Laura Stevenson, Manchester

Laura Stevenson biography

Laura Stevenson is a singer/songwriter from Long Island, New York, and formerly a keyboard player for the musical collective Bomb the Music Industry! Known for her emotionally barbed storytelling, stripped-down delivery, and orchestral mix of indie folk, indie rock, punk rock, twee pop & alt-country, Stevenson was born and raised in Long Island into a family of mariners and musicians. She spent many of her younger days on the sugar barges of NY harbor with her father and uncles, who all made their living on the water, at one time running one of the largest fleets on the Hudson. Meanwhile, her mother’s parents were successful musicians; Harry Simeone, the composer and choral arranger responsible for such works as “The Little Drummer Boy” and “Do You Hear What I Hear?” and Margaret McCravy (stage name McCrae), a singer from South Carolina who got her start accompanying her elder siblings “The McCravy Brothers,” a harmonious gospel folk duo, before continuing on her own to record and tour with bandleader Benny Goodman. Armed with her grandfather’s love for modernist dissonance, a genetic predisposition for harmony, and with her sea legs firmly planted in the traditions of American folk singing, Stevenson began creating melodies at a very young age. “My mom would find me in my room, looking out the window, out at the street, singing by myself, sometimes crying,” she laughs, “I was a weird kid.” Sites: MySpace

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