The 26-year-old vocalist – a full-time teacher of high school English before making a professional leap into music with a move to Nashville in 2008 – has formulated a unique fusion of traditional styles.
“It’s not really bluegrass, it’s not really old time, it’s not folk – it’s all of these things,” Struthers says. “In my last year of teaching, we were reading Jane Austen, Shakespeare, classic English literature. The themes in those works and in the music I was listening to – Doc Watson, the Louvin Brothers, Tim O’Brien – came together for me. The universal themes that have been pervasive in storytelling started to develop in my writing. I turned to story-songs.”
She comes by her affinity for traditional American styles naturally. Born in Virginia and raised in New Jersey, Struthers grew up singing with her father Alan, a veteran of a Minneapolis bluegrass band who wrote a novel about country-rock titan Gram Parsons as his doctoral thesis in American studies. “That’s how folk music and traditional music have been passed down forever – playing and singing with family members,” Struthers notes.
Trained classically as a teenager, she started writing her own songs in high school, and began her performing career while she was a student at New York University, playing in a folk-rock style at such venues as CBGBs and the Cutting Room.
Graduating from NYU’s Steinhart School of Education, she taught at a charter school in Williamsburg, in New York’s Brooklyn borough, but the musical itch still wanted scratching.
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Artist info obtained from public profile, artist website or social media
The 26-year-old vocalist – a full-time teacher of high school English before making a professional leap into music with a move to Nashville in 2008 – has formulated a unique fusion of traditional styles.
“It’s not really bluegrass, it’s not really old time, it’s not folk – it’s all of these things,” Struthers says. “In my last year of teaching, we were reading Jane Austen, Shakespeare, classic English literature. The themes in those works and in the music I was listening to – Doc Watson, the Louvin Brothers, Tim O’Brien – came together for me. The universal themes that have been pervasive in storytelling started to develop in my writing. I turned to story-songs.”
She comes by her affinity for traditional American styles naturally. Born in Virginia and raised in New Jersey, Struthers grew up singing with her father Alan, a veteran of a Minneapolis bluegrass band who wrote a novel about country-rock titan Gram Parsons as his doctoral thesis in American studies. “That’s how folk music and traditional music have been passed down forever – playing and singing with family members,” Struthers notes.
Trained classically as a teenager, she started writing her own songs in high school, and began her performing career while she was a student at New York University, playing in a folk-rock style at such venues as CBGBs and the Cutting Room.
Graduating from NYU’s Steinhart School of Education, she taught at a charter school in Williamsburg, in New York’s Brooklyn borough, but the musical itch still wanted scratching.
[Show Less]
Artist info obtained from public profile, artist website or social media
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