Canyon Angel

A Laurel Canyon Love Story

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Experience The 5 song cycle

It was the early 1970s, a magical moment of creativity, music, poetry, art, literature and film that wove a new tapestry in the human experience and transformed our lives forever. This energy led to the forming of a tight knit community of musical souls in a place where everyone was a muse to everyone else. Artists like Jackson Browne, Joni Mitchell, Crosby Stills Nash & Young, James Taylor, Carole King, the Eagles and others thrived there. It was the cast of characters and place we reverently call Laurel Canyon. Who wouldn’t have wanted to be there? It just so happens, I was there. The only thing is, I wasn’t born yet. 

 

My name is Anna Wilson. I am a singer-songwriter, and Canyon Angel is my story that chronicles a 25-year artistic journey that I didn’t even realize I was experiencing. What if this happens to all of us in some way?  We all have journeys that if we pay attention to and allow ourselves to get swept up in, can reveal the essence of who we really are. During the special season surrounding my 50th birthday, I came to realize there was a lost piece of my original self, separated from me years ago and still residing in Laurel Canyon. If I was ever going to be whole, I needed to find her and be reunited. I made the pilgrimage to Los Angeles and gifted myself “a studio recording day in 1972.” As the band reached a crescendo and I sang the chorus with all my heart, I suddenly realized, “I have been here before,” just not in this lifetime.

 

“If I had ever been here before I would probably know just what to do”

         – Déjà vu, by David Crosby

 

“And some of that amazing grace that shined through in those early days

Still remained, and called my name”

         – Selma Avenue, by Anna Wilson

 

I was “born” in 1972, but I believe a crucial part of my creative soul made the leap into time in 1947. I have always secretly wished that all of me had jumped along with it. This means I would have been 25 years old in 1972. As a young singer-songwriter, I feel sure I would have found my way out to Los Angeles and become a part of the identity and community that defined the Laurel Canyon folk-rock era. Listening to the sounds created by the troubadours of that movement has always been a portal for me, allowing my spirit to connect and reconnect with the Eros of that bohemian lifestyle and the counter-culture energy that was awakened and being shared by those creators.  I have listened and learned from those who came along an entire generation before me, and I have always felt a bit “unstuck in time” longing to join with my heroes, who not only stirred my passion, but the passion of the missing piece of me I believed was out there somewhere.

 

The closest thing I found to the California folk-rock community of the 1970s was the country music migration of the early 1990s to Nashville. The 1972 version of me was just coming of age  and I found myself called to Music City USA where there was a similar awakening and melting pot of creatives in search of the craft and power of a song. The Bluebird Café was our Troubadour, The Sunset Grill our Dan Tana’s, and Music Row our own Laurel Canyon. It has taken me years to reconcile these two eras, the one that I actually live in, and the one where that prodigal piece of my muse took shape.

 

I have always had a strong connection to Los Angeles, but never really understood why. Over the course of a long and wonderful career I have written and recorded many of my own compositions, but there are five very personal songs written specifically about the City of Angels that eventually morphed into a magical “five song cycle” for me.  As I was nearing my 50th birthday, something prompted me to create a playlist of these tunes, specifically putting them in the chronological order they were written. I had never listened to them as a complete body of work. When I did, there was a deluge of revelations, and like invisible ink patiently waiting for the right cue to appear, my “Laurel Canyon Love Letter” faded clearly into view.

 

Through a deep dive into my own lyrics, I soon began to discover that these songs were a sonic map, a love letter to my older self, that I didn’t even realize I was writing. For years, their mystery, message, and purpose lay dormant, until I strung them together, awakening the story of a missing part of myself, the one I now call the Canyon Angel. 

 

Over the years, I had recorded and released the first four songs of the cycle (I’m Not Defeated, The Long Way, Selma Avenue, and The Gates of Rossmore) on various projects, however the fifth and final song remained unrecorded. Once I discovered the interconnection of these tunes, I vowed to myself that I would not record the last one, Canyon Angel, unless I could do it with the musician legends who were the bedrock of the studio masterpieces that so often backed my songwriting heroes. James Taylor famously dubbed them “The Section.” These legends now record and tour under the name “The Immediate Family.” For just one day, I wanted to create a space and invite some of the original players, with ties to that season, to join me in the recording studio with the mindset of truly stepping back in time. My intent was to make it feel like an ordinary day in 1972, where I was 25 years old, I had just written this new tune, and they were the comrades I called on to imprint my song with their singular authenticity. What I got was so much more. 

