Now a decade after the release of her critically-acclaimed sophomore album, Haunted, Anne Decatur Danielewski, more commonly known as ’90s alt-rocker Poe, is finally ready to re-emerge.
In a recent interview with Spinner, the 41-year-old New York native explained that her extended hiatus was the result of a lengthy legal battle against her former label, Atlantic Records. The dispute ranged over Atlantic’s refusal to re-release her albums.
“What I would say, in a nutshell, is very short and sweet: Myself as an artist was purchased as if a slave by a Texas oilman,” Poe explained, adding her first contract was bought out by this businessman. “I have not gone a day without doing music. I’ve just done it anonymously. It’s not like I haven’t been playing — I’ve played parties and this and that — but anything that was way under the radar. I lived like an illegal immigrant for 10 years. I couldn’t make any money, couldn’t do anything.”
Now free, Poe noted that she has re-discovered her passion for writing and recording music. After playing with her old band in an accidental occurrence, an incident which she calls her “first ray of sunlight” since the start of her legal troubles, Poe once again feels alive and ready to create new music with her “bros.” While no information has been released about recordings, Poe suggests that the tribulations she has experienced over the last decade will ultimately be recounted in new songs.
To kick things off, Poe and her Hello-era band made their first public performance in nearly 15 years at the January 28th benefit concert, “An Evening of Higher Consciousness”, at Los Angeles’s Club Lingerie. Oganized by a foundation run by the influential Buddhist Gyalwang Drupka, the benefit sought to raise money for the Haiti relief through Live to Love International.
Via the glories of YouTube, check out the band’s performance of Poe’s hit “Hello”, live from Club Lingerie, below:
