Christine Lavin

media release:  Witty, songwriter-storyteller with a flair for the creative, the dramatic, and the humorous.

“CHRISTINE LAVIN  is the Folk World’s long reigning Queen of the Intelligently Absurd. The title of one of her earlier albums, “I Don’t Make This Stuff Up, I just Make it Rhyme” says it all. She has an eye for the ironic and the absurd in the news and everyday life, and puts it into song. She dresses it all up in skillful guitar work, electronic loops and wonderful gimmicks like baton twirling. Ya gotta love her.”  -NJ Morristown Patch

Christine started her professional life as a waitress/bread baker at the Caffe Lena in SaratogaSprings, NY in 1975 where she met Dave Van Ronk who encouraged her to study guitar with him in NYC. She took his advice and is now a singer/songwriter/guitarist/recording artist/author/videographer based in New York City.

Her latest solo album, her 25th, ON MY WAY TO HOOTERVILLE, includes 10 new songs and one re-worked song, “Ramblin’ Waltz,” a re-telling of her time in 1975 when she was an entourage driver for the first week of Bob Dylan’s iconic “Rolling Thunder Revue” tour.

In 2023 Christine released “THE SEASONS PROJECT,” an 80-song seasonal compilation that features the work of 63 American, Canadian, British, and Irish singer/songwriters, along with 480 digital pages of information on all the artists. She hopes it will introduce folklorists and music historians of the future to true musical artists of the last part of the 20th century and first part of the 21st century, not just the ones who make the most money.

In 2024 she is completing her 26th solo album, DRUM SCHOOL DROPOUT, which she hopes to release in the fall.

In February 2024 nine of Christine’s songs appeared in the off-Broadway musical “InunDATED” sung by Broadway star Sierra Boggess. “inunDATED” is written by playwright Alice Scovell.

In September 2019 Christine spent a month at the artist retreat Yaddo in Saratoga Springs. Three of the songs she wrote there are included on her latest HOOTERVILLE album. In April 2019 she was inducted into the Rochester, NY Music Hall of Fame along with Al Jardine of The Beach Boys. She received a 2012 Nightlife Award given annually to the best concert and cabaret performers in New York City. In November 2011, her book COLD PIZZA FOR BREAKFAST: A MEM-WHA?? (Tell Me Press, New Haven) won the 43rd Annual ASCAP Deems Taylor Award for excellence in writing about music. Christine has also won five ASCAP Composer Awards, The Kate Wolf Memorial Award, and her album Good Thing He Can’t Read My Mind won Album of The Year from the National Association of Independent Record Distributors.

She has produced ten compilations, and so far, these compilations have showcased songs of 100 songwriters whose work she admires. The food-themed compilation, ONE MEAT BALL, includes a 96-page cook booklet that Christine edited — songs and recipes by Pete Seeger, Tom Paxton, Dave Van Ronk, and many more, including a surprise appearance by international — and now late — gigastar Dame Edna, Christine’s idol (sigh).

For four years she hosted “Slipped Disks” on XM satellite radio, playing CDs slipped to her backstage by compatriots, and was occasion guest host for City Folk Sunday Supper on WFUV-FM at Fordham University. She also writes freelance for various publications (The Washington Post, Huffington Post, St. Petersburg Times, Performing Songwriter, and Delta “Sky” Magazine). Her song AMOEBA HOP is a science/music book by illustrator Betsy Franco Feeney (Puddle Jump Press), receiving the stamp of approval from The International Society of Protistologists, and a “Best Book Award” from The American Association for The Advancement of Science.

THE PLUTO FILES: THE RISE AND FALL OF AMERICA’S FAVORITE PLANET (W.W. Norton) by Neil deGrasse Tyson, head of the Hayden Planetarium in NYC, includes the complete lyrics to Christine’s song “Planet X,” which details Pluto’s history and planetary status debate in rhyme. Neil included Christine in a live concert event at The Beacon Theater in NYC, “Comedians & Astronomers,” and his voice is on that recording, her 23rd album, SPAGHETTIFICATION.

Christine performs concerts all over the US, Canada, and points beyond (Australia, Germany, Israel), often hosting knitting circles and Downton Abbey-style napkin folding backstage at each show. Songs of hers have been performed by artists as diverse as Broadway stars Betty Buckley, Sutton Foster, Karen Ziemba, Klea Blackhurst, cabaret divas Andrea Marcovicci. Barbara Brussell, and Colleen McHugh, the a cappella Dartmouth Decibelles, and The Accidentals, winners of the National Harmony Sweepstakes Championship.

On A Winter’s Night, her first seasonal compilation project, (20 artists) became a four-artist national tour that first hit the road back in January 1991 and was a five-artist tour that hit the road November 2019, including Christine, Cliff Eberhardt, Patty Larkin, Cheryl Wheeler, and John Gorka — only to be abruptly sidelined by the pandemic on March 12, 2020.

LATEST PROJECTS: Christine started creating videos for her songs in 2011, and now creates them for other artists (including Michael Feinstein, Noel Paul Stookey, Janis Ian, Judy Collins, Craig Werth, Julie Gold, David Ippolito, and others).

Even more at www.christinelavin.com