You can't measure Laurie Lewis' 30-year career with the usual commercial yardsticks. She has won a Grammy (True Life Blues: The Songs of Bill Monroe, 1997), and twice been named Female Vocalist of the Year by the IBMA (International Bluegrass Music Association).
If you listen down the back roads of acoustic Americana, however, you'll soon realize this soft-spoken, sweet-singing California fiddler, singer and songwriter is something very special. "Judging by the respect she has among fans and peers in the industry," says IBMA executive director Dan Hays, "Laurie is one of the pre-eminent bluegrass and Americana artists of our time. She spreads her talent over several genres - bluegrass, folk, country - and with the recognition she has within all those fields, I would certainly say she's one of the top five female artists of the last 30 years. And she continues to make great music."
This measure of respect is all the more remarkable given what a groundbreaking revolutionary Laurie has been, the first bona fide bluegrass star who was a woman born outside the music's native southland. It is hard to tell whether her being a woman or a Californian impacted the music more, but what is clear is that she is a pivotal figure in transforming the music from a regional genre into a truly international musical language. "She's opened a lot of doors for our music," says Hays. "There were certainly female artists in bluegrass before her, but to do what she's done with her own unique style, as opposed to mimicking her male counterparts, she's been a real pioneer in that regard. It goes beyond her just being a woman, though she's set a wonderful example for female artists. Her whole approach to music has had a positive influence throughout the country."
Billboard praised her ability to "successfully walk the high wire above esoteric country, combining elements of bluegrass and pure country to form her own seamless mix." Or as American folk icon Utah Phillips put it, "Whatever country music is supposed to be, she's at the center of it." Her songs have traveled as widely as she has, but it is revealing to see who has recorded them: Kathy Mattea, Patsy Montana, Jeannie Kendall, Prudence Johnson - all revered as supreme stylists and song-finders.
Laurie fell in love with American folk music as a teenager, at the sunset of the '60s folk revival. It was the vastness, the realness, the melodicism and welcoming accessibility that drew her. "Oh, it was so exciting," she says of the Berkeley Folk Festivals where she first caught the folk bug. "Every night there were concerts, and during the day you'd be in a eucalyptus grove listening to someone making music with nothing between you and them. Every day I'd hear something new, Doc Watson or the Greenbrier Boys. Something about it just invited me to start playing it."
She began plunking out simple songs on the guitar, then the fiddle. After high school, she drifted away from the music, but always kept her fiddle under her bed, though she didn't know why. In her early 20s, she discovered the Bay Area bluegrass scene. To her, it was "like opening that door all over again. Here were all these people making music together, and I could immediately see myself as part of it. It woke up all that excitement I felt as a teenager, and I knew this was what I wanted to do with my life."
Lewis never intended to kick in any doors, but she detested anything that excluded anyone from the music she loved. In the mid-70s, she helped found the Good Ol' Persons, an all-female ensemble that was soon headlining major folk and bluegrass festivals around the country, cheerfully breaking gender barriers that had kept women serving primarily as vocalists in male-dominated bands. She began writing her own songs then, inspired by bandmate Kathy Kallick, with whom she has collaborated many times over the years. It was in Lewis' next band, Grant Street, which she fronted, that her writing came to the fore.
Laurie’s songs helped shape the template for the modern bluegrass-pop style. She loves to play off the rhythm, helping to free the genre from its barnburning tick-tock cadence, and giving her songs a sweet sense of space that makes them at once inventive and warmly familiar, and her stage shows are renowned for their musical virtuosity and front-porch friendliness. Coming of age in such a convivial music scene, she has a keen gift for inviting audiences into her music. As with everything she plays, the point is sharing, not strutting.
Swallow Hill is pleased to present Laurie Lewis with her band, the Right Hands, comprised of Tom Rozum, Todd Phillips, Craig Smith and Scott Huffman.
