Laurie lewis biography

Laurie Lewis (born September 28, 1950 in Long Beach, California), deterioration an American singer and grass musician.

In the early Decennium she played with The Phantoms of the Opry, a grass band from the San Francisco Bay Area. When the Phantoms broke up she co-founded nobility Good Ol' Persons, an all-female bluegrass band with Kathy Kallick.

In 1979 she founded say publicly Grant Street String Band, too including Beth Weil, Tom Bekeny, Greg Townsend, and Steve Krouse. In the late 1980s, she formed "Laurie Lewis and Offer Street". Since then, she has recorded solo and duo albums, usually accompanied by mandolin person in charge and singer, Tom Rozum.

Promptly, she often plays under wintry weather names with a fairly habitual roster of musicians, calling person "Laurie Lewis and her Grass Pals," "the Guest House Band"; in 2006, she renamed remove group Laurie Lewis & nobility Right Hands.

She has won straight Grammy ("True Life Blues: Depiction Songs of Bill Monroe," 1997), and twice been named Womanly Vocalist of the Year manage without the IBMA (International Bluegrass Strain Association).

If you listen down authority backroads of acoustic Americana, yet, you'll soon realize this soft-spoken, sweet-singing California fiddler, singer subject songwriter is something very festive.

"Judging by the respect she has among fans and titled classes in the industry," says IBMA executive director Dan Hays, "Laurie is one of the paramount bluegrass and Americana artists endlessly our time. She spreads improve talent over several genres - bluegrass, folk, country - title with the recognition she has within all those fields, Frantic would certainly say she's memory of the top five tender artists of the last 30 years.

And she continues nominate make great music." This quantity of respect is all rendering more remarkable given what uncut groundbreaking revolutionary Lewis has antiquated, the first bona fide grass star who was a girl born outside the music's preference southland. It is hard harm tell whether her being spiffy tidy up woman or a Californian compact the music more, but what is clear is that she is a pivotal figure bundle transforming the music from practised regional genre into a absolutely international musical language.

"She's unbolt a lot of doors spokesperson our music," says Hays. "There were certainly female artists ton bluegrass before her, but choose do what she's done buffed her own unique style, chimp opposed to mimicking her 1 counterparts, she's been a authentic pioneer in that regard. Euphoria goes beyond her just vitality a woman, though she's submerged a wonderful example for motherly artists.

Her whole approach exchange music has had a good influence throughout the country."

Sam Vegetable is such a pivotal famous person in the modern bluegrass reawakening that the subgenre of growing bluegrass was nicknamed after birth band he founded in nobleness 1970s, the Newgrass Revival. Why not?

warns against making too overmuch fuss about Lewis being important simply because of her making out or where she hails devour. "She is newgrass in character truest sense of the huddle, in that she uses grass instruments to create new recent music: it's music for now," he says. "Laurie is pull off genderless to me.

I be acquainted with that's not the right no different to put it, but Farcical just think of her owing to an artist: a great soloist, terrific fiddle player, fine songster, and one very good pin leader. As a fiddler, she could be from the Forties or from 2010; it's timeless," he says. "As a soloist, she knows the rules incline bluegrass and how to pipe in her own voice.

She's probably one of the scarce female singers who really knows the nuances of the Ralph Stanley vocal style."

The Sacramento Data called her "as fine spiffy tidy up singer as anyone on birth acoustic music circuit, anywhere scheduled the world." Billboard praised move together ability to "successfully walk birth high wire above esoteric kingdom, combining elements of bluegrass captivated pure country to form amalgam own seamless mix." Or monkey American folk icon Utah Phillips put it, "Whatever country congregation is supposed to be, she's at the center of it." Her songs have traveled introduce widely as she has, however it is revealing to esteem who has recorded them: Kathy Mattea, Patsy Montana, Jeannie Biochemist, Prudence Johnson - all reverend as supreme stylists and song-finders.

Laurie fell in love with Inhabitant folk music as a youngster, at the sunset of honesty '60s folk revival.

It was the vastness, the realness, illustriousness melodicism, and welcoming accessibility consider it drew her. "Oh, it was so exciting," she says magnetize the Berkeley Folk Festivals turn she first caught the race bug. "Every night there were concerts, and during the dowry you'd be in a gum grove listening to someone manufacturing music with nothing between complete and them.

Every day I'd hear something new, Doc Psychologist or the Greenbrier Boys. Take steps about it just invited family name to start playing it." She began plunking out simple songs on the guitar, then position fiddle. After high school, she drifted away from the opus, but always kept her intrude under her bed, though she didn't know why.

In unlimited early 20s, she discovered goodness Bay Area bluegrass scene. Inspire her, it was "like duct that door all over anew. Here were all these generate making music together, and Beside oneself could immediately see myself hoot part of it. It woke up all that excitement Uproarious felt as a teenager, flourishing I knew this was what I wanted to do clank my life."

The bluegrass scene bank Northern California was a beefy mix of the region's celebrated progressivism and ardent devotion disturb musical tradition.

Nobody minded depart young Lewis was a bride, a non-southerner, or a beginner. They did mind if she didn't want to learn, folio and verse, the gospels garbage Bill Monroe and Ralph Journalist. It gave her a rockbound foundation in the rudiments adequate American roots music. "It genuinely was a different deal draw away to bluegrass in the San Francisco Bay area," she says.

"There weren't a lot place cutting contests; it was shrinkage about making music together, elegant focus on interdependency rather outshine individual prowess."

Lewis never intended defy kick in any doors, nevertheless she detested anything that undesirable anyone from the music she loved.

In the mid-70s, she helped found the Good Ol' Persons, an all-female ensemble put off was soon headlining major fixed and bluegrass festivals around honesty country, cheerfully breaking gender barriers that had kept women piece primarily as vocalists in male-dominated bands. She began writing gibe own songs then, inspired be oblivious to bandmate Kathy Kallick, with whom she has collaborated many days over the years.

It was in Lewis's next band, Decided Street, which she fronted, ensure her writing came to rank fore. Her songs reflect allay she loves about folk concerto. No matter how quick-tempo, they never seem crowded, either melodically or lyrically. She does categorize sing inscrutably about her temper life, but looks outward non-native an intimate perspective, in distance that let us see contact own lives reflected back take into account us.

Her songs helped shape honourableness template for the modern bluegrass-pop style.

She loves to amusement off the rhythm, helping pact free the genre from closefitting barnburning tick-tock cadence, and abrasive her songs a sweet muse of space that makes them at once inventive and warm-heartedly familiar.

Lewis's performing companion is lettering mandolinist-singer Tom Rozum.

Their 1996 CD, "The Oak and class Laurel," was nominated for tidy Grammy. "I love to enjoy a partner to sing restore, crave it deep down inside," Lewis says. "And Tom's class same way. He's a notice conversational mandolin player, always responding to what's going on spick and span the moment."

Lewis's stage shows attend to renowned for their musical panache and front-porch friendliness.

Coming chide age in such a conversable music scene, she has uncluttered keen gift for inviting audiences into her music. As accost everything she plays, the gaudy is sharing, not strutting.

That hawthorn not be the recipe be thankful for big-time stardom in this near-sighted careless, hype-happy age, but it hint the recipe for timeless penalisation, and for careers like hers that are built not close dazzle but to last.

Extra it remains the real congestion of legend, at least sight the quiet corners of escort culture where American roots penalization still thrives.