 

Once I uncovered the cosmic love letter hidden in my own songs, it led me to the life changing discovery of the Canyon Angel. She is the wayward piece of my divided nature. That sacred second part of me who resides in Los Angeles, was there during the Hollywood Hills heyday, and who has been reaching out to me through time and space to sing me back home to her. For 25 years, she has continually been unveiling poignant revelations in the very songs that she inspired, constantly writing through me and to me. This final leg of the journey brings to light what happened to both of us, how we got separated and why, but more importantly, how music and love brought us back together again.

 

Canyon Angel is a tale of choices, confusion, loss, heartbreak, longing, and ultimately redemption. It is a transcendental story of true love, that not only reunites estranged spiritual soulmates but real-life soulmates, delivered by fate and mystically written into the lyrics and melodies as a long-lost letter from the Canyon.

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Anna WilsoN - bio

Anna Wilson is a critically acclaimed recording artist with a voice that Jazz Times likens to “crème de cocoa.”  Her seven studio albums spanning a thirty-year career have garnered rave reviews and she has been hailed as the queen of the country-jazz duet for her critically acclaimed Countrypolitan Duets album that has her singing alongside Kenny Rogers, Ray Price, Connie Smith, Keith Urban, Rascal Flatts, Larry Carlton and others. Additionally, she has garnered honors as an award-winning ASCAP songwriter, penned the global theme song for Habitat for Humanity International, and has had her songs appear on over seven million RIAA certified records for artists such as Lady A, Reba McEntire, Billy Ray Cyrus, Chuck Wicks and more.

Her latest project is a documentary film in-the-making called “Canyon Angel”.  An inspirational tale that chronicles a 25-year musical journey that she didn’t even realize she was on until the dawning of her 50th decade.  A journey that took her from her hometown of Chester Springs, Pennsylvania to Nashville to Los Angeles and back.  Wilson says, “I’ve had a very diverse career that has blended genres in unique ways but at the heart of my creative soul has always been a deep connection to the musical movement of Laurel Canyon that I never got to be a part of simply because I was born too late. This film is the story of my redemptive journey to uncover, rediscover and reclaim the lost piece of my creative soul that I call the Canyon Angel.”

Her Americana duo, Troubadour 77, that she formed in 2016 with husband and hit songwriter Monty Powell was the impetus that set Wilson on the course to discover her Canyon Angel doppelganger. Although it may seem like an odd departure from her many jazz albums and country songwriting accolades, Wilson indicates that first and foremost she is a songwriter and that her songs have always been the driving force in everything she does.  “Even on my vocal jazz projects it was always about the original jazz songs I wrote way more than the standards of the genre. T77, as we sometimes call ourselves, is representative of the music I have always wanted to make. It comes from a true singer-songwriter perspective.”

This dynamic and diverse songbird has even more things to sing about as she recently co-wrote and co-stars in a two-person musical with her Troubadour 77 partner, Monty Powell, called “Songstars” that debuted with a residency at the historic Woolworth Theatre in Nashville. Wilson remarks, “The best way to describe it is, Springsteen on Broadway meets the hit movie Once meets The Bluebird Cafe on steroids!”  It’s a scripted songwriter concert-play that tells her and Powell’s personal story of chasing dreams and finding love amid the backdrop of their separate and combined Nashville pilgrimages to songwriting success.

As for giving back, Wilson is all hands on deck.  Community outreach is another important aspect of her career and she continually tries to find ways to marry her music with charities that she is passionate about. She is widely known for her Habitat for Humanity International theme song “A House, A Home” that garnered worldwide attention when it appeared in the charity’s public service announcements and received over $5 million in free advertising worldwide.  She also penned and Olympic inspired song called “Spirit” whose royalties benefited Women’s Ski Jumping USA when they made their debut in Sochi, Russia in 2014. The proceeds were given directly to the organization to help support women ski jumpers around the world and advocate for gender equality in sport.

Born and raised in Chester Springs, Pennsylvania, and a graduate of Loyola University in Maryland, Anna Wilson splits her time between Nashville, the mountains of Colorado and the Florida Keys where she enjoys golf, skiing, culinary experiences, performing live and recording innovative album projects that have appeal to wide audiences. Her music is engaging and effortless as she weaves her soulful, vulnerable and richly textured voice through everything she does.