Bay Area musicians Shelley Doty & Vicki Randle have been playing together for many years in many contexts, and tonight they collaborate on a special acoustic evening at the Freight.
 
Growing up in Berkeley, Shelley listened mostly to jazz, Coltrane and Miles, and didn’t imagine herself as a musician until her brothers turned her on to rock and roll. She co-founded the popular West Coast band Jambay, touring relentlessly and releasing three independent albums before disbanding in 1996. In 1999, she won the Lilith Fair Acoustic Talent Search and closed the show playing guitar with Bonnie Raitt, Sheryl Crow, Sarah McLachlan, and Chrissie Hynde in front of 22,000 cheering fans. Since then she’s immersed herself in a wide array of projects, leading the Shelley Doty X-tet and co-writing and performing music for the animated science-fiction film Strange Frame: Love and Sax. The East Bay Express has praised her album Over the Line for its “vast reserves of upbeat creative energy,” “deep and soulful groove,” and “jubilantly jazzy vocals.”

From the time San Francisco native Vicki Randle was nine years old, teaching herself to play Beatles songs on a battered Silvertone acoustic guitar, she’s been in love with music – singing, songwriting, playing guitar and percussion. Her jazz pianist father gave her an appetite for improvisation, and artists like Joni Mitchell, Ella Fitzgerald, and Led Zeppelin gave her an appreciation of musical diversity. She has toured with George Benson, Laura Nyro, and Kenny Loggins, recorded with Aretha Franklin, and spent 18 years as the first and only woman in the band on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno. She is currently touring with Mavis Staples and playing with Skip the Needle, a funk, rock, and soul band formed with Shelley.

Visit Shelley Doty's website

Listen to a track from Shelley Doty:

Shelley Doty photo by Julie Zielinski