Claire Lynch

Last updated

Claire Lynch
Claire Lynch (30361323857) (cropped).jpg
Lynch at the Richmond Folk Festival in 2018
Background information
Born (1954-02-20) February 20, 1954 (age 69) [1]
Kingston, New York, U.S.
Genres Bluegrass
Occupation(s)
  • Singer-songwriter
  • musician
  • Record producer
Instrument(s)
  • Vocals
  • guitar
Years active1977–present
Labels
Website clairelynch.com

Claire Lynch (born February 20, 1954) is an American bluegrass musician, singer, songwriter, and producer. She is a three-time winner of the International Bluegrass Music Association's Female Vocalist of the Year honors. [3] She is considered one of the two best female voices in bluegrass, a recognition she shares with Dale Ann Bradley. [3]

Contents

Early life

Lynch moved to Huntsville, Alabama from Kingston, New York, when she was 12 years old. [4] She grew up in a musical family, with her mother playing the piano and her father singing. [5] She had two sisters with whom she would sing, including doing trios at church. In high school, she spent time writing and recording songs. [5]

Career

Lynch's musical career transitioned during college when she became interested in bluegrass music. She joined a band called Hickory Wind, which eventually changed its name to the Front Porch String Band. [5] Lynch played with the group until 1981, when it retired from the road. She then pursued a dual career of music and raising a family. The Front Porch String Band reunited in 1991, releasing the album Lines and Traces. [5]

Discography

TitleAlbum detailsPeak positions
US Bluegrass
[6]
Breakin' It
  • Release date: 1982
  • Label: Ambush Records
Friends for a Lifetime
Moonlighter
  • Release date: 1995
  • Label: Rounder Records
Silver and Gold
  • Release date: August 5, 1997
  • Label: Rounder Records
Lovelight
  • Release date: April 11, 2000
  • Label: Rounder Records
Out in the Country
New Day
  • Release date: March 28, 2006
  • Label: Rounder Records
11
Crowd Favorites
  • Release date: October 9, 2007
  • Label: Rounder Records
10
Whatcha Gonna Do
  • Release date: August 25, 2009
  • Label: Rounder Records
Dear Sister
  • Release date: May 28, 2013
  • Label: Compass Records [2]
9
North by South 5
"—" denotes releases that did not chart

Awards and honors

Lynch has won numerous awards in her career, including being named the best female vocalist in 1997, 2010, and 2013 by the International Bluegrass Music Association. She also received a USA Walker Fellowship Award in 2012. [7]

Three of Lynch's albums have been nominated for a Grammy in the Best Bluegrass Album category: [8]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Martie Maguire</span> American musician (born 1969)

Martha Elenor Maguire is an American musician who is a founding member of both the all-female alternative country band The Chicks that previously went by the name “The Dixie Chicks” and country bluegrass duo Court Yard Hounds. She won awards in national fiddle championships while still a teenager. Maguire is accomplished on several other instruments, including the mandolin, viola, double bass and guitar. She has written and co-written a number of the band's songs, some of which have become chart-topping hits. She also contributes her skills in vocal harmony and backing vocals, as well as orchestrating string arrangements for the band.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Emily Strayer</span> American songwriter, singer, multi-instrumentalist

Emily Burns Strayer is an American songwriter, singer, multi-instrumentalist, and a founding member of the country band The Chicks, formerly known as the Dixie Chicks. Strayer plays banjo, dobro, guitar, lap steel, bass, mandolin, accordion, fiddle, piano, and sitar. Initially in her career with The Chicks, she limited her singing to harmony with backing vocals, but within her role in the Court Yard Hounds, she took on the role of lead vocalist.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alison Krauss</span> American musician

Alison Maria Krauss is an American bluegrass-country singer and fiddler. She entered the music industry at an early age, competing in local contests by the age of eight and recording for the first time at 14. She signed with Rounder Records in 1985 and released her first solo album in 1987. She was invited to join Union Station, releasing her first album with them as a group in 1989 and performing with them ever since.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Debby Boone</span> American singer, author, and actress (born 1956)

