About Angel

Los Angeles-based singer-songwriter Angel Travis has an uncanny ability to convey - to practically channel - intense feelings through her words and music in a way that is both fully organic and potentially transformed by artistic vision.

Part Cherokee and part Irish, Angel grew up about two hours outside of Seattle on the shores of the Colombia River in Wenatchee, Washington State's famed "Apple Capital." As a child, her passion was riding her Appaloosa pony Tepa - Cherokee for "Warm Love" - through the verdant Wenatchee Valley. Then at about age 12, Angel remembers, "I fell in love with the upright bass, cellos, and boys." Her early love for music was sparked by her stepfather and his large collection of over 10,000 vinyl records. "They were mostly soul, jazz, rhythm & blues, blues and roots - Ella, Billie, Delaney & Bonnie - when I was little I'd dance around to them, I thought I was a jazz or blues singer."

That side of Angel's inspiration was further encouraged through vocal lessons from a teacher affiliated with Seattle's acclaimed Cornish College of the Arts, and from seeing performances with her mother and father at the Jolly Roger, one of the city's top music clubs in the 80's and 90's. One artist, Chicago-based blues singer Valerie Wellington, especially touched her. Angel had the opportunity to be onstage with her briefly, remembering, "I was a scrawny little girl, up there with her big awesome blues band - it made my life at that point. Afterwards, she said to me, 'You know honey, you really do have talent. Don't give up, you have a voice.' That's when I knew for sure what I wanted to do." The supremely talented Wellington died of a brain aneurysm in 1993 at age 33; her spirit and encouragement will live on in a blues album that Angel still has inside of her. "I haven't even tapped into that yet," she says, "but it's coming."