Abigail Washburn

If American old-time music is about taking earlier, simpler ways of life and music-making as one’s model, Abigail Washburn has proven herself to be a bracing revelation to that tradition. She—a singing, songwriting, Illinois-born, Nashville-based clawhammer banjo player—is every bit as interested in the present and the future as she is in the past, and every bit as attuned to the global as she is to the local. Abigail pairs venerable folk elements with far-flung sounds, and the results feel both strangely familiar and unlike anything anybody’s ever heard before. To put it another way, she changes what seems possible. Abigail has circled the globe performing at festivals, clubs, theaters and universities around the world including 10 tours of China in the past 8 years. She led the first and only official musical tour of Americans to Tibet in 2006, performed at the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing and the World Expo in Shanghai 2010, produced & released a record of healing from Sichuan's earthquake disaster zone in 2009 as well as leading a month-long State Dept and Chinese government sponsored tour of the Silk Road in winter 2011. She is a 2012 TED Fellow and will likely be performing somewhere near you soon with 2 tours of Europe, festivals in Canada and the US as well as tours of Indonesia and China in the near future. Her discography includes: 2011 City of Refuge (Rounder Records) 2009 w/ Shanghai Restoration Project - Afterquake (self-release charity CD) 2008 Abigail Washburn & The Sparrow Quartet (Nettwerk Records) 2007 w/ all-g'earl stringband 'Uncle Earl' - Waterloo, Tennessee (Rounder Records) 2006 The Sparrow Quartet EP (Nettwerk Records) 2005 Song of the Traveling Daughter (Nettwerk records) 2005 w/ all-g'earl stringband 'Uncle Earl' - She Waits for Night (Rounder Records)