Deborah Anne Boone is an American singer, author, and actress. She is best known for her 1977 hit, "You Light Up My Life", which spent ten weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart and led to her winning the Grammy Award for Best New Artist the following year. Boone later focused her music career on country music, resulting in the 1980 No. 1 country hit "Are You on the Road to Lovin' Me Again". In the 1980s, she recorded Christian music which garnered her four top 10 Contemporary Christian albums as well as two more Grammys. Throughout her career, Boone has appeared in several musical theater productions and has co-authored many children's books with her husband Gabriel Ferrer.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Patty Loveless</span> American country music singer (born 1957)

Patty Loveless is an American country music singer. She began performing in her teenaged years before signing her first recording contract with MCA Records' Nashville division in 1985. While her first few releases were unsuccessful, she broke through by decade's end with a cover of George Jones's "If My Heart Had Windows". Loveless issued five albums on MCA before moving to Epic Records in 1993, where she released nine more albums. Four of her albums—Honky Tonk Angel, Only What I Feel, When Fallen Angels Fly, and The Trouble with the Truth—are certified platinum in the United States. Loveless has charted 44 singles on the Billboard Hot Country Songs charts, including five which reached number one: "Timber, I'm Falling in Love", "Chains", "Blame It on Your Heart", "You Can Feel Bad", and "Lonely Too Long".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rhonda Vincent</span> American bluegrass singer

Rhonda Lea Vincent is an American bluegrass singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Chris Thile</span> American mandolinist and singer-songwriter (born 1981)

Christopher Scott Thile is an American mandolinist, singer, songwriter, composer, and radio personality, best known for his work in the progressive acoustic trio Nickel Creek and the acoustic folk and progressive bluegrass quintet Punch Brothers. He is a 2012 MacArthur Fellow. From 2016 to its cancellation in 2020, he hosted the radio variety show Live from Here.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Del McCoury</span> American bluegrass musician

Delano Floyd McCoury is an American bluegrass musician. As leader of the Del McCoury Band, he plays guitar and sings lead vocals along with his two sons, Ronnie McCoury and Rob McCoury, who play mandolin and banjo respectively. In June 2010, he received a National Heritage Fellowship lifetime achievement award from the National Endowment for the Arts and in 2011 he was elected into the International Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alison Brown</span> American musician (born 1962)

Alison Brown is an American banjo player, guitarist, composer, and producer. She has won and has been nominated for several Grammy awards and is often compared to another banjo prodigy, Béla Fleck, for her unique style of playing. In her music, she blends bluegrass, jazz, Latin and Celtic influences.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Laurie Lewis</span> American musician

Laurie Alexis Lewis is an American singer, musician, and songwriter in the genre of bluegrass music.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rob Ickes</span> Musical artist

Rob Ickes is an American dobro player in San Francisco, California. Ickes moved to Nashville in 1992 and joined the contemporary bluegrass band Blue Highway as a founding member in 1994. He currently collaborates with guitarist Trey Hensley, with whom he has released three albums. Ickes has been nominated for numerous Grammy Awards, winning two in 1994 for bluegrass and gospel albums he contributed to.

<i>The Grass Is Blue</i> 1999 studio album by Dolly Parton

The Grass Is Blue is the thirty-seventh solo studio album by American singer-songwriter Dolly Parton. It was released on October 26, 1999, by Sugar Hill and Blue Eye Records. The album won a Grammy for Best Bluegrass Album and "Travelin' Prayer" was nominated for Best Female Country Vocal Performance.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Aoife O'Donovan</span> Musical artist

Aoife O'Donovan is an American singer and Grammy award-winning songwriter. She is best known as the lead singer for the string band Crooked Still and she also co-founded the Grammy Award-winning female folk trio I'm with Her. She has released three critically acclaimed studio albums: Fossils (2013), In the Magic Hour (2016), and Age of Apathy, as well as multiple noteworthy live recordings and EPs, including Blue Light (2010), Peachstone (2012), Man in a Neon Coat: Live From Cambridge (2016), In the Magic Hour: Solo Sessions (2019), and Bull Frog's Croon (2020). She also spent a decade contributing to the radio variety shows Live from Here and A Prairie Home Companion. Her first professional engagement was singing lead for the folk group The Wayfaring Strangers.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ann Marie Calhoun</span> American violinist

