Laura Love

Laura Love retired from live musical performance at the height of the Pandemic in 2020, feeling satisfied that she’d said everything she needed to say, sung everything she needed to sing and done everything she needed to do in a lifetime of touring and playing concerts.  Laura, who is a light-skinned African American woman, felt ready to put topical songwriting aside to settle into an easychair rocking groove after long days of organic gardening and playing with her legion of cats -- yet after recent frightening escalations in hate crimes, racism, sexism, anti-environmentalism and all the other “isms”, she again feels the need to poke her head up and outta retirement, however briefly, to sing and say just a little bit more.  Over the decades, Laura has performed at venues across the globe, including The Philadelphia Folk Festival, Merlefest, Carnegie Hall, Club Passim, The Ark, City Winery NYC, The Freight & Salvage, Strawberry Music Festival, Winnipeg Folk Fest, Millpond and Kate Wolf Music Festivals, as well as  Edmonton, Montreal and Vancouver, Canadian festivals, to name a few.  In this resurfacing, she has expanded her repertoire of original, socially conscious songs, to include several hand selected jazz standards along with beloved Negro spirituals and Field Hollers.  As well, she now sprinkles a dusting of covers learned from some of her favorite singer/songwriters (Shawn Colvin, Amy Winehouse, Laura Nyro, Joni Mitchell and the like).

 

Laura has received glowing reviews for her 13 cd releases (On Mercury, Rounder, Koch and other labels) from print publications such as THE NEW YORK TIMES, Billboard, The Utne Reader and People and Time Magazines.   She is also a published author, having released her memoir, “You Ain’t Got No Easter Clothes” on Hyperion (Now Hachette Book Group) as well as “Nights In Tents” about the year she spent traveling with the OCCUPY Movement (Skyhorse Publishing).  

 

Early in the Spring of 2022, Laura dropped her latest CD, “UPPITY” which she “sincerely hopes will be her last!”