Biography
Although primarily recognized by the wider public for her bestselling 1970 volume Living on the Earth together with assorted writing and illustration work, Alicia Bay Laurel had already assembled an intriguing musical background well before entering a recording studio. As a youngster she took lessons on piano and clarinet, favoring pop and boogie-woogie selections, yet a 1961 Bob Dylan concert ignited her lasting passion for music and live performance. Shortly afterward a brother introduced her to fundamental folk guitar, and by 1964 she was absorbing open-tuned techniques from John Fahey, then wed to her cousin Jan Lebow. She immersed herself in Fahey’s own discs along with folk, world, ethnic, and jazz releases, paying special attention to Mose Allison, the Swingle Singers, Barney Kessel, Kimio Eto, early Dylan, Donovan, and Judy Collins, while also absorbing abundant West Coast jazz through radio broadcasts. Arriving in San Francisco in 1966 at age seventeen, she circulated through coffeehouses and modest clubs, performing wherever listeners would gather—whether in parks or private homes—while steadily composing original material. In the late 1960s she entered the Wheeler Ranch commune and performed with a collective that evolved into the Star Mountain Band, which later established its own neighboring community.
Her book Living on the Earth appeared in 1970 to broad praise and commercial success, yet it formed only one element of a larger vision that encompassed her original songs as an accompanying soundtrack. While making television and radio appearances to promote the volume, she often played several of those pieces, one of which featured in a KQED-TV special devoted to the publication. After departing Wheeler Ranch, Laurel spent two years traveling with avant-garde composer Ramon Sender, a co-founder of the San Francisco Tape Music Center established in the early 1960s alongside Mort Subotnick, Pauline Oliveros, and Terry Riley. From Sender she acquired extensive knowledge of scales, modes, and tunings; together they produced the 1973 Harper & Row title Being of the Sun, which incorporated much of this musical material. Sender had also helped invent, with Subotnick and audio engineer Don Buchla, the Buchla Box, the first synthesizer built on the West Coast.
Laurel relocated to Hawaii in 1974, where open-tuned guitar already formed part of the island’s traditional musical fabric. She studied performance and vocal styles with numerous instructors, among them Auntie Clara Tolentino, slack-key guitarist Uncle Sol Kawaihoa, twelve-string player Wesley Furumoto (with whom she performed as a duo for two years), and jazz guitarist Sam Ahia, while learning nearly as much from live appearances by Auntie Alice Namakelua, who had served as court musician to Queen Liliukalani in her youth, and from early recordings by Keola and Kapono Beamer. During the 1980s she devoted three years in California to jazz guitar and, alongside Pamela Polland, vocal technique, simultaneously teaching at the Los Angeles alternative school Hearlight. There she developed an affinity for Michael Franks’s early work and Brazilian pop, assembling a repertoire of jazz standards and Brazilian pieces alongside her Hawaiian songs. Returning to Maui, she continued vocal studies and taught at Haleakala School. A 1984 return to California brought a year of restaurant gigs throughout Sonoma County before she moved back to Hawaii, where she maintained an active performance schedule while founding and operating a full-service wedding business for eleven years.
In 1996 she began a sustained collaboration with avant-garde drummer, composer, and synthesizer player Joe Gallivan, who had served as test driver for the first Moog drum. Laurel assisted with his company and label, newjazz.com, thereby acquiring the skills to assemble and release her own CD. In 2000 she recorded several of the original folk songs written during her late-1960s and early-1970s commune period and issued them independently as Music From Living on the Earth, promoting the album through more than seventy concerts across twenty-five states that year. She also created the one-woman, one-act play Living on the Earth-The Musical, drawn from stories in her bestselling book and those songs, and entered discussions about adapting it for the screen. The following year she began recording Living in Hawaii Style, devoted chiefly to her original Hawaiian slack-key compositions, while planning a jazz and blues album, What Living’s All About, to be produced by Gallivan.
Her book Living on the Earth appeared in 1970 to broad praise and commercial success, yet it formed only one element of a larger vision that encompassed her original songs as an accompanying soundtrack. While making television and radio appearances to promote the volume, she often played several of those pieces, one of which featured in a KQED-TV special devoted to the publication. After departing Wheeler Ranch, Laurel spent two years traveling with avant-garde composer Ramon Sender, a co-founder of the San Francisco Tape Music Center established in the early 1960s alongside Mort Subotnick, Pauline Oliveros, and Terry Riley. From Sender she acquired extensive knowledge of scales, modes, and tunings; together they produced the 1973 Harper & Row title Being of the Sun, which incorporated much of this musical material. Sender had also helped invent, with Subotnick and audio engineer Don Buchla, the Buchla Box, the first synthesizer built on the West Coast.
Laurel relocated to Hawaii in 1974, where open-tuned guitar already formed part of the island’s traditional musical fabric. She studied performance and vocal styles with numerous instructors, among them Auntie Clara Tolentino, slack-key guitarist Uncle Sol Kawaihoa, twelve-string player Wesley Furumoto (with whom she performed as a duo for two years), and jazz guitarist Sam Ahia, while learning nearly as much from live appearances by Auntie Alice Namakelua, who had served as court musician to Queen Liliukalani in her youth, and from early recordings by Keola and Kapono Beamer. During the 1980s she devoted three years in California to jazz guitar and, alongside Pamela Polland, vocal technique, simultaneously teaching at the Los Angeles alternative school Hearlight. There she developed an affinity for Michael Franks’s early work and Brazilian pop, assembling a repertoire of jazz standards and Brazilian pieces alongside her Hawaiian songs. Returning to Maui, she continued vocal studies and taught at Haleakala School. A 1984 return to California brought a year of restaurant gigs throughout Sonoma County before she moved back to Hawaii, where she maintained an active performance schedule while founding and operating a full-service wedding business for eleven years.
In 1996 she began a sustained collaboration with avant-garde drummer, composer, and synthesizer player Joe Gallivan, who had served as test driver for the first Moog drum. Laurel assisted with his company and label, newjazz.com, thereby acquiring the skills to assemble and release her own CD. In 2000 she recorded several of the original folk songs written during her late-1960s and early-1970s commune period and issued them independently as Music From Living on the Earth, promoting the album through more than seventy concerts across twenty-five states that year. She also created the one-woman, one-act play Living on the Earth-The Musical, drawn from stories in her bestselling book and those songs, and entered discussions about adapting it for the screen. The following year she began recording Living in Hawaii Style, devoted chiefly to her original Hawaiian slack-key compositions, while planning a jazz and blues album, What Living’s All About, to be produced by Gallivan.
Albums