Laurie Lewis

Laurie Alexis Lewis (born September 28, 1950) is an American bluegrass singer, musician, and songwriter.

Laurie Lewis was born in Long Beach, California on September 28, 1950. Her family moved regularly from place to place until she was eight years old, when they settled back in Berkeley. Her family strongly encouraged Laurie and all her siblings to play music. She started on piano and violin until a friend took her to the Berkeley Folk Festival where she first caught the folk bug:

Oh, it was so exciting. 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 Greenbriar Boys. Something about it just invited me to start playing it.

She began picking 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, not knowing exactly 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 bluegrass scene of Northern California was a powerful mix of the region's historic progressivism and ardent devotion to musical tradition. Nobody minded that young Laurie was a woman, a non-southerner, or a novice. They didn't mind if she didn't want to learn, chapter and verse, the gospels of Bill Monroe and Ralph Stanley. The scene gave her a rock-ribbed foundation in the rudiments of American roots music.

It really was a different deal coming to bluegrass in the San Francisco Bay area. There weren't a lot of cutting contests; it was all about making music together, a focus on interdependency rather than individual prowess.