The Jazzabels

How do you explain a female folk duo that swings like Count Basie and rocks like the Rolling Stones? The Jazzabels obey no musical boundaries with their transcendent harmonies, grooving guitars, freewheeling accordion and hook-laden original songs.

The Jazzabels, Cathy Carfagna and Kilissa McGoldrick, are a popular act around the Northeast acoustic music scene. Cramming people wall to wall at coffeehouses like Buffalo's Coffee Bean Cafe, the Jazzabels fill the room with rhythm and sound. Their voices can soar in angelic sweetness one minute, and then dig down and rock the house while the audience becomes rhythm section and choir.

The Jazzabels bring you into a world where politicians would be issued electric guitars, people are free to sing out their troubles, and you can quit your day-job to answer the irresistable call of the open road. With classical training and pop sensibility, the duo's musical roots are in the blues, jazz, folk and country. Their sound has been compared to the Indigo Girls, Sheryl Crow, the Bangles, Maria Muldaur and Joan Baez. With their seamless harmonies, they evoke the Everly Brothers or Simon and Garfunkel.

With the indie release of their second CD Skyway, the duo is touring the northeast, and performed at Texas's Kerrville Folk Music Festival. Cathy sang back-up on tour with the 10,000 Maniacs, and Kilissa directs MUSE, Musicians United for Superior Education, a nonprofit organization that provides traditional drumming and dancing to Buffalo school children.

"Definitely recommended. I can't remember the last time I had as much fun with an album as with Cafe All Day... The blend of the two women's voices is enchanting... You have to love a group that can come up with a line like "It's hard to sing like Johnny Cash when you wear a dress." --Dirty Linen

"Pleasingly varied harmonic roots and jazz chops with a couple of sussed swingstrels. [Skyway is] a soundtrack for touring the States in a pickup truck and piling through small town after small town." --Folk Roots, England

"Skyway presents the Jazzabels as artists who can slip into many styles and seem right at home in all of them" --ArtVoice, Buffalo, NY

"The Jazzabels opened the show with 50 minutes of bravely diverse music. They started with a Cajun dance tune, Carfagna's accordion chords gliding over McGoldrick's percussive guitar. They celebrated a "Lucky Day" in earthy counterpoint, the "Telephone" in a jazzy swing number, and impatient love in "I Don't Want to Wait." They invoked torch jazz in "Little Harlem Hotel," and hailed the healing properties of rock and roll in "Whole Lot of Rhythm." "Little Bird" intriguingly grafted flute to slide guitar in an afro-blues, while "Sweet Dream" celebrated the beauty of two voices. They made the songs work in more directions than most bigger bands can manage." --Daily Gazzette, Albany, NY