Laurie Lewis and the Right Hands
Multi-GRAMMY nominee Laurie Lewis is a forebear and contemporary of so many bluegrass,
old-time, and folk greats. Over more than fifty years in music she has established herself as a
truly singular voice, instrumentalist, and frontwoman in genres that lionize tradition,
“authenticity,” and emulation. She’s won IBMA Awards, sung and recorded with Linda Ronstadt,
set poems by Wendell Berry to music – at his request. She’s influenced and inspired folks like
guitarist phenom Molly Tuttle, who’s just one example of an entire generation of pickers and
singers who can call her a mentor. All in all, Lewis has carved out a unique, superlative niche in
American roots music occupied by almost no other musicians and creators.
Her brand new album, Trees, finds Lewis’s music-making rooted in the natural world – as on
many past recordings – with a measured and often melancholy view of life, loss, and grief that’s
resplendent and complicated. An avid walker, Lewis is both an urban explorer and a wilderness
wanderer – plus a self-taught naturalist and conservation activist. Her skillset in songwriting and
recording is usually looking outward, text-painting to evoke the landscapes she adores and to
relay their speaking to us. On Trees, Lewis looks inward instead, utilizing all of the literary and
naturalist skills at her disposal to observe and process seasonal, organic, inevitable life
changes.
Trees is a long-play journey, a vinyl trek, inviting each of us to put the needle to the record and
join her as she traverses the Sierra Nevada or rafts the Tuolumne River, singing. It’s not simply
a metaphor or parable, it’s not merely an introspective, emotional inventory, it’s not a
performative challenge to the powers and systems that be – powers and systems that leave us
alone to encounter, interpret, and reckon with such grief and loss. This LP is all of these things
together, at the same time, held in place by a remarkable linchpin and a gorgeous, maternal tree
under which all of us can learn, grow, and flourish. Each of us on this beautiful, complicated
Earth should count ourselves lucky to encounter Trees as stately and as tall and as nurturing as
Laurie Lewis.
old-time, and folk greats. Over more than fifty years in music she has established herself as a
truly singular voice, instrumentalist, and frontwoman in genres that lionize tradition,
“authenticity,” and emulation. She’s won IBMA Awards, sung and recorded with Linda Ronstadt,
set poems by Wendell Berry to music – at his request. She’s influenced and inspired folks like
guitarist phenom Molly Tuttle, who’s just one example of an entire generation of pickers and
singers who can call her a mentor. All in all, Lewis has carved out a unique, superlative niche in
American roots music occupied by almost no other musicians and creators.
Her brand new album, Trees, finds Lewis’s music-making rooted in the natural world – as on
many past recordings – with a measured and often melancholy view of life, loss, and grief that’s
resplendent and complicated. An avid walker, Lewis is both an urban explorer and a wilderness
wanderer – plus a self-taught naturalist and conservation activist. Her skillset in songwriting and
recording is usually looking outward, text-painting to evoke the landscapes she adores and to
relay their speaking to us. On Trees, Lewis looks inward instead, utilizing all of the literary and
naturalist skills at her disposal to observe and process seasonal, organic, inevitable life
changes.
Trees is a long-play journey, a vinyl trek, inviting each of us to put the needle to the record and
join her as she traverses the Sierra Nevada or rafts the Tuolumne River, singing. It’s not simply
a metaphor or parable, it’s not merely an introspective, emotional inventory, it’s not a
performative challenge to the powers and systems that be – powers and systems that leave us
alone to encounter, interpret, and reckon with such grief and loss. This LP is all of these things
together, at the same time, held in place by a remarkable linchpin and a gorgeous, maternal tree
under which all of us can learn, grow, and flourish. Each of us on this beautiful, complicated
Earth should count ourselves lucky to encounter Trees as stately and as tall and as nurturing as
Laurie Lewis.