This post is part of our occasional feature, Songwriter Profiles. If you have a suggestion for a bluegrass songwriter we might want to consider, please contact us.

Louisa Branscomb is an acclaimed songwriter and pioneer in bluegrass music, having been referred to by Lance LeRoy, Lester Flatt’s manager, as “always 20 years ahead of her time.” A short list of her current accomplishments includes 4 songs on Dale Ann Bradley’s new release, Don’t Turn Your Back, including the title cut, having penned Alison Krauss’s breakout hit, Steel Rails, which still holds the honor of the longest running chart hit in bluegrass music, songs on Grammy’s by John Denver and Alison, approximately 85 songs recorded in bluegrass, and winning songs in songwriting contests that span decades. In addition, Louisa has a long career as a performer on guitar and banjo herself.

The International Bluegrass Music Awards have seen Louisa win honors on two recorded events of the year, including a project by Mark Newton celebrating women in bluegrass, and a song on the first Daughters of Bluegrass Recorded Event of the Year. Steel Rails, which received SPBGMA Song of the Year when released by Alison Krauss, is often credited with bringing a generation of young women into bluegrass music. At the present moment, her Dale Ann cut Don’t Turn Your Back is climbing bluegrass and roots charts, and Dale Ann’s CD by the same name is also climbing the charts, earning the #3 slot, so far, on Bluegrass Music Profiles.

Songwriting came early to Ms. Branscomb. Her parents recall her creating melodies on the piano at the age of four, and Louisa says that the first song she clearly remembers writing was at age six while at a Methodist summer camp in Alabama.

“It was a love song with one verse. Shows what I knew!”

At the age of 11 she won first place in the Alabama Student Music Composition Contest and performed with the Birmingham Symphony before an audience of 2000.

A country-music singing cousin in Texas gave Louisa her first guitar, a Martin 00-21.

“Ben was the real deal. He brought me into the real country music–Lefty Frizzell, Hank Snow, and Merle Haggard. From then on, folk and classical music took second place and bluegrass and country ruled.”

Sally Wingate, a banjo playing friend in college began playing with Louisa, and the two moved to Winston-Salem, where, at the age of 21, they co-founded the first, or one of the first modern all-female bluegrass bands, Bluegrass Liberation. (more…)

This post is part of our occasional feature, Songwriter Profiles. If you have a suggestion for a bluegrass songwriter we might want to consider, please contact us.

Originally from Jacksonville, Florida, Chris Stuart plays guitar and leads his own band, Backcountry, based in Del Mar, California. His first professional involvement in bluegrass was as a banjo player in the band Salt Run in St. Augustine, Florida, in 1984, and then, after moving to upstate New York, as the banjo and mandolin player in the group Cornerstone, founded in 1991 by Stuart, Pam Daley, Rick Manning and Dana Paul, in Ithaca, New York. The band won the Winterhawk (now Grey Fox) band contest that year and then showcased at the IBMA Convention in 1992.

From an early age, Stuart wrote poetry and stories. He remembers writing a fable when he was ten, and he wrote poetry in high school. Both his parents wrote poetry and listened to a wide range of music. His father was a Disciples of Christ minister and his mother a sixth-grade school teacher. There were always books and music in the house. Everyone in the family liked a different kind of music, so they listened to everything from Hank Williams to Cleo Laine.

It was during his time with Cornerstone that Stuart began writing songs, inspired by the voice of Ms Daley, the lead singer with the band. His first song was Paul And Peter Walked, which Claire Lynch heard and recorded on her gospel album. She also recorded another Chris Stuart song God Spoke His Name, and a Cajun song, Thibodeau, on her next album.

Stuart’s talent as a songwriter was further evident as he won the Chris Austin Songwriting contest at the 1993 Merlefest in both bluegrass‚Äìwith Maggie’s Daughter‚Äìand gospel‚Äìwith God Spoke His Name‚Äìcategories. Both songs are on Cornerstone’s first CD Maggie’s Daughter, along with three other Stuart-penned songs.

Other Chris Stuart songs to find favor with bluegrass singers are Dear Friends and Gentle Hearts, on the Suzanne Thomas album of the same name; Saro, on Sally Jones’ Love Hurts CD; Dale Ann Bradley recorded Julia Belle on her Catch Tomorrow album; and Larry Cordle recorded a Chris Stuart song, The First Train Robbery for his recent album, Took Down and Put Up. Also, Danny Paisley recorded Don’t Throw Mama’s Flowers Away, on his The Room Over Mine album (The song is on the final ballot for IBMA Song of the Year); Michael Cleveland recorded Farewell for a Little While on his Leavin’ Town CD; Bobby Osborne recorded Stuart’s Civil War ballad Shenandoah Wind, and Doyle Lawson recorded a Chris Stuart gospel song, When the Last of Our Days Shall Come, which is on the final ballot for IBMA Gospel Recording of the Year.

In 1996 he moved to California, where, in 2002, with Janet Beazley, he started Backcountry, a band that they put together to promote their first album, Angels of Mineral Springs. Stuart says,

“I’m really lucky to have someone like Janet Beazley to work with. I’ve co-written a couple of songs with her, including “Jealous Crow”, but also she’s able to respond to my songs and suggest melodic and alternate ways of doing things, and also she’s a genius at arrangement and recording, so she’s not only an inspiration, she’s essential to my writing.” (more…)

This post is part of our occasional feature, Songwriter Profiles. If you have a suggestion for a bluegrass songwriter we might want to consider, please contact us.