Ann Marie Calhoun is an American classically trained violinist who has performed as a bluegrass and rock musician in a number of prominent acts, including Jethro Tull, Steve Vai, Widespread Panic, Dave Matthews Band, Ringo Starr, A.R. Rahman and Mick Jagger's SuperHeavy. She has closely collaborated with Hans Zimmer on numerous film scores, including Sherlock Holmes, Interstellar, 12 Years a Slave, The Lone Ranger, The Little Prince, Man of Steel, and Captain Phillips. She is the sister of violinist Mary Simpson.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">The Chicks</span> American country band

The Chicks are an American country music band from Dallas, Texas. Since 1995, the band has consisted of Natalie Maines and sisters Martie Maguire and Emily Strayer. Maguire and Strayer, both née Erwin, founded the band in 1989 in Dallas, Texas, with bassist Laura Lynch and vocalist and guitarist Robin Lynn Macy. They performed bluegrass and country music, busking and touring the bluegrass festival circuits and small venues for six years without attracting a major label. In 1992, Macy left and Lynch became the lead vocalist.

Dale Ann Bradley is an American bluegrass musician. She is a six-time Female Bluegrass Vocalist of the Year, a distinction given by the International Bluegrass Music Association. She has released music both as a solo artist and as part of the group New Coon Creek Girls.

<i>Dear Sister</i> (album) 2013 studio album by Claire Lynch

Dear Sister is the tenth studio album from bluegrass musician Claire Lynch. The album reached No. 9 on the Bluegrass Album chart in Billboard magazine. The track, "Dear Sister", won the 2014 International Bluegrass Music Association award for Song of the Year.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jim Hurst</span> American singer-songwriter

James Edward “Jim” Hurst is an American bluegrass and country guitarist. He is known primarily as an instrumentalist but has also been credited for vocals with numerous other artists as well as his solo career. Hurst has performed with musicians that include Holly Dunn, Trisha Yearwood, Sara Evans, and Missy Raines. He has also won numerous awards for his work.

The International Bluegrass Music Awards is an award show for bluegrass music presented by the International Bluegrass Music Association (IBMA). Awards are voted based on professional membership in the IBMA.

Shane Ken Cook is a Canadian violinist. He is a long-time member of the celtic fusion ensemble Bowfire, and is a past Canadian Grand Master fiddler and U.S. National Fiddle Champion. His musical career has taken him to tour across Canada, the United States, Mexico, Germany, England, China and Taiwan.

References

  1. Harris, Craig. "Claire Lynch Biography". AllMusic . Retrieved July 6, 2017.
  2. 1 2 Morris, David (March 28, 2013). "New Music from Claire Lynch". Bluegrass Today. Retrieved September 2, 2014.
  3. 1 2 Papadatos, Markso (November 16, 2013). "Review: Claire Lynch shines on angelic studio album Dear Sister". Digital Journal. Retrieved March 25, 2014.
  4. Wake, Matt (August 19, 2014). "Claire Lynch, bluegrass star, former Huntsville resident tells story behind 'Dear Sister' LP". AL.com. Retrieved October 6, 2015.
  5. 1 2 3 4 Weber, Mark (October 15, 2015). "Claire Lynch Band including Red Deer on current tour". Lacomb Express. Retrieved November 7, 2015.
  6. "Claire Lynch Album & Song Chart History – Bluegrass Albums". Billboard . Prometheus Global Media . Retrieved March 16, 2015.
  7. Hughes, Ellen (January 27, 2014). "Post-modern Bluegrass? Claire Lynch Band Breaks Out at ABC". Penn Live. Retrieved September 2, 2014.
  8. "Artist: Claire Lynch". www.grammy.com. Recording Academy. 2020. Retrieved April 2, 2020.