Spiritdancer Music

Anne-Marie Lax, of Spiritdancer Music, is a Singer Songwriter from the mountains of New Mexico. A consummate performer, she is equally adept at both rocking your socks off and soothing your soul with her mellow folk and blues tunes, all underlined with positive, inspirational and encouraging themes. For this spiritual composer, song writing inspiration has come from a voracious reading habit, love of nature, her life-long spiritual practice and a deep fascination with observation of the human spirit. With her warm velvet voice, Anne-Marie’s vocal style has been described as a blend of Joni Mitchell, Grace Slick and Mary Chapin-Carpenter.   

"My songs,” Anne-Marie says, “reflect my beliefs that music has healing and transformative powers, that it’s important to listen to your Muse, and that it’s never too late to live your dreams.” As a regular speaker at Unity Spiritual Center East Mountains, a positive spiritual movement that honors all paths as divine, Anne-Marie has incorporated her “music with a message” into her monthly talks. Additionally, in 2014, she founded the Second Saturday Community CoffeeHouse. This popular concert venue, now in its 3rd year, has brought seasoned musicians to perform live music to the rural mountain community of Edgewood, New Mexico, and has given new performers the opportunity to be heard as opening acts. 
 
For much of her adult life, Anne-Marie was content to raise her children and support her family while working in the challenging careers of corrections and security. She had a brief flirtation with creativity when she purchased an online teddy bear making training and supply business. This venture quickly failed in 2001 after September 11th, when no one seemed to be making purchases deemed “frivolous”. This led to a 15-year career with the Transportation Security Administration, (yes, the people that make you take your shoes off!) as an officer and a supervisor. However, in her late 40’s, a time when many women feel an urge to follow their creative dreams, she joined a band as a vocalist at her local Unity church. This led to a desire to create her own music rather than to sing other people’s songs.  

In July of 2011, she attended a songwriting workshop, given by folk singer Carrie Newcomer, at Ghost Ranch in northern New Mexico. She credits this as a life-changing event. “When I returned from that retreat”, she says, “the floodgates opened. All the thoughts and visions bottled up over a lifetime poured themselves onto a page.” Before she knew it, she was recording an album with some of the most talented musicians in New Mexico. Recorded at the multi-award winning Wall of Sound studio by John Wall, and produced by Katie Gill, a long-time friend and well-known, award-winning local musician, the CD “Dancing in the Light”, was release in February of 2016. It has been recognized by winning an Empower Posi Music award for Best Video of 2015 (Choose Love) and being nominated for 3 - 2016 New Mexico Music Awards for Best Jazz Song (Coming Home), Best Blues Song (Nothin’ to be Blue about Blues) and Best Pop album.  

“Dancing in the Light” has received glowing reviews in the June 2016 issue of Albuquerque The Magazine by local music critic Mel Minter. Anne-Marie’s songs have received regular internet airplay on Women of Substance Radio and Podcast. If you’re in New Mexico, you can catch one of Anne-Marie’s performances as a regular guest soloist at the Unity Spiritual Center in Albuquerque and at the Second Saturday Community Coffeehouse in Edgewood.  Check the calendar as more venues are always being added!