TAPPING HER ROOTS, TOUCHING OUR HEARTS

by Chris Jones (Bluegrass Now)

Some of the finest original bluegrass music has been characterized by the blending of the simple and the complex. It could be argued that this is one of the many things that set apart Bill Monroe’s sound from much of the music of his time. The songs of Louisa Branscomb have the kind of depth that results from such a fusion. She has lived a broad and unique life which has contributed to her wisdom and complexity as a person, and her music reflects those qualities as well as her love for the simple heart of traditional music.

 

Those of us who have followed bluegrass music closely over the past few decades will remember the various musical partnerships in which Louisa has been involved, most notably the North Carolina-based Boot Hill, which played full-time throughout the 1970s. Newer and younger fans, however, would be more likely to identify Louisa with her song, “Steel Rails,” which was a bonafide hit for Alison Krauss from her Grammy-winning CD, I’ve Got That Old Feeling. John Denver also recorded it on what would be his final release, another Grammy winner.

 

Songwriting came early to Louisa Branscomb. Her parents recall her creating melodies on the piano at the age of 4, and Louisa says that the first song she clearly remembers writing was at age 6 while at a Methodist summer camp in Alabama.

 

“A kid on the other side of the cabin had a ukulele,” she relates. “It was the first stringed instrument I remember seeing up close and I fell in love with it. Only problem was, she wouldn’t let anyone play it. So when canoe time came, I said I was sick every day, and while everyone was gone canoeing, I got out her ukulele and played it and wrote songs. I was very careful, at least!”

 

Her first ukelele-accompanied original was a love song called “I’d Climb the Highest Mountain.” She devised her own written music notation at the time, using stair-steps to depict the movement of the melody, then wrote it down on the stationery her parents had given to her on which to write home from camp.

 

Though she was born in the Adirondack region of upstate New York, Louisa was raised in Alabama after a few years of living in Nashville. Although Louisa’s father eventually recovered from tuberculosis, he was struggling with the disease at the time of her birth so she was born in a T.B. sanatorium. In addition to her early ukulele experience, her piano teacher saw her tremendous creative talent and entered her in a statewide classical music composition contest at age 12, which she won with a piece bearing the colorful title, “Fantasy of the Trolls.” She then had the terrifying experience of playing the piece with the Birmingham Symphony in front of an audience of several thousand at the Birmingham Civic auditorium.

 

At age 14, this experienced classical music performer took up the guitar, and later, while in college, began applying these skills to her growing love of country music. A cousin in Texas gave Louisa her first guitar, a Martin 00-21, and a friend in college taught her how to flatpick. She and her friend then moved to Winston-Salem and formed Bluegrass Liberation, an all-female band. While there, Louisa continued what would become an impressive academic career, earning an M.A. in film production and a faculty position at Bowman Gray School of Medicine.

 

Winston-Salem was also the place that Boot Hill was formed. Co-founder Sam Sanger was a guitar player, so Louisa switched to banjo. “Once I bought my RB 250-Ronnie Stoneman had pawned it before Hee Haw-I was in love! Everybody in those days said women couldn’t play lead bluegrass, especially banjo. It didn’t really matter to me that people said that, except perhaps making me want to do it more!”

 

She also was a woman who was fronting the band, another rarity in those days. Boot Hill became an ideal vehicle not only for Louisa’s instrumental ability but also for her songwriting, with three albums eventually being recorded which prominently featured her songs. It also marked the beginning of the life of “Steel Rails” and some of the connections that occurred as a result, including a publishing deal with Mel Tillis. (Tillis also recorded an unreleased version of “Steel Rails.”)

 

“I wrote ‘Steel Rails’ in 1971,” she recalls, “and it was the title cut of Boot Hill’s first album.” However, she stresses that the song is not the beginning and end of her range as a writer. “I think I have lots of better songs, but I think [‘Steel Rails’] has had such a life of its own that it has defined me as a songwriter in a lot of ways, most of which have been positive, but some restricting.” Reflecting on some possible reasons for its appeal, though, she adds, “One thing I think ‘Steel Rails’ does do is leave a lot of negative space. It says less, in a way, than most of my songs, and I wonder if that gives the listener a lot of elbow room to go with the images wherever they personally need to.”

