hypersongs

Claire Lynch

A bluegrass singer, songwriter and guitarist from Kingston, New York, raised in Alabama, a three-time Grammy nominee and multiple IBMA female vocalist of the year whose song "Dear Sister" won IBMA song of the year in 2014.

Alabama and the Front Porch String Band

Claire Lynch was born on February 20, 1954 in Kingston, New York, and moved to Huntsville, Alabama at twelve. She sang in church trios with her two sisters, and in the 1970s joined the bluegrass revival with a band called Hickory Wind, renamed the Front Porch String Band. The band retired from touring in 1981 after its first national release, and Lynch spent the following years writing songs and raising a family, working for seven years as a staff writer at two Music Row publishers and as a session vocalist. The group reunited in 1991 for Lines and Traces on Rebel.

Her solo records began with Breakin' It (1982, Ambush) and then moved to Rounder: Friends for a Lifetime (1993), Moonlighter (1995), Silver and Gold (1997) and Lovelight (2000). Moonlighter and Silver and Gold earned Grammy nominations for best bluegrass album, and in 1997 the International Bluegrass Music Association named her its female vocalist of the year.

Harmony singer, then her own band

Around 2000 she paused her own touring to sing harmony: she appears on Dolly Parton's The Grass Is Blue and Little Sparrow and toured as one of Parton's backup vocalists, and she has sung backing vocals for Emmylou Harris, Linda Ronstadt, Pam Tillis, Alison Brown, Patty Loveless, Kathy Mattea and Ralph Stanley.

She formed the Claire Lynch Band in 2005 and released New Day (2006), Crowd Favorites (2007, an anthology) and Whatcha Gonna Do (2009). The IBMA again named her female vocalist in 2010 and 2013, and Wikipedia calls her one of the two best female voices in bluegrass alongside Dale Ann Bradley. She entered the Alabama Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame in 2007 and received a $50,000 United States Artists Walker Fellowship in 2012. In January 2013 she signed with Compass, which issued Dear Sister in 2013 and North by South (2016, produced by Alison Brown, with Bela Fleck, Jerry Douglas, Stuart Duncan and David Grier), her third Grammy nomination. Her own Thrill Hill label put out the holiday album Holiday! in 2014. Her homepage now promotes a new album, Empty Pair of Shoes.

Albums

  • Dear Sister 2013 · Compass

    Her 2013 Compass debut: ten songs, the title track based on Civil War letters, and the source of an IBMA song of the year.

Songs

  • Dear Sister Dear Sister · 2013

    A song of a sister's loss built on Civil War letters, named IBMA song of the year for 2014.

Sources

  1. Claire Lynch (musician), Wikipedia
  2. Conversations with Claire Lynch, The Bluegrass Situation
  3. Claire Lynch, GRAMMY.com
  4. Dear Sister, Songlines (2013-10)