Press Kit | Bio
Louisa Branscomb
THE PATH OF A MUSICAL PIONEER
Veteran and visionary artist and composer.
Legendary among acoustic songwriters, Louisa is entering her second 50 years of performing, producing, and recording her works. She also continues to forge new ways to sustain and support professional songwriters through her passion of mentoring. Established in 1989 as Woodsong, her retreats are the longest-running continuous retreat program in bluegrass and one of the longest in acoustic music. She has pioneered and presented an in-depth model, the first of its kind, Branscomb Transformational Songwriting. The current home for her retreats is Lyric Mountain Songwriter Retreat in Asheville.
In her volunteer community-building work, Louisa has also worked tirelessly to forge visionary ways to use songwriting for healing and interpersonal connection, bringing people together across differences. Drawing on both her lifetime work in music and her career as a Clinical Psychologist, she has worked with at-risk communities (economically or culturally conflicted) and with high-risk individuals, including foster children, veterans, trauma survivors, and survivors of natural disasters, all while applying her background in psychology to assemble and publish her findings. The common thread is Louisa’s enduring faith in the power of song to reach and transform the writer, the listener, and the world around us.
Louisa's path traces back to 1971, when she emerged, barely 20 years old, as a full-time songwriter and performer on guitar, then banjo, fronting one of the first all-female bands, and later co-leading the popular 70s band Boot Hill, producing 3 widely played records featuring original songs. Louisa is widely recognized as a trailblazer for songwriters and women performers in bluegrass and acoustic music. Both Alison Krauss and Alison Brown have said that Louisa stood out to them as the first woman they saw playing banjo on stage.
Louisa’s song Steel Rails appeared on Alison Krauss’s first Grammy album and John Denver’s last, and “brought an entire generation into bluegrass” (Bluegrass Now). It is said to be one of the longest-running #1 hits and most-played songs in the genre, with over 350 video and album covers by other bands, and the 13thmost influential song in the 75-year history of bluegrass music.
Louisa’s 2018 Compass release, “Gonna Love Anyway,” broke records by debuting at #1 and #2 on the bluegrass and folk charts, respectively, and continued to chart for 18 months, with 5 top ten songs. Likewise, her 2011 Compass album, I’ll Take Love, had crossover hits in folk and bluegrass and commanded top chart positions for over a year and a half. Her song, Dear Sister, co-written and performed by Claire Lynch, earned the Song of the Year Award and longstanding chart distinction in folk, Americana, roots, and bluegrass. She is now setting the stage for the release of her 15th Album, produced in Nashville with Wanda Vick and including a stellar cast of internationally known musicians.
Louisa, community advocate and mentor. Louisa’s contribution to music goes far beyond her recording and performing. As a visionary mentor and organizer, Louisa spearheaded the songwriter movement in bluegrass beginning in 2006, with the original songwriting committee, the Songwriter Award, and the Songwriter Mentor Program and educational IBMA track.
Louisa moved on to geographic communities, where she has taken her model, “Transformational Songwriting™,” to schools, veterans, high-risk communities, and post-disaster communities. Her program, “Helene, My Story, My Song,” was among the first mental health interventions after the WNC hurricane, aimed at helping youth put their traumatic experiences into song and then sharing them on stage.
She also continues to direct her farm retreat, Lyric Mountain Songwriter Retreat (established as Woodsong Farm Retreat in 1989) with over 600 graduating songwriters over the last 33 years, and an ongoing, ever-expanding community of songwriters who have achieved notable recognition across the country.
Research, Publishing, and Presenting. A prolific and award-winning researcher and author in psychology, with a previous career as a research professor, Louisa has turned her research and publishing skills to music. Compiling and analyzing 30 years of feedback from her own students on effective elements of mentoring, she researched and published the Branscomb Mentor Method, a Relational Model for Mentoring. Her trailblazing work is a guide for building meaningful and productive mentoring relationships within a sustainable community context. Here again, she was emphasizing relational and community elements of teaching and mentoring before mainstream education began to research and publish on these same themes.
Using the same data-based analysis, along with decades of anecdotal conversations with students, clients, and communities where she has intervened, Louisa has created a model called Branscomb Transformational Songwriting™. BTS is a simple yet elegant approach to songwriting that emphasizes the songwriter's person and creative voice. More than a method, it is a sustainable life practice that fosters conscious attunement to the world around us and how to channel awareness into songs.
These commitments, going back to her first retreat in 1989, earned Louisa the coveted “Distinguished Achievement Award” in 2017, for “pioneering work that has expanded and furthered the genre of bluegrass music.”
Off stage. Louisa prefers the sunlight to the limelight, so when she is not performing, you’ll most likely catch her out on the trails on her Morgan horse or bush hogging on her John Deere at her farm retreat, Lyric Mountain. Says folk legend Si Kahn, “the raw courage of Louisa’s work is stunning and moving. She is absolutely extraordinary.” Lance LeRoy, Lester Flatt’s manager, famously remarked in 1974, “Louisa is always over 20 years ahead of her time and she’s barely 20 years old.” Mel Tillis spotted Louisa’s talent when he recorded Steel Rails in 1972 and invited Louisa to Nashville at age 23, saying, “It’s time for a groundbreaking woman songwriter like you in Nashville. You remind me of a young Cindy Walker or Dottie West.” Many describe her as beyond the usual definitions of “songwriter.” In the words of David McGehee, “No one captures the full rainbow of human emotions, in all their flawed beauty, as does Louisa.” It is this same rainbow – devotion to the rainbow of human emotions- that drives her passion to write, teach, and bring songwriting to non-songwriters.
