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.

Ollabelle began as humble side project for each of its six musicians before quickly evolving into a musical entity with a life--and sensibility--all its own.

Amy Helm is a Woodstock native who's been singing professionally since her teens. 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 great singing voice. Hailing from Sydney, Australia, Fiona McBain, 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.

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."

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. "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."

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." Inspired by the spirit and sound of the traditional country singer, Ola Belle Reed, the six musicians decided to call their group "Ollabelle."

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."

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