Emily Lacy

Emily Lacy is a folksinger and experimental filmmaker based in New York and Los Angeles. She collects songs from the banks of folk music history while also creating her own works for banjo, guitar, or acapella performances. She has also sung about specific women who have died under varying political circumstances including Marla Ruzicka, Rachel Corrie, and Leslie Ironroad.

Her influences include Pete Seeger, Jeffrey Lewis, Bob Dylan, Elizabeth Cotten, Woody Guthrie, Barbara Dane, and Peter La Farge.

She was asked to open for the Philadelphia band Dr. Dog throughout the Eastern United States in the Winter of 2007.

She has created the following 5 homemade albums:

Sing with an open Heart and your heart will shine, 2005
Youngster Balladeer, 2006
Makeshift Medallions, 2007
Newsworthy New York Tapes, 2007
Emily Lacy Sings Leonard Cohen Songs, 2007 (created for a multimedia performance Lacy did based on Cohen at the Manual Archives, a small puppet theater in Los Angeles)

Emily Lacy primarily played in art galleries and experimental spaces within the Los Angeles area from 2006-2007. Below she is pictured playing upon a spinning bicycle platform at Park Projects in Los Angeles. Before playing by herself for audiences, she first began to play music in a punk/folk/rock band called Daphne the Painted Lady. This band was formed between Laura Steenberge, Joe Napolitano, and Emily Lacy, in the Fall of 2002, a few months after Lacy decided to learn guitar. The band played for 4 years or so in LA, becoming increasingly more hard edged and punk, from it's more strictly based rock and roll roots,- With faster and faster beats and screamier and screamier vocals entering into the equation. At the same time the folk element was also growing in devotion within other parts of the set. The band played for fans and friends alike all around Echo Park, Silverlake, and Los Feliz, as well as several performances at CalArts. Eventually the band began to dissolve and play less and less shows as all members pursued multiple other projects by Winter of 2006. Before dissipating the band added Bassist, Keyboardist and general music wonderboy Duncan, who added a layer of genre-specific detail to each song played. He made the punk songs more punk and the western songs more country.

Emily began to play solo on banjo near to once a week in the LA underground Artscene beginning in the Fall of 2006, and rapidly found herself devoting herself to that practice full-time.

She has decided to take a home in the Catskill Mountains where she can focus on playing and recording music from sun-up to sundown, while still taking trips to either New York City or Los Angeles for whatever creative project may take her there.

She is currently working on a novel of observations entitled "Hunger Passes".

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