She’s done it all. Aimee Mann first played in a punk band, then a new wave band, before she became a singer-songwriter influenced by country music. In 1993, she released her solo debut ‘Whatever’, after which she was celebrated by the critics as a new female Paul McCartney. This woman from Richmond has the same instinct for simple, yet profound pop songs as the ex-Beatles songwriter. Inspite of the critical acclaim, Aimee’s label wanted her to write nice little songs for the masses, so she left and started her label ‘SuperEgo’. The record company must have been quite irked when, soon after, Aimee received an Oscar® nomination for the magical song ‘Save Me’, the title song of the film ‘Magnolia’. Since then, Aimee has achieved a kind of iconic status: The woman, who could already play all of Neil Young’s songs as a teenager, has developed into Young’s female counterpart: rough around the edges, but loveable and above all, a brilliant songwriter.

The songs of young singer Kyla La Grange from the British town of Watford are far from melancholy. She is the daughter of two hippies: her mother is from South Africa and her father is from Zimbabwe, and she was shaped by the openness of world culture and self-discovery. It is not surprising that she wrote her first songs at the age of five, ten years before she was given her first guitar. Kyla La Grange talks about being very shy in her childhood. She finally found her audience at the University of Cambridge when she was studying philosophy. The campus was full of open mic sessions, which influenced her sound and her songwriting. Kyla’s appearance is fascinating. She looks like a top model, has a smoky voice which is not sexy and sweet, but rather mysterious and haunting. She lets her folk songs grow into dark stories that hang in your heart like bats on the rafters of a fairy tale castle steeped in legend.

The provocative cabaret songs of the golden twenties are the source of inspiration for the 23-year-old Berlin singer Elisa Schmidt and her band. With her smoky voice, she gives the dry jazz-rock arrangements a sexy gangster charm, which she herself calls ‘Pop Noir’. The ‘pop’ part expressing an intoxicating lust for life and a mature swing vibe and modern urbanity, all in the same breath. The ‘noir’ part is provided by her voice and the dark, sensual enigmas she sings about. One of her greatest hits so far was the song ‘Heart Shaped Gun’, which climbed up the German charts as the title song of the German crime show ‘Tatort’.

The English singer Alex Hepburn worked through the painful experiences and losses of her childhood by writing in her diary. The journal entries later became rhymes, then lyrics and finally songs, which she sings with verve and a powerful voice: This combination has made her a shooting star of neo soul. The resulting songs are so powerful that Hepburn’s debut single ‘Pain Is’ and the debut album which followed, ‘Together Alone’, immediately achieved success in the European charts. It is no wonder since the modern soul of this young English singer is a product of the blues and rock of her childhood. Her voice is as rough and strong as a double whisky. Her fans celebrate her, depending on their age, as a new Pink or a new Janis Joplin or, and everyone agrees on this, as a worthy successor to Amy Winehouse. In the end, the comparisons are unimportant, because Alex Hepburn is Alex Hepburn.

Mavis Staples and Nick Lowe join forces to define the dichotomy that blues musicians mean when they sing «Standing At The Crossroads» – and the two could not contrast more as a duo. Mavis is an established American gospel singer. Englishman Nick performed in pubs and was as a punk rocker before he discovered country music. They are united by their love for the blues.

Steve Miller’s parents taught him to love jazz, his friends were hippies and he liked rock. And he wanted to bring all of that together, so he skipped his final literature exams to become a professional musician. In 1967, at the tender age of 24, Steve founded the Steve Miller Band, where he fusioned the blues, psychedelic music and rock with reverb and echo effects to pioneer a new music form that music critics labelled blues rock. Six years later, after making Texas his new home, the guitar hero put his blues sentiment in a nutshell: «Some people call me the space cowboy, some call me the gangster of love». He called the track «The Joker». He’s been filling stadiums in America ever since and he rarely finds the time to come to Europe. It’s great that Steve Miller is finally «headed down» to Switzerland and to the AVO SESSION Basel.