Event
Laurie Lewis & The Right Hands
Laurie Lewis is one of the pre-eminent bluegrass/Americana artists performing today. 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).
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."
The Sacramento News called her "as fine a singer as anyone on the acoustic music circuit, anywhere in the world." 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."
Laurie's band, The Right Hands, includes long-time performing partner Tom Rozum on mandolin. Their 1996 CD, "The Oak and the Laurel," was nominated for a Grammy. "I love to have a partner to sing with, crave it deep down inside," Lewis says. "And Tom's the same way. He's a very conversational mandolin player, always responding to what's going on at the moment." On bass is Todd Phillips, an original member of The David Grisman Quintet who has also performed with The Tony Rice Unit, Psychograss, and the Bluegrass Album Band. Craig Smith started playing music with Laurie in the mid-70s and now lives in North Carolina, recording with the likes of Jerry Douglas, Bobby Hicks, and Herschel Sizemore. He has earned two Grammy Awards in the process. Another North Carolinian, Scott Huffman, is a consumate musician on banjo and guitar and has been performing with Laurie since 2004.
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LocationFirst Church of Christ Scientist
522 B St. (corner of B and 6th)
Petaluma, CA 94952
United States
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