“Ambition often follows talent, and Laura Cortese has an embarrassment of both.”  John Wenzel, Denver Post

 The Poison Oaks began as a studio experiment for fiddler and side-woman Laura Cortese. Originally an excuse to focus on experimentation, the group evolved into a full-fledged collective including as few as five and as many as fifteen members. After two years of studio sessions The Poison Oaks have emerged: with songbird vocals, triple tracked banjo and shredding guitars, they are an indie rock folkestra with fiddle that roars and subsides. Studio sessions were fruitful, yielding a vinyl 7” (with 3 bonus tracks available as downloads) called Pine, with more releases planned.

Stylistically in line with artists like St. Vincent and My Brightest Diamond, the Poison Oaks collaborations have resulted in a beautifully composed set of chamber pop songs. Compelling imagery and a fine wit, Cortese draws parallels between the devil and one of the seven Deadly Sins, then pirouettes to turn out a plaintive road song about yearning for love while on tour. While her previous work embraced classical and folk styles, the Oaks tunes are layered and embellished with choral background singers, multi-tracked banjo and chiming, distorted guitars. Founder Laura Cortese on the impetus for Pine: “When we began in 2009 we called them arranging sessions and we were almost dogmatic about thinking of the process as a project not a future record. Our focus was to get as arty and creative as possible, no limitations, no boundaries.”

Although The Poison Oaks are a fairly new project, Laura Cortese has been making music for the better part of her life. Welding the propulsive grace of folk styles to disarmingly open-hearted original pop songs, Laura Cortese is among the most intriguing and versatile, musicians in the bountiful New England post-folk scene. At home in any number of styles, her highly-visible work as a supporting musician (on fiddle, vocals, and bass) includes appearances with Band of Horses, Uncle Earl and – as part of Pete Seeger’s 90th birthday celebration at Madison Square Garden – Patterson Hood and Michael Franti. She comes from a family of musicians, received formal training at Berklee before launching her career; she has received coverage in publications like Strings, Songwriter’s Monthly and Blogcritics.

The collective includes:

Sam Amidon (organ, banjo, vocals) whose last album I See The Sign received critical nods from Pitchfork, Spin and Mojo.

Aoife O’Donovan (vocals) is the lead singer of the acclaimed bluegrass band Crooked Still. Kristin Andreassen (piano, organ, vocals) performs in Uncle Earl and has performed as a solo artist on Prairie Home Companion.

Neil Cleary (Wurlitzer, electric piano, piano, vocals) has been involved in the Elephant 6 collective as well has releasing his own albums including The Alcohol Tape and Numbers Add Up.

Matthew Douglas (baritone guitar, organ, vocals) is in the Proclivities and performs in a duo with Caitlin Cary (Whiskeytown) and guested on The Historical Conquests of Josh Ritter among many other projects.

Jefferson Hamer (acoustic guitar, electric guitar, vocals) has performed with Laura Cortese as a duo and with Anais Mitchell.

Jennifer Kimball (vocals) is a singer/songwriter who was part of the folk duo The Story, she has released two solo albums.

Robin MacMillan (drums, sewing machine) performs with Sugar and Gold, Christina Courtin and Aoife O’Donavan.

Matt Malikowski (baritone guitar, electric guitar) produced and engineered Pine.

Dave Mattacks (drums, percussion) performs with Richard Thompson, Brian Eno and Paul McCartney.

Jacob Silver (bass, acoustic guitar, organ, moog, farfisa) plays with Mike and Ruthy and the Shalants as well as running the 7” label Media Blitz.

Dietrich Strause contributed piano and Pierce Woodward played organ and sang.