Noe Venable

American singer songwriter

Noe Venable (born April 20, 1976 in San Francisco, California) is an experimental folk/pop singer songwriter. She has earned a loyal fan base in her native San Francisco, in part through frequently performing in small, intimate venues. Her advocacy of small venues caused a stir in the San Francisco music community when she took San Francisco Chronicle reporter Joel Selvin to task for claiming that the city's music scene was "dead".

Venable attended Bennington College as a Dramatic Writing and then a Music major before deciding to pursue music as a career. In 2004 Venable moved to Brooklyn, New York where she obtained a bachelor's degree at Hunter College of the City University of New York. In 2007 she relocated to Boston, Massachusetts to begin graduate studies at Harvard Divinity School.

She performed in numerous theatrical and musical productions as a youth with the San Francisco based Young People's Teen Musical Theater Company. She was also in the cast of the Lewis Carroll themed musicals "Right Mind" and "Right Mind is Nowhere" directed by George Coates. Her original one act play "Annie Beckstead Does Her Homework" won at the Rocky Mountain Student Theater Project in Telluride, Colorado.

She spent a month opening for Ani DiFranco, and toured with artists as varied as They Might Be Giants, Boz Scaggs and Dar Williams. Venable continues to compose and perform with longtime collaborators Todd Sickafoose and Alan Lin. Her songs are noteworthy for their striking melodies and complex subject matter, and she invites comparison with musicians Elliott Smith and Mazzy Star. She is reportedly working on recording new music, has been performing approximately twice per year and has performed most recently in September 2010. In March 2014, Venable completed funding for her album "Cascadia" which was released the same year.

Her music was featured in the 2002 low budget film Cherish directed by Finn Taylor, and stars Tim Blake Nelson, Robin Tunney, and Liz Phair. The movie was filmed in and around the Berkeley and San Francisco area.