rosebud bullets by Myshkin's Ruby Warblers

Performing solo or with her band the Ruby Warblers, Myshkin always brings passion, intelligence and skill to her work. Her award winning songwriting is built of subtle wit and thorny truths. She writes about work and love, justice and war, prison and escape. She is an entrancing singer, a deft instrumentalist and a musical nomad, her restlessness making each concert and recording into something of a travel log: driving down the cornfields, a detour through Appalachia, getting lost in Louisiana, slipping out to sea in search of the Cabaret, the Celts, and the Gypsies. Inspired by the far and wide, she remains an original.

During a decade in New Orleans, Myshkin gathered chops and inspiration and toured unceasingly on three continents. She played major music festivals from Vancouver to Melbourne, toured Europe annually and released five records of solely her material, and three collaborative records. She recorded with dozens of artists, was involved in a variety of local and regional projects, and was a founding force behind a resurgent acoustic scene in the crescent city.

In 2001 she formed Myshkin's Ruby Warblers and two years later the band left the south for the west coast, a new CD - Rosebud Bullets - in hand. In wet, literate Portland, Oregon they are finding new fans and fertile ground for their continuing exploration of world music. The band is a Gypsy Torch Rock trio: Myshkin on guitars, Scott Magee on drums, and Brent Martens on upright bass.

"a marriage of punk's irreverence with the refinement and emotion of the jazz torch singers of old...an exhilarating musical ride." -new orleans times-picayunne

"Magnificent: amazing lyrics, a one in a thousand voice...from now on she can be considered a musical monster." -rootstown music magazine, belgium

"One of the best songwriters around...oh, and she sings like a dream too!"

-folk roots magazine, uk

rosebud bullets: myshkin's latest and favorite. here's her take on it:

"Rosebud Bullets is both a continuation of and a departure from my earlier work. I started the Ruby Warblers in January 2001 to try to forge a whole sound out of all the musical elements I had been playing around with. I wanted this record to have a cohesion to it, a thru line of style that I hadn't really achieved since I came to New Orleans and began experimenting with writing in different genres. Lyrically, this ones the heartbreak record. Musically, it's sweet as i could make it."

"fiercely talented, elegantly skewed" -time out magazine, london uk

"a wholly original voice...distinctive, arresting and affecting"

-new times, san luis obispo ca

HERE ARE SOME WHOLE REVIEWS FOR ROSEBUD * BULLETS:

"New Orleans powerhouse Myshkin's latest release is darkly joyous, endlessly restless, and spellbinding.  Her songs are a unique, shape-shifting blend of Celtic, cabaret, Gypsy, and punk influences, featuring her masterfully mercurial, seductive voice, hard-driving guitar, and fine lyrics. The effect is haunting and dreamlike; thankfully, this dream is available on demand. Highly recommended." - Sing Out! magazine, summer 2003

Village Voice 6/17/02

Myshkin & the Road Dog Divas - Bottom Line Cabaret

Price Myshkin, Dostoyevsky's Idiot, is good because he's pure. Myshkin, the New Orleans folk chanteuse with desert dust and swamp murk swirling in her voice, is good because she's impure; Celtic, bluegrass, Latin, klezmer, and punk snake through her story-songs. With a new band and album, she might find her way off the Euro-Australian folk circuit, where she has hit the washboard lo these many years, though nothing will ever keep her off the road.

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Jes Burns

Where Y'at Magazine 4/02

New Orleans

Myshkin's Ruby Warblers, Rosebud Bullets

Wow...I just can't think of any word more fitting to describe my feelings towards the new relase by Myshkin's Ruby Warblers. Wow... Rosebud Bullets is an amazing album.

The sound is rambling folk with touches of gypsy, rock, jazz, and an intangible that keeps me coming back for more. Myshkin does quite a bit of picking work in the lower register of the guitar, and this sets a dark tone for the album. Her voice is diverse, but has a signature warble that captures intense emotion like a tissue of tears. The warble is fitting, not just for conveyance of her music, but it completes the bird motif that pervades the album.

Though every track is worthy of mention in this review, space restrics me to a few favorites. Like all great bands (i.e. the Monkees), Rosebud Bullets includes a theme song. "Ruby Warbler" is a dark, nostalgic trip into the persona of a woman whose past is lost. "And I had a motto/ I'd try anything twice/ and if it was still hurtin' and wrong I'd keep trying/ 'til I got it hurting right." The song is lyrically tight and builds from a sad tip-toe to a frenzied, repetitive assault by violin and guitar. It's an exhausting trip.

"Cory Jo" is the track that best exemplifies the lower register guitar work. It is intense with forays into devotion, temporary insanity, and fear. "Giving me that look like you can read me like a braile book/ but are your fingers calloused hard?/ are we gonna wind up like that Texas man/ had the world's hardest hands/ like some fire had burned him up from inside/ for a long time?" This is the best translation of paranoia through music that I've ever heard.

The title track "Rosebud Bullets" is a slow dirge wrought with passion. "Happy Hollow" makes me happy, because I'm a sucker for a social message. It speaks to the potential evil of materialism and technology. Then there's "Unearthed" and "Annabelle" (Yee-haw! A song in seven-eight!) and "Big Wind" and "Rosie" and "Black Braids," a song like night on the edge of a hurricane. CURSE THE WORD LIMIT!

