Abigail Washburn Biography

If American old-time music is about taking earlier simpler ways of life and music-making as one’s model Abigail Washburn has proven herself to be a bracing revelation to that tradition.
She—a singing songwriting Illinois-born Nashville-based clawhammer banjo player—is every bit as interested in the present and the future as she is in the past and every bit as attuned to the global as she is to the local. Abigail pairs venerable folk elements with far-flung sounds and the results feel both strangely familiar and unlike anything anybody’s ever heard before. To put it another way she changes what seems possible.
One fateful day eight years ago Washburn was miraculously offered a record deal in the halls of a bluegrass convention in Kentucky which changed her trajectory from becoming a lawyer in China to a traveling folk musician. Since then Abigail has been recording and touring a continuous stream of music. Her music ranges from the all-g'earl string band sound of Uncle Earl to her bi-lingual solo release Song of the Traveling Daughter (2005) to the mind-bending “chamber roots” sound of the Sparrow Quartet to the rhythms sounds and stories of Afterquake her fundraiser CD for the Sichuan earthquake victims. Her latest release 'City of Refuge (2011) written with collaborator Kai Welch takes her bold and expansive musical vision to new heights with enigmatic songs that mingle Appalachia and folk-pop with tinges of Asia and Bruce Springsteen (Jon Pareles The New York Times).

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