Tag: Murphy Hicks Henry

Louisa Branscomb: The Songwriter Still Chasing Sunshine Round the Bend

Posted on by Editor

You may not recognize her voice, but you’ve heard her songs.

Louisa Branscomb wrote “Steel Rails,” the song that helped launch Alison Krauss’ career and inspired a new generation of young women to sing bluegrass. She is a talented singer and instrumentalist, with a dozen albums to her name. Yet it’s as a songwriter that she’s had the most influence, both in the industry and among individuals who benefit from her guidance and unique approach to writing.

In Louisa’s words, “The most powerful tool we have to move people, and bring people together, is music. And songwriting is where music begins. The most important skill a songwriter has is not craft or rhyme — it’s empathy, to connect deeply with one’s own soul and to connect to others. Two verses and a little soul can change lives, and when life is changed, the song keeps on going, crossing frontiers in ways we can only imagine.”

Louisa has been writing poetry and stories since she could first hold a pencil. At age 11, she won a composition contest, gaining her a stage performance with the Birmingham Symphony. By the time she finished college, she had written 400 songs and attracted the attention of country star Mel Tillis. He suggested she move to Nashville to work as a songwriter.

But, she told Bluegrass Today, she hated hairspray and couldn’t see herself fitting in with all that 1970s “big hair” in the country music world. Plus, she was “painfully shy.” So, she chose bluegrass over Nashville. In 1971, she played guitar and sang with Bluegrass Liberation, which Murphy Hicks Henry calls “the first modern all-female bluegrass band.” She was one of the earliest women to lead a mixed gender band after switching to banjo. Her band Boot Hill performed her originals, including “Blue Ridge Memories,” a hit in Japan.

Through 1980, Louisa played up to 250 gigs a year. Then a doctorate in psychology, a farm, a passion to teach and later, a daughter, kept her closer to home. She has since become one of the bluegrass industry’s principal advocates for songwriters, a valued mentor and an important contributor to the bluegrass repertoire, having received countless songwriting awards and nominations.

Louisa is as well-known as a teacher as she is for her own writing. She uses her fascination with psychology and her immense compassion to help others express their experiences in words and music. She has founded a number of teaching programs, including the Woodsong Farm Retreat for songwriters on her Georgia farm. Several programs engage elementary school students and foster children. And she has mentored more than a thousand hopeful songwriters.

“Dear Sister,” co-written with Claire Lynch, won Louisa the 2014 IBMA Song of the Year Award. Some of the biggest names in bluegrass have recorded her music. John Denver sang “Steel Rails” on his final album, earning the song’s second Grammy nomination.

A stunning selection of bluegrass musicians joined Louisa for her 2019 album, Gonna Love Anyway. Nearly 50 years after she wrote her most noted song, she recorded a new version of “Steel Rails” on the album. In a tribute to both the enduring appeal of that song and Louisa’s ongoing creativity, Gonna Love Anyway reached #1 on both the bluegrass and folk charts.

Photo courtesy of louisabranscomb.com

Lynn Morris: The National Banjo Champion Who Couldn’t Get an Audition

Posted on by Editor

If you’re in a jam with women over 50, it’s likely that you’ll hear at least one song learned from a Lynn Morris recording.

Her singing is as pure and sweet as a mountain spring. She brought every song alive and made every story real. And during most of her career, there simply weren’t a lot of women topping the bluegrass charts. So aspiring female singers naturally gravitated to her music – sung in their range and often, from their perspective. Although a stroke halted her career in 2003, her legacy endures through her fans.

Lynn was born in 1948 in Lamesa, Texas, where she rejected piano lessons at an early age, but fell in love with the guitar. At age 21, she had a banjo epiphany when she heard a bluegrass band in Colorado Springs. As she told author Murphy Hicks Henry, she was so taken with the banjo sound that she thought, “I will die if I don’t learn how to do this.”

And learn she did. Within five years, Lynn became the first woman to win the National Banjo Championship — and later became the first person to win it twice. She was slow to gain confidence in her singing, and in her earliest band affiliations she primarily played banjo and guitar, singing harmony and rarely taking vocal leads.

On a trip to her home state, she met Marshall Wilborn, who claims he could barely play the bass at the time. But within months, he joined Lynn in the Pennsylvania band Whetstone Run. They later moved to their present home in Winchester, Virginia.

In the 1980s, bluegrass was still very much a male business. Lynn’s success in banjo competitions were always in blind contests — where the judges couldn’t see the pickers. Apparently, banjo judges weren’t ready to acknowledge women. Similarly, after moving to Virginia, she couldn’t get an audition with any of the bands she wanted to play with.

So, in 1988, she started her own, believing, as she told Murphy, that her career depended on it. Lynn, with Marshall on bass and vocals, attracted stellar sidemen, with whom they recorded five successful Rounder albums. Lynn was IBMA Female Vocalist of the Year three times and won IBMA Song of the Year for her recording of Hazel Dickens’ powerful “Mama’s Hand.” She also was the first female IBMA board member.

Four years after winning her last IBMA award (in 1999), Lynn had a near-fatal stroke following knee surgery. While she recovered to a miraculous extent, some hand weakness and residual speech problems prevent her from performing. She remains active and vigorous. For several years, she handled sound for Bill Emerson’s band. One of her paintings hangs in Winchester’s best breakfast spot. An ardent animal advocate, she dedicates much of her time to roughly a dozen rescue cats.

Lynn Morris’ enthusiasm and gratitude for life are a continuing gift to any who get to meet her.

(Editor’s note: For more details about — and terrific quotes from — Lynn Morris, read Murphy Hicks Henry’s book, Pretty Good for a Girl: Women in Bluegrass.)

Photo credit: Rounder Records