Blazing Trails in Mentoring

Louisa Branscomb has one of the longest-running songwriter retreat programs in acoustic music. Her workshops offer scholarships and ongoing mentoring for songwriters at all levels, often affording bonds that take a writer from inspiration to song to CD to stage.

Her mentoring has included professional and aspiring songwriters, such as children, veterans, students, high-risk populations, and community interventions, such as after natural disasters

Mentoring Children and High Risk Youth …

The Howard boys, who have participated 8 years in the non-profit ScreenDoor Songwriter Alliance with learning to write their stories, came full circle this year, by coming to Lyric Mountain to pay it forward with helping clear, clean, and help get the farmhouse ready for opening.

Mentoring Emerging Artists …

Louisa’s Southport Songwriter Festival features kids in the KidsWrite™ Program and emerging artists.

Louisa Branscomb knows how to write a song that cuts to the heart of a story and gives a message of hope. I have used her songs in my university classes the last two years to help students reflect snd look beyond their differences to their shared humanity. After hearing Dear Sister, one student, who came into the class thinking violence and guns are the solution came to me later and said:

“ I understand now. It’s not about the Blue and the Gray. I felt the soldier’s loss and I realized that war doesn’t stop at the battle. It’s about all humans …oneness. It’s right here! , “…In the dark before dawn, instead of battle songs, the enemy and we all sang a melody … of home sweet home.”

Mentoring Veterans and High Risk Adults …

This song is the story of one Iraq veteran, written by Louisa and Dale Ann Bradley, recorded on Louisa’s album “I’ll Take Love.” This gentleman said the song transformed his journey and wanted it shared with others.

Mentoring Songwriters …

Branscomb Transfomational Method™

Research, Publishing, and Presenting. Combining her journey as a psychologist, where she published on creativity and trauma, and her career in music, with 40 years of feedback and research in songwriting, Louisa has published her model, the Branscomb Transformational Songwriting Method™. In this new era of her work, she has presented and/or applied this model at national conferences and retreats. She continues to apply her work with professional songwriters and high-needs groups such as foster children, communities affected by trauma or conflict, the elderly, and veterans. The Branscomb Model is unique in that it is backed by research and is an elegantly simple model that others can use. As an artist-centered model, it is personalized and sustainable, allowing songwriters to approach their writing in a meaningful, evolving way in their lives - whether the goal is to record their songs or to develop a practice to add meaning to their lives.

Louisa has also published the Branscomb Mentor Method™, a humanistic model for mentoring that has been shown to be effective, easily incorporated into others’ approaches, and used in many settings.

These combined contributions in songwriting, performing, mentoring, and community building earned her the coveted “Distinguished Achievement Award” in 2017 for her pioneering work in “expanding and furthering the genre of bluegrass music.”