Joan As Police Woman biography
Joan Wasser (born July 26, 1970, in Biddeford, Maine) is a violinist, guitarist and singer/songwriter in the indie rock world. She began her career playing violin with the Dambuilders. She has released three albums as a singer songwriter, the 2006 Real Life the 2008 To Survive and the 2011 The Deep Field. Her resume includes live performances and studio work with Lou Reed, Tanya Donelly, Sheryl Crow, Sparklehorse, Dave Gahan, Elton John, the Scissor Sisters, Antony and the Johnsons, Guillemots, Joseph Arthur, Rufus Wainwright, Fan Modine and Lloyd Cole.
Biography
Wasser was raised in Norwalk, Connecticut, with a younger brother, Dan. She began piano lessons at age six, before starting her first violin lessons at age eight. Wasser played violin in school and community orchestras before leaving Norwalk for her college studies.
Wasser began her career during her studies at Boston University where she was an early admittance student studying with the renowned Yuri Mazurkevich, who himself had studied under Russian violin virtuoso David Oistrakh. She played with the Boston University Symphony Orchestra before joining local bands the Lotus Eaters, Hot Trix with Mary Timony, and the Dambuilders.
During her time in the Dambuilders, Wasser first began to make a name for herself in the indie rock world as she developed her aggressive style of playing, which led to work outside of the group. This work included a spot in Nathan Larson's side project, Mind Science of the Mind and ex-Fishbone member Chris Dowd's Seedy Arkhestra. In the liner notes to an album by the latter, Dowd praised her as a "soulful mothafucka." In the late 1990s, Wasser began to explore more musical paths than those limited only to violin playing, adding guitar and keyboard parts to the Dambuilders recordings, singing vocals, as well as co-writing several songs. Some of these new explorations can be heard on the Dambuilders' Against the Stars; on both Luster and Itch It, Wasser wrote the lyrics and handled the lead vocals. Due to disillusionment, creative malaise, and a need to expand their respective musical horizons, the Dambuilders disbanded in October 1997.
In 1996, Wasser also made a record with her friend Nathan Larson called Mind Science of the Mind.
In May 1997, her boyfriend, musician Jeff Buckley, drowned accidentally, in Memphis, Tennessee. She continued to play with the Those Bastard Souls, a solo project started in 1995 by a close friend of the couple, Dave Shouse of The Grifters. They made a record entitled "Debt and Departure" attempting to respond to Buckley's death. In late 1997 she created a band with the remaining members of Buckley's band called Black Beetle and finished an eponymous album which was never released. This was the first project where she was writing as well as fronting a band.
In 1999, Joan joined Antony and the Johnsons. She contributed to their Mercury Prize-winning album, I Am A Bird Now. Joan has stated in interviews that being part of this band saved her life because of the nurturing effect of Antony and his "singularly beautiful voice".
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