Australian blues sensation Anni Piper’s sultry vocals have attracted significant overseas interest and she signed with USA label Blues Leaf Records in 2008. The ‘Blues Leaf’ catalogue includes releases by many successful American performers including the award-winning Janiva Magness. Anni’s USA debut, titled ‘Two’s Company’ was released in January 2009 and hit #1 on the Australian Roots music charts.

Anni Piper remembers the moment she first heard the blues. “It was Paul Butterfield Blues Band playing Born in Chicago – I knew straight away this was the direction I was heading,” she says. She is one of the young, exciting new blues players emerging in Australia, winner of Best New Talent at the Australian Blues Music Awards in 2005. Anni quotes Stevie Ray Vaughan as a huge influence on her playing, and the influence of Texas blues is evident on her debut. Her instrument is the bass guitar, (“preferring to lay down a groove rather than scream out a solo”). She is one of the premier Australian blues songwriters, able to capture the economy of language and wit of the blues in her lyrics.