Laura Cortese

Dirty Linen

This is an excerpt from the print edition of Dirty Linen #131 (August/September 2007).
The full article is in the magazine, available on newsstands, by subscription, and at the Dirty Linen webstore.

Laura Cortese

Lost Creek

by Kerry Dexter

Laura Cortese grew up immersed in Scottish-style fiddle playing and listening to pop music. Her latest album, Even the Lost Creek, is part of her exploration of "finding the intersection of my background in playing traditional music and my listening tastes, which are from the Beatles and Otis Redding to U2 and the Cure, finding in that, what is my music? What are the influences I've had, and what do they create?' "

Cortese grew up in the San Francisco area. Her grandmother played the fiddle. "In California schools, in the fourth grade you get to pick an instrument to learn. Grandma was pretty cool," Cortese said, laughing, "so I picked the fiddle. Then about two summers later, I was camping with my family, and I met this little girl who said, 'Next week I get to go to fiddle camp!' and I thought, 'I want to got to fiddle camp!' " By the following summer Cortese's mother had it organized. The camp was Alasdair Fraser's Valley of the Moon Scottish Fiddle Camp. "Alasdair likes to really inspire people to play music. He's not that particular about what kind of music that it is, just that you do play, and he passes that on," Cortese said. "Going to fiddle camp is what got me to express myself that way." As it did other fiddle campers: Cortese recalls Scottish fiddle camp nights where the jams in the evening were Dixieland jazz or Southern gospel.

[cover #131]