Lucy Kaplansky

Singer-songwriter, contemporary folk

Lucy Kaplansky was part of the Fast Folk scene in the 1980s and, as such, could easily be compared to many of her compatriots from that era of the Greenwich Village folk world. Fans of Shawn Colvin, John Gorka, Suzanne Vega, Tracy Chapman, Jack Hardy, Christine Lavin, Michelle Shocked, and other of the Fast Folk crowd would certainly enjoy Lucy Kaplansky's music, as would fans of Ani DiFranco, Dar Williams, Eliza Gilkyson, and Greg Brown. Indeed, Kaplansky's records have been released on Red House Records, where folks can find remarkable work by Meg Hutchinson, Cliff Eberhardt, and other great artists who, like Kaplansky, could be considered "songwriter's songwriters."

Ten Year Night (Red House Records, 1999) compare prices

Over the Hills (Red House Records, 2006) compare prices

Reunion (Red House Records, 2012) compare prices

"I Am a Child" (with Eliza Gilkyson and John Gorka, from Red Horse)
"This Morning I Am Born Again" (from Reunion)
"The Ballad of Mary Magdalene" (from Fast Folk Musical Magazine Vol. 8, No. 6 - 1995 Fast Folk Revue, Live at the Bottom Line)

Lucy Kaplansky grew up in Chicago, Illinois, the daughter of a mathematician (who also played piano) and a homemaker. She grew accustomed to music early on and started playing in bars and clubs when she was just a teenager. After graduating high school, Kaplansky followed in the footsteps of what so many other great singer-songwriters have always done, and headed for New York City, setting up shop in Greenwich Village and joining the decades-long march through the Manhattan folksinger world.

There, she found herself among a vibrant collection of budding folksingers, and began frequenting a songwriter's night headed by Jack Hardy and others, known as Fast Folk. Through the Fast Folk scene, Kaplansky developed friendships and collaborative relationships with folks like John Gorka, Shawn Colvin, Richard Shindell, Eliza Gilkyson, and countless others. She and Colvin even frequently performed together as a duo, earning major label attention in which Kaplansky ultimately decided she wasn't interested. Rather than continue to pursue a career in music at that point, she left the songwriting world and went to college.

Kaplansky earned a phD in psychology and opened a practice in Manhattan for a few years. She also began raising a child and, ultimately, decided she was more passionate about the music than she was about her psychology practice. So, returning to the fold of Greenwich Village songstress, Kaplansky inked a deal with Red House Records (the label home of fellow Fast Folkers like John Gorka and Eliza Gilkyson - with whom she recorded a collaborative album titled Red Horse in 2010), Kaplansky started making her way as an independent singer-songwriter.

Since then, she has released eight studio albums and toured extensively throughout the US and across the world. In addition to her collaborative album with Gorka and Gilkyson, she joined forces with Dar Williams and Richard Shindell in 1998 for a collaborative disc under the moniker of Cry Cry Cry.

In 2012, Kaplansky released another disc teeming with collaborations, but this time it was more focused on her friends backing her up on her own songs. The disc is titled Reunion and includes appearances by Gorka, Gilkyson, Eberhardt, and a number of others. It also places a number of remarkably stirring, personal original tunes next to cover songs by Woody Guthrie, Eliza Gilkyson and more. Kaplansky is an avid road warrior, and you can find her on tour via the tour dates listed on her website.