Must be over a year now that I first saw Anne play at Billy Block's Western Beat Roots Revival. She came on right after this other Australian act, an absolutely blazing guitarist named Geoff Achison.

Most people would have been a little daunted at the prospect of hitting the stage of a packed jaded room after a smoldering and razor sharp Blues rock trio just blew the roof off the joint. But not Anne McCue, apparently. She's played in some pretty hot trios herself, after all.

But we didn't know that, or anything else about her, aside from her also being Australian. But she was tall (actually, I thought she was, but she was wearing huge heels and her musical presence was looming in the stage lights) and kind of heavenly looking. Rarely would one see a solo acoustic act in this show, and Frank the soundman was not usually very kind to acoustic guitarists, in my opinion. Often they could simply not be heard.

But this evening a mighty sound was heard, and everybody looked, and everybody listened. Predictably, I ran her down later and introduced myself, and secured a CD for review. Not long after that, I heard she'd been back in town, and played the cool little room known as The Basement, and that Lucinda Williams had been in attendance. That's the thing about Nashville gigs--there are frequently none too many people in the audience (a lot of shows going on, and a rampant "seen it already" attitude is common), but one of the people there might well impact your life one way or the other. In this case, Lucinda asked Anne if she'd like to open some shows for her. I'd heard of people I knew opening one or even a handful of shows for Lucinda before, but in this case it turned out to be 23 shows. Which led to opening some shows for Richard Thompson. Well.

So, the woman's on a roll, for sure, and it will be interesting to see which way it rolls from here. She is a very charming person, actually diminutive and disarmingly cute. A refreshing combination of confident and self-effacing. She and L.A. manager Mike Gormley were in town recently, where Anne was headlining an Australian festival in Music City, of all things. I missed it, unfortunately--I had a Puremusic.com show that night. But we did have brunch at the fabulous Red Wagon on the East Side, and headed back to Cat's Pajamas, a sweet B&B owned by ace songwriter Duane Jarvis and his wife Denise. Our conversation in the dining room follows. Be sure to check out clips of this incredibly talented musician and also visit her website, which is among the best artist sites we've seen. Oh, and her CD, Amazing Ordinary Things--buy it!
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