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Drawing both inspiration and materials from a deep well of rural American roots music--including gospel, blues, bluegrass, and country--Ollabelle reimagines these sounds for contemporary audiences, honoring the spirit and substance of the original sources while allowing this music to live and flourish in a post-modern era.

An egalitarian sextet whose members' résumés run the gamut from rock and jazz and pop to avant-folk and downtown classical ensembles, Ollabelle began as humble side project for each of its musicians before quickly evolving into a musical entity with a life--and sensibility--all its own.

Ollabelle is the story of six versatile musicians and how their talents coalesced into one transcendent musical collective.

Amy Helm is a Woodstock native who's been singing professionally--primarily in blues bands--since her teens.

Currently a resident of Brooklyn, Byron Isaacs has both toured and recorded as a bass player with other artists, but is an accomplished singer-songwriter in his own right.

Tony Leone is an accomplished jazz drummer with a long résumé of gigs but a previously underutilized singing voice.

Hailing from Sydney, Australia, Fiona McBain, also a professional singer, moved to New York City in 1999 to pursue a career as a singer-songwriter.

Canadian-born pianist/songwriter/vocalist Glenn Patscha served a long and eventful apprenticeship in New Orleans where he played and recorded with some of the city's best jazz musicians.

Renaissance man Jimi Zhivago, a veteran of New York's downtown music scene, is a multi-instrumentalist/songwriter/record producer with countless recording credits and many good stories.

"Ollabelle is very much a democracy," says singer Amy Helm. "Everybody comes from such incredibly different backgrounds, but there are points musically which are the common ground. It's a shared endeavor where everybody gets an equal say."

The seeds of Ollabelle were sown in New York's East Village in the aftermath of September 11, 2001. "I had known Glenn in New Orleans," says Amy, untangling the Ollabelle chronology. "Jimi and Glenn knew each other from one band and Fiona and Byron had played in one band and all those guys met in the city."

"The interconnectedness was just insane," says Byron Isaacs, remembering the earliest days of the nascent Ollabelle.

It all started at the bar 9C, an Alphabet City watering hole named for the intersection of 9th Street and Avenue C, where barman Roger Davis held sway over a loose and friendly music policy. "There was this really cool roots scene going on there," offers Byron Isaacs, "…bluegrass nights, old country nights, this group of singer/songwriters with an old-timey feel to it."

"I'd been playing there for ages," remembers Fiona McBain, “It was Roger who gave me my first gig in New York at 9C. "I'd been playing with Glenn and Byron in my bands. Glenn introduced me to Amy which was really fantastic because I thought she was such an amazing singer. There were three of us who liked to sing together, but we had to have a band. I remember calling Jimi and asking him to come down."

"Basically, a bunch of us had been playing there with different configurations with different people," Byron recalls, picking up the threads. "We all knew each other. We were hanging out one night and Roger said, 'I was thinking about doing a gospel night on Sunday nights.'"

Word of 9C's Sunday night gospel jam sessions quickly spread through Lower Manhattan. Back then, the group of six didn't see any reason to have a name because it was just a night, not yet a band.

And, then, suddenly, those Sunday nights at 9C mutated into something unexpected. "All these crazy, super East Village types were there," Byron recounts, still a bit amazed. "All the tattoos and the piercings and the crazy hair, there was this edgy crowd freaking out for this music. We had this really weird summer of 2002 leading into the fall. We played about three or four months straight. It was so mobbed it was uncomfortable in 9C. It was really hot, really noisy, really intense… and really fun! It took us all by surprise."

"It felt so good," says Amy, "to have this once-a-week jam, to be trying songs you would normally never try. There's a really genuine love amongst everybody. Everybody really wants to see the other person shine as much as possible and that's a very tangible element in this group."

The longer the six musicians played together, the more specific their arrangements became and the gospel nights became "less of a jam session and more of an arranged thing."

Guitarist Jimi Zhivago introduced his bandmates to Steve Rosenthal, owner of the Magic Shop studio in New York and co-owner, with Zhivago, of Stanton Street Records, a local indie label. "Jimi brought us into the Magic Shop to make a demo for fun," Amy recalls. "Steve heard us and wanted to make an album, a spec deal. The intention was to get in a van and do the grassroots thing, there was a lack of any kind of hustle."

"The one thing I knew about Ollabelle," says guitarist Jimi Zhivago, "is that a) we were doing something that was unheard of in New York--playing that kind of music, especially on the Lower East Side--and b) to be in that band, you couldn't have an ego. This was six singer/songwriters, people that could all be doing their own records, yet it be became this thing. I could just be the guitar player, it really appealed to me."

