After twelve years playing solo and in country bands in post-grunge Seattle, Anna Coogan moved to Ithaca, NY in 2011. After seeing the Johnny Dowd Band perform during her first month in town, Anna traded in her acoustic guitar for a 1979 Stratocaster and submerged herself in Ithaca’s thriving experimental rock scene. Willie B, a fellow Bostonian and Dowd’s longtime drummer, joined Anna in early 2013 for a show supporting Taj Mahal at the State Theater in Ithaca, along with musical powerhouse JD Foster (Calexico, Patty Griffin, Marc Ribot) on bass. Scheduling conflicts prevent Foster from joining them further, and Anna and Willie began to shift towards performing as a duo with Willie holding down the rhythm section. Willie, best known for incorporating bass pedals into his drum set up and playing drums and bass at the same time, has spent years on the road with Johnny Dowd, Jamie Lidell, and Neko Case, including six weeks on the road with Lidell supporting Elton John. Anna, who trained classically in Austria and worked for years as a fisheries biologist, has been building a career as an alternate-folk singer on stages across the world for most of the last decade. She was noted by the Times of London as a must-see touring act of the 2013 UK festival season and has performed live on the BBC, KEXP, and Germany’s largest radio station, WDR 4. Her music has been described as "absolutely gorgeous" by the BBC and given 4 Stars by the Daily Telegraph. Anna and Willie reunited with Foster in the waning months of 2013, to create “The Birth of the Stars” an album of nine original songs co-written with Foster, to be released around the world in October 2014. They continue to write and record and will be releasing more music in early 2015.