"If the bee disappears from the surface of the earth, man would have no more than four years to live. No more bees, no more pollination … no more men!" –Einstein

Annie and the Beekeepers is a folk and country inspired trio that met at Berklee College of Music in December 2006. When Annie Lynch (lead vocal, guitar), Ken Woodward (upright bass), and Alexandra Spalding (cello, vocals) first began playing together in living rooms and basements around Boston, the mysterious disappearance of bee colonies throughout the world was receiving a great deal of attention in the media. As the group built the foundations of their band in coffeehouses and clubs around the Northeast, the collapse of the bee colonies fascinated them and gave them their name.

The members of Annie and the Beekeepers came to Berklee from across the country with different musical backgrounds – Annie, from Cape Cod, is a self-taught guitarist and the Beekeepers’ principal songwriter; Ken is from Charlottesville and plays acoustic bass and sometimes stomps on a snare at the same time for fun; Alex grew up playing cello in orchestras in Northern California. Annie met Ken through her assorted attempts to learn bluegrass and saw Alex playing in a Berklee Joni Mitchell ensemble. One brief rehearsal later, the group of four gathered in Ken's frigid basement apartment with producer and peer, Frank Charlton, for two days of recording. Though the work was never titled or released, those two days in December of 2006 gave birth to a band that would go on to build a reputation for their unique instrumentation and lyrics, evocative layered harmonies, and heart warming live performance.

Despite their roots in coffee shops and basements, the band’s quick rise in various outlets has led them to larger frontiers, playing in both folk and country festivals. Their latest EP, the Squid Hell Sessions, shines new light on the melancholy approach of the Beekeepers, with Annie’s voice maturing from their first album into a noticeably deeper vocal range. Even with a wistful tone, they still retain the same sense of youth with tunes like “The Wine Song”, mixing a bouncing bass-line with the enjoyment of a bottle of wine.

More at myspace.com/annielynch