About the Band
If Rani Arbo & daisy mayhem offer to cook at your place, you better open up all the doors, and borrow every table and chair you can, because the whole town should come.
Playful and profound
After 25 years together, Rani Arbo & daisy mayhem is an indelible alchemy of song, groove, friendship and soul. Beloved in their native New England, they have toured across the U.S. and Canada to festivals, theaters, and coffeehouses, leaving audiences humming, hopeful, and renewed.
Known for their lockstep harmonies, incisive songwriting, and lush arrangements with “stylish, unexpected choices” (Acoustic Guitar), Rani Arbo & daisy mayhem has always been a standard-bearer among string bands who stretch the boundaries of American roots music. Arbo is “blessed with an unmistakable voice, both light and sultry, with a hint of tremolo and smoke” (Acoustic Guitar), and her singing and fiddling pulls from old-time, blues, and swing. Anand Nayak’s electric and acoustic guitar style mixes folk, blues, and rock; bassist Andrew Kinsey doubles on clawhammer banjo; and drummer Scott Kessel plays a homemade kit of wooden boxes, tin cans, caulk tubes, tambourines, and a vinyl suitcase. Arbo, Nayak and Kinsey all write songs, and the band covers gems from Leonard Cohen, Bruce Springsteen, The Georgia Sea Island Singers, The Pretenders, and others, spinning performance sets that plumb the human condition with poetry, bravery, curiosity, and love.
Writes Maverick Magazine, “How refreshing to hear something that sounds as if it has come from people who are genuinely original thinkers. As soon as Rani Arbo & daisy mayhem strike up, you realize this is a band that is unpredictable and impossible to pigeonhole. But, what a thoroughly mellifluous melange — sophisticated, soulful and always handled with care and a lightness of touch that is part folk/jazz/country, part blues/old time, and all good. There is a togetherness that flows right through the heart of the performance. It never gets too clever and always remains understated and classy.”
Rani Arbo & daisy mayhem’s seven releases on Signature Sounds include Wintersong (November 2016), a celebratory and reflective collection of seasonal songs; Violets Are Blue (April 2015), an eclectic bouquet of love songs that “skip over sentimentality and go straight to the bittersweet truth” (Music Matters Review); the back-porch, gospel-styled Some Bright Morning (2012); Big Old Life (2007); and Ranky Tanky (2010), a kids’ album that won a awards from Parents’ Choice Foundation. The band’s strong residency programs include school and family shows, hands-on percussion-building workshops and Arts in Medicine offerings.
