Queen Esther
Photo by Aidan Grant
Click here to download hi-res copy
Queen Esther
“Needless to say Queen Esther drinks in fully from the musical waters that really have no name, but instead come from an inner fabrication where the woman understands what roots are really all about, and then implants them wherever she sees fit. This is free-form fullness that knows no walls. There is no real description of what Queen Esther has accomplished on RONA. Rather, it is a musical osmosis that is exactly what America and the rest of the world surely needs to assimilate into modern life, so maybe the human race can get on with living openly instead of boomeranging between fear and fanaticism.”
Bentley’s Bandstand - Americana Highways
“Can you imagine a black Lucinda Williams? Not like when she plays the blues torn from her first albums, no. A black Lucinda Williams in pop, rhythm, blues, and even gender roots Americana. So it sounds as if you can imagine such a hodgepodge somehow, the latest album from this brutal, original, explosive singer."
-Vanity Fair (Spain)
Photo by Whitney Browne
Click here to download hi-res copy
Raised in the unapologetically Black bastion of Atlanta, Georgia – ensconced in the vibrancy of the Black Arts Movement and the sonic undertow of the Black church – and rooted in Charleston, South Carolina's culturally rich and enigmatic Lowcountry, a region with African traditions and Black folkways that span centuries and deeply inform her work, Queen Esther embraces lost American history along with her wide-ranging and ever-changing aural influences, as she leans heavily on the bluing of the note to create reclamation-driven Black Americana. Her Southern penchant for storytelling entwines historical truths with personal anecdotes that contemporise traditional and original songs, blurring the past and present and embracing the connectedness of the human spirit..
Queen Esther toured internationally and recorded with her mentor, harmelodic guitarist James "Blood" Ulmer, for many years in several incarnations, including a stint as frontwoman in his seminal band Odyssey. A bandleader in her own right, she has performed and/or recorded with Speedball Baby, Mona's Hot Five, Eyal Vilner Big Band, Burnt Sugar Arkestra, Michael Arenella and his Dreamland Orchestra, Richard Barone (The Bongos), Elliot Sharp (as the alt-blues duo Hoosegow), Swingadelic, LaLa Brooks (The Crystals), Dusty Wright, The Hot Toddies, Dan Levinson's Jass Band and The Dirtbombs, amongst others.
Recent highlights include performances with The Black Opry Revue; her western swing project, The Black Rose of Texas with Cindy Cashdollar (featuring vocalists Queen Esther, Kat Edmonson, and Synead Cidney Nichols) at Lincoln Center's outdoor festival Summer for the City along with a sold-out weekend at Dizzy's Club Coca-Cola; one of 25 chosen for the 2023 Western Arts Alliance Performance Artist Discovery Program; one of three Americans chosen for 2022 Global Music Match; one of five playwrights chosen for the 2022 - 2024 WP Theater "Pipeline" PlayLAB Playwriting Residency; and official showcases with Folk Alliance International (2023) and Americanafest (2021).
Her most recent release, Things Are Looking Up, was released in 2024. It's a heady mix of lost classics from Lady Day and original songs from Lenny Molotov, played by some of the best jazz musicians on the planet. She also released Rona (2023.) While set adrift in the narrow COVID-restricted confinement of life in New York City after a month-long residency alone on the Gettysburg battlefield, Queen Esther let her heart shelter in place as she wandered creatively and wrote and produced Rona, recorded at Mighty Toad Recording Studio with engineer/owner Craig Dreyer and released on her imprint EL Recordings. Her Black Americana album Gild The Black Lily (EL Recordings, 2021) continues to make waves internationally, along with her 2018 TED Talk about the true origins of bluegrass and country music.
Queen Esther Links:
Hear Now: https://queenesther.hearnow.com
Bandcamp: https://queenesther.bandcamp.com
Website: https://queen-esther.com
Twitter: https://twitter.com/qenewswire
Facebook: https://facebook.com/1queenesther
Instagram: https://instagram.com/queenesthermusic and https://instagram.com/thisisqueenesther
Cover Art by Mad Collage
Click here to download hi-res copy
Ampled: https://www.ampled.com/artist/queenesther
Press Quotes:
"Queen Esther is a Billie Holliday-ish singer. Her singing also somehow reminds me of Sly Stone in the way she slides a syllable from one note to another in her melodies while imbuing the note with funk and the word with poignance."-- Rate Your Music
"Every song is sung with passion and fire by this underrated female singer who should be a musical giant." --Country Music People (UK)
“Our admiration for Queen Esther is almost beyond measure.” -- Rootstime (Belgium)
It’s the melancholy country cuts that Queen Esther excels in. --Americana UK
Queen Esther ties the loose strands of black and white churches, juke joints and honky-tonks, blue notes and twang into knots too tangled to be untied. She reminds us that each half of the phrase, Afro-Americana, helps the other. -- Geoffrey Himes, Paste
Queen Esther's vocals, even at their hardest rocking, invoke the high-and-lonesome plaintiveness of the honky-tonk/bluegrass/rockabilly continuum as much as they do the harsher timbered blues tradition. --Living Blues
A masterpiece of an extremely talented singer and songwriter who can compete with the major players in this field, such as Lucinda Williams. --Blues Magazine (The Netherlands)
Reviews:
Bentley’s Bandstand - Americana Highways:
https://americanahighways.org/2023/05/31/bentleys-bandstand-may-2023/
Parton and Pearl:
https://www.partonandpearl.com/blog/album-review-queen-esther-gild-the-black-lily
If It’s Too Loud (review of the of the single “The Whiskey Wouldn’t Let Me Pray”):
http://www.ifitstooloud.com/2021/03/queen-esther-whiskey-wouldnt-let-me.html
If It’s Too Loud (March 26, 2021 release):