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Laura Love: An American Original
by Pamela Dore

When Laura Love and her band took the stage before a sold-out house at the Triple Door this summer, the audience knew it was experiencing something truly unique. Her textured blend of American roots music (banjo and fiddle), funky slap-bass guitar style, and hint of Appalachian yodel is out of this world. She calls it “NeGrass” — the great confluence where black and white musical traditions meet … and get down.

Her sound has been alternately described as folk-funk, Afro-Celtic, or Hip-Appalachian, but if asked about her musical heritage, Love won’t tell you joyful stories about the family sitting on the porch singing harmonies. As chronicled in her memoir, You Ain’t Got No Easter Clothes (Hyperion, 2004), Love survived a childhood fraught with chaos, poverty and chronic instability in racially troubled Nebraska. Her mother, singer Winnie Winston, and father, jazz impresario Preston Love, never married. Winnie suffered horrible bouts of delusion which left her in and out of mental institutions all her life. Consequently, Laura and her sister spent their earliest years in orphanages, foster homes, convents and homeless shelters.

Love left home at 16 and one of her first gigs was singing in the Nebraska State Penitentiary for $50. “That kind of money still looks good to me!” she laughs. Fast forward to 1995, when “underexposed singer/songwriter” Laura Love was chosen to participate in a homeless benefit at Carnegie Hall with 28 other artists. Her show-stopping performance landed her on Billboard magazine’s list of the Top 10 Best Unsigned Acts, where Danny Goldberg, chairman of Mercury Records, noticed her. He immediately offered her a deal.

“I had to think about that one for a long time,” Love explains. Any other artist would have jumped at the chance, but she had already produced three successful albums on her own. “In the end I went for it,” she laments, “and ultimately became Satan’s minion.” The complexities of the record business are many, but suffice it to say that the label gives an artist a lot of money up front, and the artist spends a lifetime paying it back. “It’s called ‘recoupment,’” she says, “and I just didn’t understand it at the time.” After two albums with Mercury, they parted company and she never looked back.

Love is not afraid to say what she thinks, and she wants her audience to think as well. A Phi Beta Kappa graduate of the University of Washington, she has often used her public platform to speak out on important issues. The most infuriating time for her was when the Bush Administration declared war on Iraq in 2003. Long before the Dixie Chicks blundered into a firestorm with an offhanded comment about the president, Love dared to write an entire song about him called “I Want You Gone.” She wrote, “I’m tired of being smooth/I’m tired of being nice/I’m tired of making it sound pretty … I want you gone like the wind … gone, gone, gone!” She followed with an open letter to the UTNE Reader that said, “Music isn’t just about being nice and making it rhyme. It’s about making sounds that disrupt the silent passivity of a country being led deadly astray.”

Shortly afterward she found herself at MerleFest, the Americana music celebration in Wilkesboro, N.C. Following her performance of “I Want You Gone,” a vocal few in the audience started yelling, “Get off the stage! Go back to Hollywood!” Complaints to the festival organizers led to an unofficial boycott for the next three years. Though she had been forewarned about saying anything political, she couldn’t keep quiet, believing “You cannot commit to a contract that violates your basic rights — like freedom of speech. I learned that from Judge Judy.”

Interestingly, her biggest fan bases tend to be in the more conservative areas of Florida and North Carolina. Love’s manager Mary McFaul attributes that to the fact that the choices are limited for those audiences, and they’ll come out in droves to see a freethinking performer. But Love has paid a price for her outspokenness. Promoters these days aren’t willing to take the heat for a controversial comment and, as a result, her bookings have decreased. “That, and the rise of online music sales have really hurt Laura financially,” says McFaul. She does the math: If a CD costs $2 to make, and sells for $16, the artist gets about $7 (from an independent reseller like CD Baby). However, if someone only buys a single song from iTunes, the artist gets about 8 to 14 cents. “Economically it can be very tough for the average artist to maintain a band, make albums, and tour.” Love now often performs as part of a duo with band-member Jen Todd, and she has managed to get bookings from venues that couldn’t otherwise afford a bigger band.

When she’s not traveling, Love enjoys the simple pleasures: hanging out with her family, riding her bike, gardening, playing with her cats (13 of them), and pondering ways to make the world a better place. She is a passionate advocate for the environment, and has long been involved with the restoration of Longfellow Creek in West Seattle. Gina Hall, director of resource and community development for the Delridge Neighborhood Association, says, “We love Laura! She’s a great partner, and committed to green space in our community. She supports us in deeds, not just words.” That means walking door-to-door to explain the human impact on the creek, performing at open space benefits, speaking out at community meetings, and organizing work parties.

That kind of awareness and a lot of hard work by the community culminated in the creation of the Longfellow Creek Legacy Trail, which runs the length of the creek from the headwaters of Roxbury Park to the mouth of the Duwamish, with educational exhibits along the way. Recent spawning surveys by Seattle Public Utilities have tracked the return of Coho salmon to the waters there.

“The Pacific Northwest is so unique,” marvels Love. “We have an ecosystem here where we can actually sit in our backyards and watch the salmon swimming home. For me it has been a life-altering experience working on the creek and restoring native habitat. In a very short period I’ve seen something happen — it doesn’t have to take a lifetime.”

When asked about the future, Love says it will definitely include music, whether it’s for two people or 200. Her songs are something of her own “legacy trail,” charting the course of the things that are important to her: Helping the little guy (“Sometimes Davey Wins”); acknowledging our diversity (“Freak Flag”); appreciating our bodies (“Mabootay”); criticizing our leaders (“I Want You Gone”); or simply celebrating the moment (“Aha Me A Riddle I Day”). She likes to think of herself as a catalyst for change “one song at a time,” and nothing makes her happier than fans who write to thank her for speaking her mind. As an independent artist unencumbered by a corporate parent, she says, “It’s easier to say what you think when a lot of people aren’t listening!” But don’t let her fool you — a lot of people are listening, and loving it.

Pamela Dore is a freelance writer in Seattle.

©2007 Caliope Publishing Company