earthy textures of country with the raw, confessional bite of rock & roll. Born Star Anna Constancia Krogstie Bamford in 1985 in Ellensburg, a small city in central Washington, she grew up with a mother who kept the Indigo Girls spinning often around the house. At eleven she first picked up drumsticks, and once high school began she joined the local punk outfit No Continuous Standing, whose name came from a sign posted inside the school gymnasium. By sixteen she had set the drums aside and was teaching herself guitar instead. Songwriting soon followed, leading to intimate acoustic sets in neighborhood coffeehouses until personal circumstances forced a two-year break from the stage. When she resumed playing, Star shifted her focus toward a stronger country foundation and assembled the Laughing Dogs as her backing group, with Justin Davis on guitar and Travis Yost on drums. Malamute Records noticed her work, brought her into the studio, and issued her debut album, Crooked Path, in 2008. Slightly more than a year afterward she returned with The Only Thing That Matters, this time sharing billing with the Laughing Dogs; the record carried a tougher edge than its predecessor, drew warm notices from the roots-music community, and prompted former Guns N’ Roses bassist Duff McKagan to write in his Seattle Weekly blog that “She is the real deal…she will be a talent that we can all say that ‘We saw her when….’ Guaranteed.”