Mark Brinkman has been around music all his life. He grew up in Wisconsin playing classical piano at the age of four. Like so many kids of the 1960s he was heavily influenced by the folk and rock groups of the era. He took up guitar and played everything from Kingston Trio stuff to Doobie Brothers to Jethro Tull. Brink could never have prepared for the change his life would take in 1974 when he attended Bill Monroe’s Bluegrass Festival at Bean Blossom Indiana. It was there he heard groups such at Bill Monroe & the Blue Grass Boys, Lester Flatt & the Nashville Grass, Jimmy Martin among others. It was a life changing experience that continues to influence him today as he continues to write bluegrass, Americana, country and Acoustic songs.

About the same time “Brink,” as all his friends call him, began writing songs, folks songs for acoustic guitar mainly. He performed these songs at many local clubs around Madison, Wisconsin, while attending college there. Over the following  25 and more years he has continued to write music and perform around the country.

He spent a few fruitless years in Nashville, going from publisher to publisher, trying to get his songs published. Discouraged, he gave up song writing for about 10 years.

Bluestone Mountain was the first Brinkman song to be recorded, cut by Don Rigsby and released on his acclaimed Empty Old Mailbox album, released in 2000. Rigsby’s version of this haunting song was awarded the West Virginia Governor’s Award.

Since then Brinkman has not looked back. Going from strength to strength, his songs have been widely recorded. A sample of those that he had had recorded includes She’s a Stranger In His Mind, a song about Alzheimer’s disease recorded by Carrie Hassler & Hard Rain;  I Can’t Bear the Thought of Losing You recorded by The Larry Stephenson Band; Prisoner of the Highway, by Don Rigsby & Midnight Call; The Legend of Jonas Willingham recorded by the Lonesome River Band; Alone In The Still Of The Night by Valerie Smith; The Ghost of Silas Jordan, Can’t Be Anything But Love and  Hobo’s Lament all by The Boohers; The Old Coal Mine recorded by Larry Sparks; Before Your First Tear Hits the Ground and Tennessee Backroads by Lou Reid & Carolina; When You’re Looking Up by Lorraine Jordan & Carolina Road; and Devil’s Road recorded by Grasstowne.

Brinkman has been a Merlefest Chris Austin Songwriting Contest finalist five times and his song Beyond the Rain was nominated and voted Best Bluegrass Gospel Song at the 2007 National Gospel Quartet Convention in Louisville, Kentucky.

He has his own publishing company, Brinksongs, online at www.brinksongs.com.

Brinkman says, “Writing music is like breathing, something I just have to do to live. I can’t see ever getting away from the process of creating music from a blank page.” (more…)

This post is part of our occasional feature, Songwriter Profiles. If you have a suggestion for a bluegrass songwriter we might want to consider, please contact us.

Jon Weisberger became serious about writing songs in 1998, having taken up the bass in his early teen-age years. Born in Yellow Springs, Ohio, and trained as a classical musician, the first songs that he wrote were recorded by Union Springs, a band that he helped to form in April 1992. A fellow member of the band at that time was Dwight McCall, who later recorded Weisberger’s song The Pathway Of My Savior (on Never Say Never Again, McCall’s 2007 album on the Rural Rhythm record label).

Subsequently, he has worked with the Comet All-Stars, Prospect Hill, Katie Laur Band and The La-Z Boys. More recently Weisberger has played bass in the Wildwood Valley Boys; Chris Jones and the Night Drivers; Larry Cordle and Lonesome Standard Time; The Lonesome Heirs; the Roland White Band; the Harley Allen Band; and Sally Jones & The Sidewinders.

Also he has done some touring with the Tony Trischka Double Banjo Bluegrass Spectacular and spent a couple of years touring with April Verch.

Weisberger has also worked on the air and behind the scenes in bluegrass radio, hosting shows in the Cincinnati area and producing several after his move to Nashville in 2002.

His songs have been recorded by a wide range of top bluegrass acts including The Chapmans (Losing Again), Jim Van Cleve (Grey Afternoon and Way It Always Seems to Go), the Infamous Stringdusters (Three Days In July), Doyle Lawson (Yesterday’s Songs) and Blue Highway (Blues on Blues).

Other cuts include My Heart’s Bouquet (The Chapmans, on the same album as Losing Again), Blown Away And Gone (Del McCoury Band on The Company We Keep), Help Me, Lord (Dwight McCall, Kentucky Peace Of Mind), Lonely Road Back Home (April Verch, Steal The Blue) and Every Shade Of Blue (Cages Bend, Now I’m Lonely).

Unreleased songs that Weisberger has written or co-written include one on the forthcoming album by The Dixie Bee-Liners, Susanville, due out in October, and one on an album by Cincinnati area artist Missy Werner, whose Dwight McCall-produced album will appear around the same time.

He occasionally writes for the Nashville Scene.

Did you grow up in a musical family?

Both my parents enjoyed listening to music – classical and folk, mostly – and my father got me started playing the recorder when I was just three or four years old.

At what age did music register with you and what were the circumstances?

I’ve been interested in music for literally longer than I can remember – I have a photo of myself holding a recorder taken when I was three. I was very absorbed in classical music as a child, taking up the oboe when I was in the 3rd grade and playing it until I graduated from high school. My father bought a guitar when I was 13 – he intended to learn to play, but lost interest in fairly short order and passed it along to me. I taught myself some chords out of a book, but took up the (electric) bass soon after, playing in local rock and blues bands through high school. After a year or so of “general purpose” collegiate studies, I transferred to the California Institute of the Arts as a music major, and graduated with a BFA degree in 1975. (more…)