Sofie Reed & Mark A. Haynes - Wish Free (2019)

Sofie Reed www.sofiereed.com Soulful, spunky, raw and refreshing, Swedish born and raised – Sofie Reed.
Sofie is a Vocalist, Composer and Visionary formatted into a One-Woman-Band. She plays harmonica, McSpadden Mountain Dulcimers, lap steel guitar, ukulele.. and she stomps her foot on an old wooden wine box!
You could call her music roots-blues or folk-blues or even roots-appalachian-with-a-dalecarlian-twist. Or – you could not call it at all. But you can feel it.
Yes, it’s blues, but it’s blues played on dulcimer: go ahead, Google it …look thru the blues history books …I cannot find a single artist of note anywhere who has applied the dulcimer to the blues. Then the voice — the lap steel — the harmonica — and the stomp box …and finally the heart, the attitude, the stories, the songs—this is the stuff from which music historians write long after an artist is gone, not while they’re in our midst. No band — just a few choice backup singers and Sofie. The recording is raw, live, in your face, affecting your musical soul. This is a woman who has lived a life worthy of being called a blues artist.

Sofie left Sweden as an eighteen year old young adult in 1987, after her mother died, and settled in the ghettos of Minneapolis—alone. She freelanced as a stylist within the local music scene for several years, until one of her clients, Sheila Charles, daughter of Ray Charles, hired her as a back-up singer. That encounter resulted in Sofie performing session work throughout the Twin Cities – from Paisley Park Studios to voice-over commercials and independent films. After performing in a duo for a while with her former husband, internationally acclaimed guitarist Preston Reed, she left Minneapolis and moved to Colorado.

Over the past decade, living in the foothills west of Denver, Sofie’s many experiences as a lone Swedish immigrant in a foreign culture have allowed her to create an intriguing and colorful story, reflected in her unique approach to her music and performance."
~Chris Kresge