SELECTED AWARDS AND DISTINCTIONS
Age 11
Won regional piano composition contest and performed her piece with the Birmingham Symphony before an audience of 2000. Youngest child to win this composer award and perform with the orchestra.
1972
Helped form possibly the first all-female band, Bluegrass Liberation. Guitar, songwriter. The women are featured on one of the historic Union Grove live records in approximately 1973.
1974
Began playing guitar, then banjo with Sam Sanger, then in Union Station, a side band with Sam and Jimmy Arnold. A coincidental name, since this was several decades before Alison was born, and Louisa's song was one of the first that Alison and Union Station recorded.
1977
Boot Hill. First woman in bluegrass to front a modern touring bluegrass band playing banjo while also writing a large part of the band’s repertoire. With co-leader Sam Sanger, she produced 3 albums: Steel Rails (seminal version later heard by Alison), Blue Ridge Memories, which earned heavy play in U.S. and a hit single title cut in Japan, sung and written by Louisa, and third, Fly Soul Away, which won 3rd place Gospel Album in BU chart awards 1979. All three heavily featured the band’s songs written by Louisa.
1989
Founded what is the longest continuously running songwriter retreat series for acoustic writers in the country.
Louisa created an original research-based, unique artist-centered model for teaching songwriting that draws on both her psychology and songwriting careers, “Branscomb Transformational Songwriting™”. Since her model focuses on the artist as a person, many songwriters return year after year.
Louisa has had over 700 songwriters pass through her retreats, and they are now taking place at Lyric Mountain Songwriter Retreat in Asheville.
~1990s
Allison Krauss was inspired by seeing Louisa as the first female banjo player she’d ever seen.
Alison Brown has also noted that Louisa was the first female banjo player she saw perform.
Many current high-profile artists, such as Sierra Hall, Chris Thile, and Jeannette Williams, credit Steel Rails, or Louisa’s presence as a band leader and banjo player, as influential in their becoming bluegrass musicians.
1991
Alison Krauss had her first worldwide breakout hit with Louisa’s Steel Rails.
Steel Rails won Song of the Year, SPBGMA
Steel Rails became the longest charting single in bluegrass (over 18 months) for several decades.
Steel Rails, by Alison Krauss, is described as “bringing a whole new generation into bluegrass” and inspiring a generation of women to become bluegrass musicians for the first time.
1980
Continued to perform full-time, regionally with Cherokee Rose (NC, banjo) (EP), Gypsy Heart (Atlanta, banjo, mandolin, guitar) (one Album), Fontanna Sunset (banjo, guitar) (2 albums)
2001
Class speaker, Bluegrass Leadership Class. Spoke after 9/11 on the potential for Bluegrass to model connection and an example of a healing, interconnected community. Buzzwords now, these concepts were new at this time.
2006
Spearheaded the mission of building community among songwriters, led the formation of the IBMA Songwriter Committee, the Songwriter Mentorship Program (the first such program in IBMA), and the Songwriter Track at the World of Bluegrass.
Louisa Hosted First Songwriter Rounds in IBMA: Featured Dixie Hall, Laurie Lewis, and others.
IBMA Recorded Event of the Year
2008
Inducted as a member of the Atlanta Country Music Hall of Fame, Hall of Honor
2010
Inducted into the Alabama Bluegrass Hall of Fame
2011
IBMA Songwriter Award, originated by Louisa in 2006, was passed by the Board to be official.
Release of Compass album of originals: I’ll Take Love.
Pre-nomination: IBMA Album of the Year
Nomination: IBMA Song of the Year – I’ll Take Love, co-written with/sung by Dale Ann Bradley
Top 10 Bluegrass albums: 14 months
Top 10 Bluegrass songs: I’ll Take Love
Top 10 multiple folk and roots charts
IBMA Recorded Event of the Year
2014
Song of the Year 2014 (IBMA) Dear Sister, co-written with C. Lynch
2017
IBMA Distinguished Achievement Award 2017: for contributions as a songwriter, performer, and community organizer that have “expanded the bluegrass genre and brought many into bluegrass.”
2020
Sirius XM Radio compiled a celebrated list of the 75 most influential Bluegrass songs in the first 75 years of Bluegrass.
Steel Rails was voted #13th, and was one of the few songs written by a woman.
Considered the “most jammed bluegrass song”.
According to contest judges such as Johnny and Jeannette Williams, who have judged the Galax and SPBGMA band competitions for decades, Steel Rails is the most frequently played song in the band competitions among all the Bluegrass songs.
ADDITIONAL AWARDS AND DISTINCTIONS
Karen Lynne’s “Will I Be Good Enough” reached the top 12 on Australian country charts
7 Nominations Songwriter of the Year (SPGBMA, IBMA)
5 Nominations IBMA Mentor of the Year
Grammy cuts – Steel Rails, on Alison Krauss’s first Grammy album
Steel Rails, on John Denver’s last Grammy album
Membership in Daughters of Bluegrass, a group of leading women in Bluegrass
Louisa’s Compass recordings in 2011 and 2018 received major recognition and earned hits in roots, Americana, and bluegrass, and remained on the charts for 12 and 18 months, respectively
Dear Sister, sung co-written by Lynch crossed genres to major chart standing in bluegrass, folk, and roots charts.
Chris Austin Songwriting Contest
1st Place Bluegrass, 1st Place General, 3rd Place Spiritual
Over 300 recorded originals, including hits by artists including Claire Lynch, Dale Ann Bradley, McPeak Brothers, NuBlu, Alison Krauss, John Denver, and artists from chart hits from her own records, including the Whites, Molly Tuttle, Becky Buller, Sierra Hull, Russell Moore, Alison Krauss, Jeanette and Johnny Williams
PRESS PHOTOS