 

After most of a decade on the road with Boot Hill, Louisa was ready for a change of direction. She played briefly with another all-female bluegrass band called Cherokee Rose, then relocated to Atlanta where she continued the academic side of her life. Continuing to pursue her interest in psychotherapy, she received a Ph.D. from Georgia State. Therapy and music were not aspects of her life that she wanted to keep separate, however, and she began a path that would eventually bring them closer together. This included recording an album that was distributed within the world of professional therapists, consisting of original music and poetry meant to be a celebration of hope and the human spirit.

 

There was plenty of music and recordings to come out of Louisa’s time in Atlanta: She formed the band Gypsy Heart, with whom she recorded an all-original album. At this time, she was playing mandolin as well as banjo. In 1994, she recorded It’s Time to Write a Song, an album that featured the broad spectrum of her material. It brought together a number of talented guest players and singers, including Scott Vestal and Randy Howard. The CD included a new recording of “Steel Rails” and other great examples of her writing, including the hard-driving “Stormy Night” (also recorded by the New Coon Creek Girls), and the poignant “Hold Me Gently in Your Dreams.” Two years later, she recorded an album of original children’s songs while a contracted writer for a publisher of children’s books. It was a project that held a lot of meaning for her.

 

“I became a mom at the same time,” she explains, “so the timing was perfect, and I think in some ways those songs are some of my deepest work.” This album earned a national award, the “Parents’ Seal of Excellence Award.”

 

In 1997, Louisa Branscomb made another bold move, leaving her life of balancing music with her work as a psychologist and relocating with her family to Port Townsend, Wash., on the Olympic Peninsula.

 

“The goal was to downsize and live a simpler life,” she explains, “closer to nature and friends, and take two years just to write. I felt I’d become unbalanced in the upwardly mobile, aggressive, urban lifestyle.” Though she only stayed a couple of years, it gave her just the kind of breathing room that she needed. “I knew it would wipe the slate clean and make room for something. It challenged me, and made space for a deeper creativity.”

 

She has since returned once again to the east, to the mountains of north Georgia, and is living full-time at Woodsong, the 125-acre farm that she’s owned for the last ten years. It’s a place where she has led retreats in the past, and she has restored an old farmhouse as a B&B and a musician’s and writer’s retreat, with regular workshops held there as well.

 

At this point, having worn lots of hats, Louisa feels that her writing is the part that reaches closest to the heart of who she is.

 

“I love playing in a band,” she explains. “There has never been anything to compare to that musical connection when a band is really in a groove, so I hope to continue that. But my deepest identity is as a writer.” And, as evidenced by her early work, it’s an identity she’s been aware of from an early age. “Writing was not just something I did for fun as a child,” she remembers. “It was a very basic way of being in the world, of coping with thoughts and feelings.”

 

She is very much an inspirational writer, and she respects the inspiration as a gift. “I don’t feel I’m gifted,” she modestly offers, “I feel a gift is given to me to pass on, if I can do justice to the inspiration or idea. I would go so far as to say it is a form of prayer.”

 

Like other prolific songwriters, though, she understands the need to be receptive and to let the ideas come and take shape, even if she doesn’t schedule times to write.

 

“When I think I might have a song,” she adds, “it’s my job to sit up and listen, because I truly believe that what I’m tuning in to is bigger than me.” From that point, the craft is important to her, too. “I take it as a responsibility to work on the craft,” she adds, “and become as good a carpenter of the song as possible.”

 

She tends to write at the time that she’s moved, and then the process moves quickly.

 

“The words and the music come pretty much together,” she says,” and I write very quickly-thirty minutes, an hour-but sometimes I might need another verse or line. I don’t edit much after that. It’s not that they don’t need it, it’s more that I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about form, so a lot of that is autopilot while I’m writing now, and I throw ideas out very fast.”

 

Though she is putting a lot of effort into her new retreat center, Louisa Branscomb will definitely continue to be active as a performer and as a recording artist. She has half of a new CD finished of all original material, recorded while she was out in Washington. She’s also featured on Mark Newton’s new Tribute to Women in Bluegrass CD, a project that’s a testament to some of the changes that have taken place in the music for women, changes for which Louisa helped break the ground. She modestly sees this as a continuation of a positive trend.

 

“What I love about bluegrass is it transcends so many things to unite people in the love of the music, and I’d like to see it continue to focus on looking past individual differences to what’s important: the purity of the music, with room for individual expression and creativity.”

Louisa Branscomb’s career so far both inside and outside of music has been guided by a powerful creative force.  It’s a force that has not only brought us a staggering amount of original recorded music, but one that has enabled her to juggle, and effectively synthesize, her love of music, writing, people, and the mountains around her.