Truly, Rosebud Bullets is the most amazing album I've heard in years. Why don't moe people know about Myshkin? Myshkin's Ruby Warblers' CD release party is coming up may 1st at the Blue Nile. If the album is any indicator, it is bound to be an amazing show.

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Keith Spera

New Orleans Times Picayunne 4/26/02

Myshkin's pain yields beautiful "Rosebud Bullets"

Myshkin's 2000 release "Why Do All Thge Country Girls Leave?" was a joyous romp through a kaleidescope of styles, from country-blues to pop to "gypsy-torch-punk," a catagory of the singer's own creation. On her new "Rosebud Bullets, she aspired to craft a more cohesive album, one that is bound by a common theme.

That theme, she says, is "heartbreak. And heartbreak. And heartbreak." She wrote and recorded most of "Rosebud Bullets" in the wake of her split last summer from her husband and longtime creative partner, singer songwriter Mike West.

Despite, or perhaps becasue of, its unhappy origins, "Rosebud Bullets" is a gorgeous, often bittersweet body of work. With her band, the Ruby Warblers - upright bassist John Lutz and drummer Scott Magee, who will join her wednesday at the Blue Nile for a CD release party with fiddler Neti Vaan and clarinetist Ben Schenck - she has crafted a record that draws on torch songs, Celtic influences, Gypsy music and other exotica, stamped with her singular, sometimes haunting, alto.

Always a formidable presence, that alto makes great strides on "Rosebud Bullets." Often cast in bare settings, its richness and subtle power are striking.

"With any instrument, and with voice as well, you stay on a plateau for a while, and then you make a little leap and suddenly you're in this other space in your growth as an artist," Myshkin said. "I fell like I had one of those little jumps. I'm able to use my voice more emotively. It's a matter of technical things, but it's also an attitude thing. I think I found a new passion in performance and singing thhat changed the way I sing."

She will likely find new inspiration in August, when she leaves New Orleans, her home since 1993, for Portland. The move is necessary, she believes, for both personal and professional reasons. Friends, an abundance of gigs and some of the west coast's most inexpensive living await her there.

She knows that leaving new Orleans will not be easy. "I've learned so much here," she said. "I feel like I've gone to school here for nine years. But I feel like I've done what I can do in New Orleans. I need to be in some place that feels more connected to the rest of the world. It's hard to be taken on your own terms in this town. This place is wonderful; it's a majic kingdom here. It's a beautiful town, and I love it. But it's time."

For years, she and West collaberated on each other's albums in between barnstorming tours around the country. West recorded and mixed "Rosebud Bullets" after their break-up; Myshkin is optimistic that they can remain friends. "We found new ways to work together, which was good, " she said. "We did some great work together over the years."

Her work has hit a new high water mark on "Rosebud Bullets", as her lyrics match her poignant voice. She wrote the lines "I'll be here all the winter/ come summer I'll be somewhere cooler again," from the song "Ruby Warbler," before she realized she'd be making a summertime move to Portland. "I think it often works that you write stuff and you're not really sure what you're writing about until later," she said.

"Rosebud Bullets" feels more like a film to her, as it conjures many visuals. Such a perspective accounts for the dramtic arc of the songs. The final cut, "Northern Coast," is a farewell to both the record and Myshkin's time in New Orleans. It closes with, "I dream of the northern coast/ California fog and dogpatch grass/ passes clearing red and roan/ manzanita and madrone/ I dream of the cliffy coast/ I see jumping women floating down/ gowns that match the spray and foam/ all the strings swell as the credits roll."

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Alex Rawls

Offbeat Magazine 5/02

Myshkin's Ruby Warblers

Rosebud Bullets

(Double Salt)

Too many New Orleans records are too eager to please. Like the kid who invites everybody to come over and play his Nintendo because he's afraid no one will like him if he doesn't, too many bands want people to dance to the grooves they're comfortable with and hear songs they can get right away. As a result, a lot of local records lack the mystery and challenge that are the hallmarks of the best art. These thoughts are provoked by Rosebud Bullets, the new album by Myshkin's Ruby Warblers. Myshkin speaks in a personal lyrical and musical voice on the record, and the result is one of the strongest local records of the new year.

Folk may be the tradition Myshkin comes out of, but she isn't constrained by the form. Instead, it's the launching pad for songs you might expect-"Cory Jo"-and songs you won't-"Kankakee," the latter a galloping, exotic song about pirates, kings and conquest. There are a number of similar songs, each story having a purpose, but the purpose isn't immediately clear. Similarly, her torchy vocal on the elegant "Ruby Warbler" marks the song as a melancholy one, but the exact cause and nature of the melancholy is something listeners will figure out over time.

Though Rosebud Bullets isn't an immediate disc, it isn't a difficult disc. The songs don't require unusual patience or endurance, but they don't fit comfortably into one genre. Like P.J. Harvey, Myshkin has vision, and Rosebud Bullets is the product of someone who has realized "pretension" is only a dirty word if the art doesn't work.

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