“It wasn’t until I started touring nationally that I realized what an oasis this place was, and what a good place for me to get into the music.” — Laurie Lewis
Bluegrass star Laurie Lewis performs with her Right Hand Band, Friday, March 8, 2024, at the Sweetwater Music Hall in Sausalito, Calif. The Bay Area’s vibrant acoustic music scene in the 1960s and 1970s helped make Berkeley’s Laurie Lewis, who grew up learning classical piano and violin, a bona fide bluegrass star and an inspiration to young local musicians who’ve followed in her footsteps.
Bluegrass star Laurie Lewis leads her Right Hand Band—Brandon Godman on fiddle, Hasee Ciaccio on bass, George Guthrie on banjo— Friday, March 8, 2024, at the Sweetwater Music Hall in Sausalito, Calif. Attending the Berkeley Folk Music Festival for the first time as a teenager was an awakening for Lewis, whose father was a classical flutist.
Her father arranged for her to take banjo lessons from a student at UC Berkeley, who let her explore his bluegrass record collection — at a time when most teens were grooving to Jefferson Airplane, the Grateful Dead and Creedence Clearwater Revival. And while there were women stars, bluegrass and folk were still male dominated on the national scene. Not so here: “When I started playing bluegrass at Paul’s Saloon, the first two bands I saw had women, and I just thought that’s the way it is.”
Playing music at bars, pizza parlors and other small venues was never great money, but it was enough to get by in those days. There also were mid-sized venues, like the old Freight and Salvage, where more serious local groups could build their audience as opening acts.
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