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Blind Willies


Blind Willies is an American folk rock band based in San Francisco. The group was founded by singer-songwriter Alexei Wajchman while he was a student at San Francisco School of the Arts in 2002. The band began as a duo, with guitarist Wajchman and fiddler Annie Staninec, playing covers of American folk songs. They soon made the transition to Wajchman's original songs which he began writing when he was 15.

Wajchman and Staninec graduated from School of the Arts and continued to play together at University of California, Santa Cruz. In 2007, the band released its first professional album, The Unkindness of Ravens, written by Wajchman. The album received prominent notice from KQED and from Jenn O'Donnell, editor of the online music zine DOA, who wrote "Blind Willies play incredibly wonderful music. Alexei is a remarkable songwriter whose lyrics go well beyond the average ramblings of most singer-songwriters. Even 'Mainline' – with its 'hungry pawn store prisoners' – is well-crafted enough to run with the big boys and Wajchman wrote the song at the tender age of 15." The album also received praise from Americana UK, where reviewer Paul Villers wrote "What is beyond question is Wajchman’s skill as a storyteller. Of the Willy Vlautin school, these ten tales explore the darker side of life with word play that is evocative of a quiet desperation, a cool loathing of unavoidable situations or perhaps a pitiful yearning for redemption."

Blind Willies toured locally in California and on the East Coast. They played at San Francisco's Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival, Berkeley's legendary Freight and Salvage Coffeehouse, San Francisco's Free Folk Festival, DjangoFest, Brooklyn's Barbès where they opened for Stephane Wrembel, and Manhattan's SideWalk Cafe where they played with Peter Stampfel (The Holy Modal Rounders, The Fugs).


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