Inspired by the spirit and sound of the traditional country singer, Ola Belle Reed, the six musicians decided to call their group "Ollabelle." The album they recorded combined traditional blues and gospel songs, classics like Blind Willie Johnson's "John The Revelator" and "Soul Of A Man," group-penned originals composed and performed in the spirit of roots Americana, and even a Rolling Stones track, "I Am Waiting," originally recorded for Aftermath. Each track a diamond, shimmering with complex vocal harmonies and sublime instrumental accompaniment. Perhaps the group's most striking sonic trademark is Ollabelle's seamless vocal blends, relaxed yet confident and self-assured. Throughout the album, one finds real beauty in the Ollabelle's construction of sound.

When Rosenthal absorbed the results of the album he'd recorded on spec, he decided to send a copy to exactly one person, T Bone Burnett, the man who'd produced and curated the "O, Brother, Where Art Thou?" soundtrack album, an historic collection that introduced the music of 1930's dustbowl Americana to millions of listeners around the world. Five days after he'd received a test copy of the Ollabelle album, T Bone Burnett flew to New York City to sign the group to DMZ/Columbia Records.

"All of us were completely shocked," Amy admits. Ollabelle, the side project, a pure labor of love for six musicians, was suddenly on the fast-track, with the group's first recordings slated for release as a major label album.

"We've all been working on our own careers and we're also sidemen and we'd been working with other people who had all kinds of great things going on," says Byron. "I'm so pleased and so surprised that this is the band that did it. It's the greatest band I've ever been in. It's so much fun, it's the best. It seems like fate steered this ship, we were not pushing it in this direction. There was never any ambitious trajectory attached to it."

Behind that absence of contrived ambition lies a purity of intent. "A real purity in terms of falling in love with the songs, falling in love with playing with each other and digging into the harmonies and never conceptualizing this as something that would be a commercially viable thing. There's something very magical about the chemistry and inspiration between the six of us that sort of wipes away the individual and creates the space for everyone to shine as a group and that's an unusual feeling. I've never been part of anything like this. Everyone in the band really does feel that way."

Ollabelle's plans for the future are as humble as the group's beginnings. "We just want to have as much fun as possible and definitely play as many shows as possible," says Amy. "We're hoping that people have fun at the shows and leave feeling good."

Fiona shares those aspirations, speaking of "the history of the music, the care and the thought and the love that's gone into the music. I'd like the music to make people feel good or happy or sad or whatever, but that the music makes them feel something that's deep. It also feels very supportive, like someone's putting a coat around you. There's love and support and warmth."

While Ollabelle is keeping the music of a bygone America alive in a performing tradition that's neither stale nor archival, the group's distinctive modern musical touches are neither gimmicky nor sensational. Ollabelle is very much in sync with the original spirit and intention of this music.

With Ollabelle, the past, the present, and the future is, as they say, history.

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"Before This Time" - Bessie Jones and Alan Lomax; inspiration: Georgia Sea Island Singers; lead vocal: Amy Helm

"Jesus On The Mainline" - traditional, arranged by Ollabelle; inspiration: Mississippi Fred McDowell; lead vocal: Glenn Patscha

"Soul Of A Man" - traditional, arranged by Ollabelle; inspiration: Blind Willie Johnson; lead vocal: Amy Helm, with Levon Helm, drums

"Elijah Rock" - spiritual, arranged by Ollabelle; inspiration: Mahalia Jackson; lead vocal: Fiona McBain

"Get Back Temptation" - words and music by Glenn Patscha, arranged by Ollabelle; lead vocal: Glenn Patscha

"I Am Waiting" - written by Mick Jagger/Keith Richards

"Two Steps" - words and music by Amy Helm, Fiona McBain, Liz Tormes, Byron Isaacs, Tony Leone, Jimi Zhivago; guest vocalist: Liz Tormes

"No More My Lord" - C Ludlow/Richmond Organization inspiration: 1947 field recording made at Parchman Prison by Alan Lomax; lead guitar: Sean Costello, bass: Jimi Zhivago

"Can't Nobody Do Me Like Jesus" - words and music by Andrae Crouch

"The Storms Are On The Ocean" - Carter Family version; inspired by Bryan Bowers; lead vocal: Fiona McBain

"John the Revelator" - traditional, arranged by Ollabelle; inspiration: Blind Willie Johnson; lead vocal: Glenn Patscha

"I'm Willing To Run All The Way" - traditional, arranged by Ollabelle; inspiration: the Staple Singers; lead vocal: Amy Helm

"I Don't Want To Be That Man" - words and music by Glenn Patscha, arranged by Ollabelle; lead vocal: Glenn Patscha, special guest: Sean Costello

"All Is Well" - traditional, arranged by Ollabelle; version inspired by sheet music from "American Vocalist" by DH Mansfield, 1849