Autumn Sky is a Sacramento-area singer/songwriter and multi-instrumentalist who emerged from the local coffee-shop and open-mic circuit in the mid-2000s and later fronted a full band under her own name.[1][2] Her music is described as eclectic folk/pop centered lyrically on love in its many forms.[1][2]
At a glance
- Solo singer/songwriter who got into the Sacramento scene early after being home-schooled and graduating at 17.[1]
- Was 20 years old in May 2009, placing her birth around 1988 and her start in music around age 6.[1][2]
- "Autumn" is her real first name and "Sky" is her middle name; raised in a large, musical family.[1]
- Released the EP Diminutive Petite (Nov. 2008), the full-length All Which Isn't Singing (2009), a CD in June 2012, and the band EP Scout (2014).[1][3][2]
- Transitioned from a solo act to a full band after roughly 11 years of solo gigging.[2]
Origin and local status
Autumn Sky is treated throughout the corpus as a Sacramento-area musician. A 2009 feature explicitly groups her with "other budding musicians in the Sacramento area," noting she started out playing local coffee shops and open-mic nights and worked up to paying gigs, and is tagged as a "Sacramento Singer/Songwriter."[1] She is repeatedly listed alongside Sacramento-scene acts in the Submerge "Love It, Or Hate It!" roundup of local musicians[4] and in the Friday Night Concerts in the Park lineup, which Play Big Sacramento described as "the best Sacramento has to offer."[5] On this basis her local_status is local (confidence: high).
She was born into a large, musical family; her real first name is Autumn and Sky is her middle name.[1] She was home-schooled — "according to the theory of Romantic Naturalism," as she put it, calling her upbringing that of "really bad hippies" — and graduated at age 17, which left her time to enter the scene early.[1][2] She has stated her younger brothers are autistic and that she hoped to study child development and music therapy with a specialization in autism.[1]
Hall grew up in a religiously conservative, homeschooled family that included stints in Mendocino, where her parents ran a Christian prayer retreat; the family settled in Sacramento when she was 15, at which point she began public high school.[6]
Musical style and instrumentation
Sky is described as eclectic, with shows generally featuring two to three instruments — usually guitar, ukulele and autoharp — and a broader repertoire that she cited as including piano, organ, tambourine, drums, flute, recorder, accordion and classical violin.[1] She began piano at age 6 and violin at 12, and only took up guitar seriously as a teenager after attending a summer camp where "all the cute boys played guitar."[1] She has named Regina Spektor and M. Ward as touchstones and described aiming for a stripped-down, folk-like sound built on careful finger-picking.[1] By 2014 her band's sound was likened to Death Cab for Cutie and Florence and the Machine.[2] Her songs are lyrically driven and narrative, and she has consistently said she writes about love rather than hate.[4][1]
Releases timeline
- Diminutive Petite (EP) — released November 2008; the title references a line from the Madeline theme song.[1]
- All Which Isn't Singing (full-length) — released April 24, 2009; the title is drawn from the e e cummings line "all which isn't singing is mere talking."[1]
- CD release, June 2, 2012 — Sky released a new CD the same day as Sherman Baker's Seventeenth Street album, sharing a release event at Beatnik Studios in Sacramento with Baker and opener Ricky Berger.[3]
- Scout (EP) — released at the end of March 2014, marking the debut of her full band lineup; the release show was March 29, 2014 at Assembly with Cold Eskimo, Contra and Life in 24 Frames (all-ages, 7 p.m., $10 advance / $12 door).[2] The EP contains three tracks: "Bells," "My Own Worst Enemy," and "Young for the Night."[7]
Post-2014 releases (according to Bandcamp[8]):
- My Anxious Brain & My Broken Heart — March 2020
- reclamation of self pt 1 — August 2022
- reclamation of self pt 2 — September 2022
- While We're Here — April 2023
- The Sun Is A Girl — October 2025
From solo act to band
Sky began gigging as a solo performer but says she always envisioned her music with a full band, and only after building her fan base over roughly 11 years did she assemble a stable lineup.[2] By her account she cycled through about four bassists and five drummers, many of whom were committed to other bands, before settling on a group.[2] At the time of the Scout release her lineup included guitarist (and roommate) Barry Crider and bassist Anthony Medina, with the band at one point described as a seven-person operation.[2] In her 2009 solo period she had said hiring a backing band was impractical until an artist is signed and earning enough to pay the musicians.[1] By 2011 she was already performing with a "two-man band" in a sparkling silver bolero at the Sacramento Film & Music Festival's SummerFest opening night at the Crest Theatre.[9]
The full Scout EP band lineup comprised Autumn Sky Hall (songwriting, main vocals, acoustic guitar, autoharp), Tony Ledesma (drums), Anthony Medina (bass and harmonies), Barry Paul Crider (electric guitar and harmonies), David Daily (piano, percussion and harmonies), and Rookery Kaylor (acoustic guitar and harmonies).[10]
Artistic transformation and Write Or Die
Hall's last live performance before a period of artistic transformation was at TBD Fest in 2014.[6] By summer 2015 she had formed a new band called Write Or Die with Chris Karriker (guitar) and Jarrod Affonso (drums), recording with producer Patrick Hills at Earth Tone Studios.[6] The band released an EP titled Scream of Consciousness on February 13, 2016.[6]
Awards and recognition
Hall received multiple Sacramento-area music awards over her career.[10][6] According to LocalWiki, her accolades include:[10]
- 2009 — Sammies Best Acoustic (Sac Scene Awards)
- 2010 — Sammies Best Indie (Sac Scene Awards)
- 2011 — Sammies Artist of the Year; Sammies Outstanding Singer-Songwriter
- 2012 — Sammies Artist of the Year; Sammies Outstanding Singer-Songwriter
- 2013 — Sammies Artist of the Year
- 2014 — Sammies Hall of Fame inductee
According to her Bandcamp biography, she was the youngest femme-presenting recipient of a Sammies Hall of Fame award at the time of her 2014 induction.[8][10]
Scene relationships and collaborations
Autumn Sky is woven into a network of Sacramento singer/songwriters. She appears repeatedly alongside Ricky Berger, including the shared June 2012 Beatnik Studios release event with Sherman Baker.[3] She contributed to local songwriter Adrian Bourgeois's 2014 double album Pop/Art as a guest, as did Ricky Berger.[11] Songwriter and producer Jeremiah Jacobs lists Autumn Sky among the Sacramento projects he played in (alongside James Cavern and Clemon Charles) before forming The Heartbreak Time Machine.[12] She also shared Submerge's Valentine's "Love It, Or Hate It!" feature with a broad cross-section of the local scene.[4]
Notable performances
- Sacramento Film & Music Festival opening night / first-ever SummerFest, Crest Theatre, Aug. 17, 2011.[9]
- Friday Night Concerts in the Park, Cesar Chavez Park (downtown Sacramento), July 20, 2012, billed as folk/pop.[5]
- Scout EP release show, Assembly, March 29, 2014.[2]
- TBD Fest, 2014 — her last live performance before her artistic transformation period.[6]
She has noted that for much of her early career most venues she played were 21-and-over, requiring her to leave the moment her set ended because she was under 21.[1]