Elizabeth Mitchell

Distinct from the television performer sharing her name who appeared in the series Lost, Elizabeth Mitchell performs as a folk-rock singer and guitarist whose work spans coffeehouse-style folksinging, moody and contemplative alt-country, and playful children's music. Her professional path opened during studies at Brown University in the late '80s, when she started a folk duo alongside roommate Lisa Loeb that played the Providence, Rhode Island singer/songwriter scene. After both women completed their degrees in 1990, Mitchell accepted a daytime post as a teaching assistant at a private kindergarten on Roosevelt Island, New York, where she encountered singer and guitarist Dan Littleton; together they launched the quiet, folky indie outfit Ida in 1991. Mitchell and Littleton also contributed backup vocals and guitar to Loeb's surprise 1993 hit single "Stay [I Missed You]."

Midway through Ida's third album, a recording hiatus forced by contractual disputes with Capitol prompted Mitchell and Littleton to cut a home-recorded set of children's songs in a single day during 1998. Conceived solely as a holiday present for their nieces and nephews, the project appeared in limited release in 1999 under the Ida name as You Are My Flower. Three years afterward the same recordings resurfaced under Mitchell's own name to prevent Ida listeners from expecting conventional folk and country material. Following the arrival of the couple's daughter Storey Littleton, Mitchell issued 2003's You Are My Sunshine, with partial production from His Name Is Alive's Warren Defever. Smithsonian Folkways released her 2006 album You Are My Little Bird, widely regarded as the first children's record to include a version of the Velvet Underground's "What Goes On." The same label issued the similarly themed Sunny Day in 2010. In 2012 Mitchell presented the idiosyncratic and poignant Blue Clouds alongside Little Seed: Songs for Children by Woody Guthrie, gathering her readings of Guthrie's spontaneous and associative pieces drawn from sessions spanning 1998 to 2012. The next year she joined fellow family-music artist Dan Zanes on Turn Turn Turn and delivered The Sounding Joy, an album of holiday material adapted from the Ruth Crawford Seeger songbook. Mitchell then partnered with Argentinian folk singer Suni Paz on a Spanish-language collection of children's songs. Issued in 2018, Tu Eres Mi Flor formed part of Smithsonian Folkways' 70th-anniversary observances.