Chris Pureka
Encyclopedia
Chris Pureka is an American acoustic singer-songwriter
from Northampton, Massachusetts
. Raised in Connecticut
, she began writing songs at the age of eight and began playing the guitar at 16. She soon became a frequent performer at local coffee houses and open mics. As a young performer, she opened shows for such artists as Erin McKeown
and Pamela Means while completing a degree in biology
at Wesleyan University
. After graduating, she worked in a microbiology research lab at Smith College
in Northampton, eventually leaving to focus on her music full-time. In June 2001, she recorded a self-titled seven-song EP in preparation for a three-month nationwide tour with lesbian folk poet Alix Olson
. The EP, which was home-recorded in two weeks and featured her playing back-up accompaniment on the mandolin
and bass
, was later mastered and reprinted for her 2005 summer tour.
In 2004, Pureka released Driving North, her first full-length album, earning rave reviews from fans and fellow artists alike. In 2006, she released Dryland, and toured the US a second time as a headlining act. The album received rave reviews and was featured on the Paste Magazine Sampler in February 2007.
In May 2007, Pureka was a member of the month-long New American Songwriter Tour in New York City, Philadelphia, and Massachusetts. The tour also featured Krystle Warren, Jesse Harris
and Ryan Scott. In August, Pureka played at the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival
.
In July 2007, Pureka's song, "Swann Song" won 1st Place in the Acoustic competition on the independent music site OurStage.com
. Because of her excellent performance there, she won a spot to perform at the Virgin Music Festival in Baltimore, Maryland, where she performed on August 5. Pureka had previously also won the Acoustic competition in April for her song "31 and Falling".
In October 2007, Pureka was nominated for 2007's Outstanding Folk Act by the Boston Music Awards. She was also awarded an ASCAPLUS award in the summer of 2007.
Pureka has sold over 7000 copies of her latest album, How I Learned to See in the Dark, independently, on her own label, Sad Rabbit Music. She has gained popularity by performing with artists such as Dar Williams, The Cowboy Junkies, Peter Mulvey
, Ani Difranco, Martin Sexton, Jeffrey Foucault
, Kris Delmhorst
, Melissa Ferrick
, Catie Curtis
, and Girlyman
.
Pureka is the founder of her label, Sad Rabbit Music. She has been compared to artists like early Bruce Springsteen
, Ryan Adams
, Patty Griffin
, Gillian Welch
and Mary Gauthier
. Pureka covered Welch's song "Everything Is Free" on Dryland and has expressed admiration for her music as well as that of Griffin. She cites influences from Peter Mulvey
and Pamela Means, as well as Ani DiFranco
, though she says that her music differs greatly from DiFranco's often-outspoken political messages. Pureka has lent her vocals and guitar playing to several tracks by artists like Olson and Arjuna Greist; a notable track is "Checking My Pulse" with Olson, which went on to become a relative hit for Olson.
Pureka identifies as genderqueer
and cultivates an androgynous appearance. She has received positive reviews in the long-running radical feminist publication off our backs
and other magazines. Pureka's music does not deal explicitly with LGBT
issues, focusing instead on emotional interactions between individuals.
On January 20, 2009, Pureka released a fourth album, an EP entitled Chimera. The EP has seven tracks; one new, original song (with a prelude as the first track), a reworked studio version of a song off of her 2001 EP, three live tracks, and a cover of Bob Dylan and Ketch Secor's Wagon Wheel
. The hard copy of Chimera is complete with written commentary from Pureka on each track.
In April 2010, Pureka released her fifth album, How I Learned To See In The Dark, which she co-produced with Merrill Garbus
.
Singer-songwriter
Singer-songwriters are musicians who write, compose and sing their own musical material including lyrics and melodies. As opposed to contemporary popular music singers who write their own songs, the term singer-songwriter describes a distinct form of artistry, closely associated with the...
from Northampton, Massachusetts
Northampton, Massachusetts
The city of Northampton is the county seat of Hampshire County, Massachusetts, United States. As of the 2010 census, the population of Northampton's central neighborhoods, was 28,549...
. Raised in Connecticut
Connecticut
Connecticut is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States. It is bordered by Rhode Island to the east, Massachusetts to the north, and the state of New York to the west and the south .Connecticut is named for the Connecticut River, the major U.S. river that approximately...
, she began writing songs at the age of eight and began playing the guitar at 16. She soon became a frequent performer at local coffee houses and open mics. As a young performer, she opened shows for such artists as Erin McKeown
Erin McKeown
Erin McKeown is an American multi-instrumentalist and folk-rock singer/songwriter.McKeown began her career in the folk scene. She released her first album, Monday Morning Cold, on her own label , travelling throughout New England while still a student at Brown University in order to promote the...
and Pamela Means while completing a degree in biology
Biology
Biology is a natural science concerned with the study of life and living organisms, including their structure, function, growth, origin, evolution, distribution, and taxonomy. Biology is a vast subject containing many subdivisions, topics, and disciplines...
at Wesleyan University
Wesleyan University
Wesleyan University is a private liberal arts college founded in 1831 and located in Middletown, Connecticut. According to the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, Wesleyan is the only Baccalaureate College in the nation that emphasizes undergraduate instruction in the arts and...
