Egge grew up the daughter of a teacher and a wheat farmer in Ambrose, North Dakota, and later moved to Silver City, New Mexico. She spent some of her childhood traveling back and forth from North Dakota to a hot springs commune in New Mexico.
When Egge was 16 years old, she began a one-year apprenticeship with luthier Don Musser, to build her own guitar which she still plays exclusively.
Career
The early songs she wrote were soon noted by bassist Sarah Brown (Albert Collins, Bonnie Raitt) and guitarist Steve James, who persuaded her to record the 1994 cassette EP of her original songs in Austin, Texas. This EP led to a recording contract with Lazy S.O.B. Recordings and the release of her first full-length album, River Under The Road. The title track was co-written by Egge, Sarah Brown and Jimmie Dale Gilmore. The following year, the Austin Music Awards named Egge, then nineteen, their "Best Singer/Songwriter" and "Best Folk Artist".
Next Egge was invited on tour by Jimmie Dale Gilmore, Iris DeMent, Shawn Colvin and Ron Sexsmith. She recorded her first live album Mile Marker on her solo tour in 1999. She later shared the stage with John Prine, Lucinda Williams, George Jones and Sinéad O'Connor among others. After a few years of constant touring, Egge returned to Silver City, New Mexico where she began building her own house in the desert and spending time with family. In 2002, after writing some of the songs for her next record, Egge resettled in Brooklyn, New York.
In Brooklyn she met bassist Jason Mercer (Ani DiFranco, Ron Sexsmith) and they began recording demos of Egge's new songs. Singer-songwriter Ron Sexsmith, guitarist Tony Scherr and trumpeter Shane Endsley joined their efforts and the result was Out Past the Light which received critical acclaim.[2] "Listen to the lyrics," Lucinda Williams urged an audience one night after the album was out. "She's a folk Nina Simone."[This quote needs a citation]
Egge's Lazy Days was released on November 13, 2007. It is an album made up of cover songs on the theme of laziness.[3] Songs include The Kinks' "Sitting in the Midday Sun", Arcade Fire's "In the Backseat", The Zombies' "I Could Spend a Day" and Belle and Sebastian's "Summer Wastin'". Though all songs on the album were written by others, "Egge makes them her own through her distinctively laid-back approach. She drawls out the lyrics like a yawn, but the kind that settles in your soul like a sigh."[4]
In July 2007 she won The Mountain Stage New Song Regional Competition in New York City.[5]
She also appears as a guest musician on Joel Plaskett's 2009 album Three and has performed as a backup singer and musician and as a solo artist on his 'Three' world tour.
In 2015 Egge released Bright Shadow, an all acoustic, intimate album produced by Egge herself and engineered by long-time friend and collaborator Steve Addabbo featuring The Stray Birds as her back-up band on mandolin, fiddle, banjo, upright bass, dobro and harmony vocals.
In 2016 Egge collaborated with the Danish indie-folk band The Sentimentals on Say That Now. Co-written and co-produced by Egge and The Sentimentals, recorded in Copenhagen, DK.
In 2018 Egge signed with the NYC based label StorySound Records. Her first release with the label was a single, We Are One. Produced by Stewart Lerman and co-written by Gary Nicholson it features Steve Holley (Wings) and Paul Socolow (David Byrne).
Egge released her eleventh full-length album Is It The Kiss in 2019. It was produced by Alec Spiegelman and features Iris DeMent, Buck Meek (Big Thief) and Matt Davidson (Twain).
