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About Lisa Bigwood and Her Music Lisa Bigwood’s songwriting and intense and memorable performances have taken her from life as a rural housewife and nurse and moved her to the life of a writer and musician. She brings the previous life along for the ride, a richness of experience that quickly shows its face. Lisa claims she was born to be a songwriter, and that’s probably true. Crossroads magazine said in a review, “…one gets the sense that the music she’s creating is an insistent force that she could no more hold back than a passerby could resist listening…” Jeff Spevak, of the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, said, “Bigwood is the scariest folksinger I’ve ever heard.” Proudest of this review, she doesn’t really know why he said it, but guesses: “You know, I have seen a lot. I spent a long time in what I see as the Trenches of America in my job as a nurse, in urban and rural public health, ER’s and ICU’s, and also in my own life. Some of it was horrible. I won’t list it all for you, you can probably imagine it, but this is what I do with it that kind of takes my own breath away: I look in its ugly big face, and roar back, ‘you frighten me, but you won’t take me’. Because I’ve seen that alongside all the bad things in this world, the strength, the good, the life force, the reason to stay here and do our best in our time… that never goes away. Sometimes it feels like it has gone, sometimes I thought it had disappeared, but truly, it never left my side, and I testify to that with a vengeance. The power of it is scary, somehow. Good scary.” This courageous message comes through, and when she writes of joy and laughter and fun, which she does, you know it wasn’t concocted for a catchy hit…she means it, and the listener can’t miss that feeling. She laughs and jokes a lot on stage, which is illuminating, given the subject matter she obviously knows intimately. Her first two studio albums were very nearly Grammy nominees, each in the categories of Best Contemporary Folk Album and Album of the Year. They made her a Telluride Troubadour Finalist, Kerrville Newfolk Finalist, Chris Austin Memorial Songwriting winner at The Merle Watson Festival, and took her around the country showcasing her songs. Her music is being played on folk radio from New Haven to Cleveland to Chicago to Salt Lake City to Santa Cruz…fans and folk DJ’s are buzzing about the third studio album, scheduled for release this spring. Of all this attention, she says, “I have found it very refreshing to find that in this time of mass-programmed media, there are lots of real people out there listening… people who really care about music and what it means, and who join me in abhorring affectation, imitation, artifice and cliché. People who know real when they hear it.” Pressed to define and describe and categorize her music, she struggles. Finally, she decides: “Warrior Folk. I sing of the battles and of the feasts, of everyday life in the Real America that you know and I know. I sing of why, given all I’ve personally seen, I still want to get up in the morning.”
Contact information: email: contact@lisabigwoodmusic.com Management: |
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