Alice Spencer's career in music stretches back to the early 90s and a rock band in St. Louis called Three Merry Widows that earned a substantial local following, verged on becoming a national act, and with which she still records. She also became a part of the long running St. Louis group known as The Geyer Street Sheiks, which plays an eclectic mix of American sounds. By the late 90s she had moved to Austin, while continuing to play in St. Louis from time to time.
In the following years she recorded albums with two groups described as “nouveau cabaret” by one reviewer, eclectic but featuring her on jazz vocals. I found an album recorded in '06 of Alice Spencer and Her Monkey Butlers that appears to be purely 1920s jazz, and one profiler describes her as singing for "traditional jazz pickup bands" around town, by which they probably mean a bunch of top shelf artists that that would be familiar to TST readers. In recent years she has appeared with the Brooks Prumo Orchestra, and frequently at Austin Traditional Jazz Society events.
Beyond jazz she is part of a group known as Matt the Electrician and Friends, and sings with the Shiny Soul Sisters, who appear at live shows with a popular act known as Shinyrib. That group has a classic Van Morrison, Bill Withers, Joe Cocker, Art Neville sound that always brings me back to New Orleans. Austin is a music town, there's work, but t
