Features

Traditional country music is played on acoustic instruments like mandolins, not wailing pedal steel guitars. That fact alone puts its practitioners so far outside the genre’s mainstream Nashville stronghold that they might as well live in, well, the Bay Area. That’s just fine with Berkeley’s very own home grown country music legend Laurie Lewis—she’s been an outsider most of her life. “Even though I’ve grown up in a city, I’m a country girl,” says Lewis. “Farms in Berkeley? You bet!” 

A musical jack of all trades, the 1968 graduate of Berkeley High and a member of the school’s Hall of Fame sings and writes songs and plays the guitar and violin. A fixture on the Bay Area roots music scene since the late ‘70s, in 1986 she hooked up with mandolinist Tom Rozum. Together they’ve recorded three albums including their latest, Guest House. The duo will roll out the new offering with concerts tonight (Friday, March 26) and Saturday, March 27 at Berkeley’s Freight & Salvage at 8 p.m. Joining Lewis and Rozum will be bassist Todd Sickafoose, guitarist Scott Huffman and surprise special guests. 

The key to Lewis and Rozum’s sound is the acoustic instruments. In addition to the guitar, mandolin and violin, the ensemble’s members strum a banjo and string bass to give their songs an authentic flavor. “We really love the sound of the acoustic instruments and the fact that you don’t need to take people’s heads off with huge volume. You can just take out an instrument and sing your songs.” 

Guest House, while paying homage to the pair’s bluegrass and early country influences, also throws in a little social commentary on songs such as Bad Seed. A song about reaping what you sow, Lewis interprets it as a lament about some of the more questionable genetic experiments being done on the world’s food supply. “That’s my personal take,” she says. “Once you put a song out into the world it’s going to mean whatever it’s going to whoever hears it and that’s what it means to me.” 

The rest of the album includes loves songs and freewheeling classic ditties such as Old Dan Tucker, the heartfelt saga of a man too late for dinner who proceeded to wash his face in a frying pan and comb his hair with a wagon wheel. 

Lewis started playing in bluegrass bands during the burgeoning traditional country scene in the late ‘70s with bands such as the Good Ole Persons, one of the first all-women bluegrass groups. She thinks the music may be experiencing another wave of popularity. 

Traveling across the country and abroad half the year to perform to sold out audiences, Lewis credits public radio stations for introducing many to her style of country—one not found on commercial radio. “The music that I play is not palatable to advertisers,” she says. “It doesn’t sell whatever it’s supposed to sell. And yet, what is really great is that we’ve been able to travel around and make a living.” Adds Lewis, who closed up her violin shop at age 36 and became a full-time musician, “I feel so incredibly lucky.” 

While Lewis is grateful for the airplay she gets on stations like KPFA, she realizes non-commercial radio can’t carry the entire music education burden. Since Lewis benefited from the Berkeley Unified School District’s outstanding music programs during her years as a student, she’s more than a little concerned about the present decline of music education, and not just because it might hamper the career of someone like herself.  

“I think it’s very important to have kids exposed to music,” says Lewis. “There’s a great empowerment in the ability to entertain yourself. That’s what playing music is first and foremost about. The less that becomes a part of everyday life the more we’ll just turn to pre-packaged entertainment from the outside which is going to stifle our creativity as a people.”