Annie Sampson and Her Band

21+ | Bar opens 6:30 pm. Happy hour 6:30 – 7 pm. Show starts 7:30 pm.

Two-drink minimum per guest. Come early for happy hour specials!

"Annie's all over the place, rocking and scolding, testifying and crying, torching and lusting, and celebrating love, life and ever increasing strength." -Ben Fong-Torres

The love of music pervades every note Annie Sampson sings. At the beginning of her career, she landed a principal part in the hit musical Hair at the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco for some 300 shows. When the popular rock group Stoneground recruited her to become lead singer, she left the show and joined the group for a series of national and international tours. Buoyed by the popularity of their four Warner Brothers albums, Annie and Stoneground played the gamut of venues - from the Fillmore West and Winterland to Oxford University and the Olympia Theatre in Paris with stops at every major American and European city and campus in between.

A big talent like Annie's did not go unnoticed by her peers. She has recorded with Elvin Bishop, Taj Mahal, Buddy Miles, Maria Muldaur, Eddie Money and Country Joe MacDonald, as well as performed with Bonnie Raitt, Boz Scaggs, Otis Clay, Sammy Hagar, Commander Cody, Steve Miller, Nick Gravenites, Clarence Clemmons, Elvis Costello and the late Jerry Garcia - among others.

Since the mid-1980s, Annie has been leading her own band which performs regularly at Bay Area nightclubs as well as making special appearances at the San Francisco Symphony's Black & White Ball, the Domaine Chandon Music Festival and the Oakland and Novato Art Festivals.

See them live at Almost Famous Wine Lounge, an award-winning tasting room and world-class music venue located in the heart of Livermore's urban wine, spirits and brewery district.

ABOUT ANNIE SAMPSON

The youngest of 12 siblings, Annie Sampson has spent much of her life singing amid throngs of people. She loves it that way, but the powerhouse vocalist is more than capable of transporting an audience as the leader of her own band.

“My father and mother and sisters had beautiful voices, and we were a singing family,” says Sampson, who graduated from Berkeley High in the late 1960s. “Coming from a big family, I knew how to get a long with people. It makes it easy for me to be with other women, singing with them. It’s easy for me to be with a crowd.”

She’s thrived on teaming stages since the beginning of her career, when she was cast in ACT’s original San Francisco production of Hair. She stayed with the musical for some 300 shows, until joining the East Bay rock band Stoneground, which recorded three albums for Warner Bros. in the early 1970s. Playing an eclectic mix of rock, blues and gospel, the sprawling band eventually featured 11 players, including four women vocalists Sampson, Lydia Phillips, Deirdre LaPorte and Dan Hicks’ Hot Licks singer Lynne Hughes.

Stoneground never scored a hit but seemed to come close to breaking through several times, particularly when it served as the house band for the Woodstockian Medicine Ball Caravan, a cross-country tour arranged by Warner Bros. that took the Aquarian ethos on the road with a series of free concerts. The resulting documentary and album famously flopped, despite strong performances by B.B. King and Doug Kershaw.“We had a wonderful time,” says Sampson, who did her first recording with Stoneground. “We traveled over to Europe and made a lot of fans.”

When several members left Stoneground to launch Pablo Cruise, Sampson and founding singer and guitarist Tim Barnes kept the band rolling until 1982. Meanwhile, numerous blues, rock and roots acts sought her out for recordings, including Elvin Bishop, Taj Mahal, Buddy Miles, Maria Muldaur, and Country Joe MacDonald. She also performs with artists such as with Bonnie Raitt, Boz Scaggs, Elvis Costello, Jerry Garcia, Nick Gravenites, and Clarence Clemmons.

Born on a 250-acre spread in the north Louisiana town of Grambling, Sampson grew up in a family deeply enmeshed with Grambling State University, where several uncles were on faculty, and the school’s legendary football coach Eddie Robinson. By the age of 10, she had relocated to the Bay Area with her family. Sampson came of age amidst the burgeoning Bay Area music scene, catching free shows in Golden Gate Park and Bill Graham productions at the Fillmore, soaking up Cream and Jimi Hendrix, the Grateful Dead and the Staple Singers.

Through her teenage years she did most of her singing in church, but during her senior year at San Francisco State she decided to drop out and focus on performing. She was in a band with vocalist Mike Mathis, a younger brother of Johnny Mathis, when a friend told her about auditions for Hair. She did nearly a dozen auditions for the production before getting cast in the musical (she played the hallucinatory Abraham Lincoln, among other parts), and felt committed to the show’s anti-war message.

“I loved the show,” she says. “It wasn’t about the nudity thing. It was about people loving each other in the communes and having to go to Vietnam, about people being more offended by nudity than the killing that was going on during the war.”

When Stoneground broke up she went back to school and got her teaching credential and spent many years at Mt. Diablo High in Concord. She’s been leading her own band since the mid-1980s.

VENUE POLICIES

• All shows are 21+. Set times and ticket prices are subject to change.
• There is a two drink minimum per guest. Our menu has 15 wines in diverse styles and sophisticated non-alcoholic options. No outside beverages are allowed.
• Outside food is welcome. Food trucks are available most nights around Vasco Row, steps away from our venue. Check www.vascorow.com and www.altamontbeerworks.com for the schedule.
• Dancing is encouraged at Almost Famous, and usually takes place in front of the stage. Therefore, we cannot guarantee a completely unobstructed view to those sitting at bistro tables.

Please visit www.almostfamous.wine for our other venue policies.

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