. After graduating, she worked in a microbiology research lab at Smith College
Smith College
Smith College is a private, independent women's liberal arts college located in Northampton, Massachusetts. It is the largest member of the Seven Sisters...
in Northampton, eventually leaving to focus on her music full-time. In June 2001, she recorded a self-titled seven-song EP in preparation for a three-month nationwide tour with lesbian folk poet Alix Olson
Alix Olson
Alix Olson is an American poet who works exclusively in spoken word. She graduated from Wesleyan University in 1997 and uses her work to address issues of capitalism, sexism, homophobia, heterosexism, transphobia, misogyny, and patriarchy...
. The EP, which was home-recorded in two weeks and featured her playing back-up accompaniment on the mandolin
Mandolin
A mandolin is a musical instrument in the lute family . It descends from the mandore, a soprano member of the lute family. The mandolin soundboard comes in many shapes—but generally round or teardrop-shaped, sometimes with scrolls or other projections. A mandolin may have f-holes, or a single...
and bass
Bass guitar
The bass guitar is a stringed instrument played primarily with the fingers or thumb , or by using a pick....
, was later mastered and reprinted for her 2005 summer tour.
In 2004, Pureka released Driving North, her first full-length album, earning rave reviews from fans and fellow artists alike. In 2006, she released Dryland, and toured the US a second time as a headlining act. The album received rave reviews and was featured on the Paste Magazine Sampler in February 2007.
In May 2007, Pureka was a member of the month-long New American Songwriter Tour in New York City, Philadelphia, and Massachusetts. The tour also featured Krystle Warren, Jesse Harris
Jesse Harris
Jesse Harris is a Grammy Award winning American singer-songwriter. He has collaborated with several musical artists including Norah Jones, Melody Gardot, Madeleine Peyroux, Nikki Yanofsky, and Lizz Wright.-Early life and education:...
and Ryan Scott. In August, Pureka played at the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival
Michigan Womyn's Music Festival
The Michigan Womyn's Music Festival, called "the Original Womyn's Woodstock" and often referred to as MWMF or Michfest, is an international feminist music festival occurring every August since 1976 near Hart, Michigan...
.
In July 2007, Pureka's song, "Swann Song" won 1st Place in the Acoustic competition on the independent music site OurStage.com
Ourstage
OurStage.com is a web and mobile-based music community offering free music streaming, discovery, and editorial content. It is owned and operated by OurStage Inc., headquartered in Chelmsford, Massachusetts...
. Because of her excellent performance there, she won a spot to perform at the Virgin Music Festival in Baltimore, Maryland, where she performed on August 5. Pureka had previously also won the Acoustic competition in April for her song "31 and Falling".
In October 2007, Pureka was nominated for 2007's Outstanding Folk Act by the Boston Music Awards. She was also awarded an ASCAPLUS award in the summer of 2007.
Pureka has sold over 7000 copies of her latest album, How I Learned to See in the Dark, independently, on her own label, Sad Rabbit Music. She has gained popularity by performing with artists such as Dar Williams, The Cowboy Junkies, Peter Mulvey
Peter Mulvey
Peter Mulvey is an American folk singer-songwriter based in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Since the early 1990s, he has developed a strong national following in the indie folk/rock scene through his relentless touring and critically acclaimed albums. Starting his musical career in Milwaukee while at...
, Ani Difranco, Martin Sexton, Jeffrey Foucault
Jeffrey Foucault
Jeffrey Foucault is a singer-songwriter from Whitewater, Wisconsin. His 2001 debut album, Miles from the Lightning, won much praise from critics and helped to kick-start a career of tours across the United States, Canada, and Europe. Along the way, he has played with such artists as Greg Brown,...
, Kris Delmhorst
Kris Delmhorst
Kris Delmhorst is an American singer-songwriter who is part of the Boston folk scene. She was involved in producing 1998's Respond compilation, a fundraiser for domestic violence groups, and it included her song Weatherman. In 1999, she released a live album with The Vinal Avenue String Band,...
, Melissa Ferrick
Melissa Ferrick
-Early life:Ferrick was raised in Ipswich, Massachusetts. Herfather John was a well-liked public school teacher who managed several free-jazz bands on the side. As a child, Ferrick would often accompany her father to clubs on Boston's North Shore to watch the bands play. She began taking...
