Laurie Lewis & The Right Hands

WATCH LAURIE LEWIS

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.