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Happy Birthday To Norwalk’s Joan Wasser

NORWALK, Conn. -- Happy birthday to Norwalk’s Joan Wasser!

Joan Wasser turns 44 on Saturday.

Joan Wasser turns 44 on Saturday.

Photo Credit: Wikipedia

Wasser, who grew up in Norwalk, turns 44 on Saturday. The musician and singer-songwriter was born July 26, 1970, in Biddeford, Maine, and adopted by a family in Norwalk. 

She began her career during her studies at the College of Fine Arts at Boston University. She studied music under, among others, Yuri Mazurkevich and played with the Boston University Symphony Orchestra.

By 1992, she had joined the Dambuilders, who were signed to Elektra Records in 1994 and released three albums. The band played a number of shows on the East Coast and admirers included Colin Greenwood of Radiohead.

In late 1997, she created a band called Black Beetle with the remaining members of the band of her boyfriend, Jeff Buckley, who accidentally drowned earlier that year in Memphis. 

In 1999, she joined Antony and the Johnsons initially as a violinist and eventually as a full-time member. She contributed to their Mercury Prize-winning album, I Am a Bird Now.

The end of Black Beetle in June 2002 brought the beginning of her work as a solo artist and the creation of a new band, Joan as Police Woman.

She formed a new trio in New York City together with Ben Perowsky on drums, percussion and backing vocals and Rainy Orteca on bass and backing vocals. The group self-released a five-track eponymous EP in 2004.

In December 2005, she signed a distribution deal with Reveal Records, a British indie label, which subsequently rereleased the self-titled debut EP.

Joan as Police Woman's full-length debut, "Real Life," appeared in the UK on June 12, 2006, and through PIAS in Europe and elsewhere. It was released in the USA on June 12, 2007, on Cheap Lullaby Records based in Los Angeles.

In early 2008, "Real Life" won in the Independent Music Award for Best Pop/Rock Album.

Her second album, "To Survive," was released in June 2008 and it reached No. 43 in Uncut's review of the year 2008, as well as in Q Magazine's top 50.

On March 10, 2014, Joan released her fourth album, "The Classic," featuring the single "Holy City."

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