, Catie Curtis
Catie Curtis
Catie Curtis is an American singer-songwriter. Her music has been categorized in several genres, including pop, rock, alternative country, indie and folk. She has recorded 11 CDs. The most recent, Stretch Limousine On Fire, will be released in August 2011 on Compass Records.-Early life:Catie...
, and Girlyman
Girlyman
Girlyman is an American folk-rock band formerly based in Brooklyn, New York City, New York, now based in Atlanta, Georgia.Their self-released debut album, Remember Who I Am, sold 5,000 copies before it was re-released by Daemon Records, the independent record label run by Amy Ray of the Indigo...
.
Pureka is the founder of her label, Sad Rabbit Music. She has been compared to artists like early Bruce Springsteen
Bruce Springsteen
Bruce Frederick Joseph Springsteen , nicknamed "The Boss," is an American singer-songwriter who records and tours with the E Street Band...
, Ryan Adams
Ryan Adams
David Ryan Adams is an American alt-country/rock singer-songwriter, from Jacksonville, North Carolina. Initially part of the group Whiskeytown, Adams left the band and released his first solo album Heartbreaker in 2000...
, Patty Griffin
Patty Griffin
Patty Griffin, born Patricia Jean Griffin, March 16, 1964, is an American Grammy award-winning singer-songwriter and musician. She is especially known for her down-home crafting of songs and her connection to musicians including Emmylou Harris, Ellis Paul, and the Dixie Chicks, who have played with...
, Gillian Welch
Gillian Welch
Gillian Welch is an American singer-songwriter. She performs with her musical partner, guitarist David Rawlings. Their sparse and dark musical style, which combines elements of Appalachian music, Bluegrass, and Americana, is described by The New Yorker as "at once innovative and obliquely...
and Mary Gauthier
Mary Gauthier
Mary Gauthier is an American folk singer-songwriter.-Life and career:Gauthier was born in New Orleans, Louisiana. Given up at birth by a mother she never knew, Gauthier was adopted by an Italian Catholic couple in Thibodaux, Louisiana...
. Pureka covered Welch's song "Everything Is Free" on Dryland and has expressed admiration for her music as well as that of Griffin. She cites influences from Peter Mulvey
Peter Mulvey
Peter Mulvey is an American folk singer-songwriter based in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Since the early 1990s, he has developed a strong national following in the indie folk/rock scene through his relentless touring and critically acclaimed albums. Starting his musical career in Milwaukee while at...
and Pamela Means, as well as Ani DiFranco
Ani DiFranco
Ani DiFranco is an American Grammy Award-winning singer, guitarist, poet, and songwriter. She has released more than 20 albums, and is widely considered a feminist icon.-Biography:...
, though she says that her music differs greatly from DiFranco's often-outspoken political messages. Pureka has lent her vocals and guitar playing to several tracks by artists like Olson and Arjuna Greist; a notable track is "Checking My Pulse" with Olson, which went on to become a relative hit for Olson.
Pureka identifies as genderqueer
Genderqueer
Genderqueer is a catch-all term for gender identities other than man and woman, thus outside of the gender binary and heteronormativity...
and cultivates an androgynous appearance. She has received positive reviews in the long-running radical feminist publication off our backs
Off our backs
For the MEN song, go to Off Our Backs .off our backs is a radical feminist periodical published in Washington, D.C....
and other magazines. Pureka's music does not deal explicitly with LGBT
LGBT
LGBT is an initialism that collectively refers to "lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender" people. In use since the 1990s, the term "LGBT" is an adaptation of the initialism "LGB", which itself started replacing the phrase "gay community" beginning in the mid-to-late 1980s, which many within the...
issues, focusing instead on emotional interactions between individuals.
On January 20, 2009, Pureka released a fourth album, an EP entitled Chimera. The EP has seven tracks; one new, original song (with a prelude as the first track), a reworked studio version of a song off of her 2001 EP, three live tracks, and a cover of Bob Dylan and Ketch Secor's Wagon Wheel
Wagon Wheel (song)
"Wagon Wheel" is the title of a song originally sketched by Bob Dylan and later completed by Old Crow Medicine Show. Old Crow Medicine Show's version was certified gold by the Recording Industry Association of America in November 2011.-Content:...
. The hard copy of Chimera is complete with written commentary from Pureka on each track.
In April 2010, Pureka released her fifth album, How I Learned To See In The Dark, which she co-produced with Merrill Garbus
Tune-Yards
tUnE-yArDs is the music project of New England native Merrill Garbus. When performing live, Garbus creates drum loops on the spot, and layers these with ukulele, voice, and electric bass...
.
Discography
- 2001 - Chris Pureka EP
- 2004 - Driving North
- 2006 - Dryland
- 2009 - Chimera (EP)
- 2010 - How I Learned To See In The Dark