MP3 Laurel Brauns - Closed for the Season

Graveyard ghosty folk

13 MP3 Songs
FOLK: Modern Folk, ROCK: Americana



Details:
Laurel is from a small town in central New Hampshire. This background has instilled in her an obsessive love of the outdoors, and a healthy hatred of vinyl siding and SUVs. For a short time she was a member of the Gunstock Parish Militia, an organization formed to ward off encroaching developers and suburbanites from out of state, but the group soon abandoned monkey-wrenching for drinking, and became a loose association renamed Lovers of Schlitz, or LOS for short.

Laurel is a singer/songwriter whose work ranges from indie americana to quiet rock. She did not sing in a punk band before getting in touch with her sensitive side. She was a trad-music geek in high school, and spent much of her time learning obscure Celtic ballads and raucous Pogues songs. After high school, she lived in Ireland, busking on the street and joining sessions in pubs.

During college in Portland, Oregon, she formed a number of duos and trios, the most popular of which was Queen Anne's Lace, featuring Anna Fritz on cello and Erica McGee on violin. She did her senior thesis on indie labels of the Pacific Northwest such as K Records, Kill Rock Stars, and Sub Pop, then started her own label (Red Trail Records) after graduating. Laurel's first album, recorded in friends' apartments, has sold 2,000 copies and received reviews in Performing Songwriter and other national media outlets. Her second release, Periphery, was recorded and co-produced by Larry Crane at Jackpot! Studios (Elliott Smith, The Decemberists). Jeff Saltzman (producer Stephen Malkmus) mastered the album and hailed it as âelegantly arranged modern/folk popâ and âone of the strongest efforts I've worked on this past year.â

Logging over 80,000 miles on her car in the past two years, Laurel tours constantly. Lured by the possibility that there is something left of Kerouac's America out there on the great highways, her songs are "like wistful Polaroid's, nostalgic memories of people and places throughout the country." (Matt Kanner, The Wire, Portsmouth, NH)

"It's somewhere out there that she meets her characters and gives you a peak into their stories, she puts you right out there in the cornfield under the wide-open skies..." (Melissa Bearns, The Source, Bend, OR.)

Laurel currently concentrates her touring efforts in the Pacific Northwest and New England, playing clubs, colleges, bars, and state prisons. When touring can't pay the bills or when she's writing new music, she returns to the restaurant industry; she paid for Periphery by pulling pints in a pub in Alaska and living in a tent.

Laurel resides in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, home of the international Record Production Month Challenge (RPM). For two years she has been running a music series called Hush Hush Sweet Harlot which has featured widely reknowned indie acts like John Vanderslice, Tara Jane O'Neil, The Winterpills, Jason Anderson, Tom Brosseau and the Williard Grant Conspiracy. Laurel has performed at all major venues in New Hampshire and shared the stage with Matt Pond PA, Matt Costa, Patty Larkin and Greg Brown. She has performed at hundreds of universities and private schools. In February 2007 she independently released her third album, "Closed for the Season," produced by Jon Nolan.