Lucy Kaplansky

Track	Album
Ten Year Night	Ten Year Night
Song For Molly	Every Single Day
This Is Home	The Red Thread
Manhattan Moon	Over The Hills
Today’s The Day	Over The Hills
Someday Soon	Over The Hills
Reunion	Reunion
I’ll See You Again	Reunion
Sleep Well	Reunion
Last Days Of Summer	Last Days Of Summer
Bonus Track
Mary And The Soldier	Flesh And Bone

Lucy Kaplansky is one of a group of remarkably talented young – and relatively young – singer-songwriters who first made their mark in the music business through their association with the journal, Fast Folk. The songwriter Jack Hardy founded it in 1982, as an outlet for some of the young talents then emerging on the New York folk club scene. This group included artists of the calibre of Suzanne Vega, Shawn Colvin, Christine Lavin, John Gorka, Richard Shindell, Steve Forbert. A few the older generation of Greenwich Village ‘folk’ musicians loosely mentored the group. Dave Van Ronk was, perhaps, the most notable of these.

The ‘Fast Folk’ group shared a similar range of influences, which included folk, country, and ‘Americana’ in general. The 1970s school of singer-songwriters also influenced them.

In her early days on the scene, Kaplansky often sang as a duet act with Shawn Colvin (a superb version of her singing Colvin’s Diamond In The Rough – with Shawn on backing vocals and John Leventhal on guitar – can be heard here. It shows the unique way in which their voices blended and complemented each other. Like their peers, at this time they frequently performed in well-known Village venues such as Folk City, the SpeakEasy and the Fast Folk Café. Their gigging together drew the attention of a number of record companies, and they began to receive offers of recording contracts. However, at this point, Kaplansky – who was already studying for a PhD in clinical psychology at Yeshiva University – decided to turn them down in favour of pursuing a career as a psychotherapist. For a time, she juggled between both careers before taking a job as a therapist at a hospital in New York. She also set up her own private practice. Even while doing so, she continued to keep a link with the music business by appearing as a harmony singer on albums by other artists including Nanci Griffith, Shawn Colvin, John Gorka, Suzanne Vega.

Eventually, this dabbling in music led to Lucy Kaplansky recording her first solo album, The Tide (with Colvin as producer) in 1994. On The Tide, she showed her mastery as an interpreter of other people’s songs, particularly on her superb cover of Robin Batteau’s ballad, Guinevere.

But it wasn’t until her third solo album, Ten Year Night, that she signalled her emergence as a songwriter with an individual style and distinctive poetic sensibility. By the time it was released in 1999, she had given up her job as a psychologist and committed herself to music full time. What her time working in the field gave her, was an intense interest in what drove people’s behaviour towards one another. She was also keenly interested in family dynamics and this was to be a central theme in her work from that point on. Her academic and practical experience meant that her songwriting also had a level of detachment which prevented it from becoming either too sentimental or maudlin. A case in point is the title track to Ten Year Night – my first choice – which is one of the best songs about a long-term relationship and the realities of ‘mature’ love (as it were) that I have heard. The track also features some fine interplay between Larry Campbell on steel guitar and mandolin and Duke Levine on electric guitar.

Although she is not a ‘confessional’ songwriter in the contemporary sense, there is a strong autobiographical thread that runs through much of her work. Indeed, a passable biography of Kaplansky could be constructed through listening to her albums from Ten Year Night onwards. For example, my next choice, Song For Molly, is a classic folk-flavoured ballad which deals with her grandmother’s experience with Alzheimer’s. The song also stands out for her keen eye for telling details – the nurses “laughing down the hall” and the “wooden cane against the wall”. By contrast, This Is Home reflects on the decision by her husband and herself to adopt a child from China. It is another example of her capacity to write songs that are both beautifully melodic but also pack a powerful emotional punch.

After their daughter Molly’s adoption in 2003, she frequently became a key figure in Kaplansky’s songs. The next pick, Manhattan Moon, addresses some of the accommodations she had to make in raising a young child.

My second choice from the 2007 album Over The Hills is probably the best – and most emotionally affecting – of her autobiographical songs. Today’s The Day is a tribute to her father, Irving Kaplansky, who was a maths professor at the University of Chicago from 1945 to 1984. As well as being a distinguished mathematician, he was a keen amateur pianist with a particular enthusiasm for the songs of Gilbert and Sullivan and Noel Coward. He also wrote quirky jazz-flavoured songs about maths. Here’s his daughter singing one of them; she may owe some of her melodic sense to his influence.

Today’s The Day manages to combine a deft character sketch of her father (“the numbers filling” his yellow notebooks which he always kept “close to him”, the music “filling up” his hospital room) with a moving description of the close bond between them. It also points to some minor unresolved tensions between them (“I will let go of what you’ll never be”), while acknowledging the depth of his influence on her life. It also features one of her most beautiful melodies.

Lucy Kaplansky’s continuing skills as an interpreter of other people’s songs are well displayed in my next choice, Someday Soon. It is a cover of the classic Ian Tyson song which has been recorded by numerous artists since the original version by Ian and Sylvia in 1964 including Judy Collins, Glen Campbell, Crystal Gayle and Suzy Bogguss. While my favourite rendition remains the original one by Ian & Sylvia, Kaplansky’s comes very close to it. This may be due to the striking purity and clarity of her voice. The track also reflects the consistent excellence of her backing musicians including Larry Campell on dobro and Duke Levine on 12-string guitar.

Kaplansky’s 2012 album, Reunion, continued her exploration of her family’s history. The title track, which I have included, focuses in particular on her paternal grandmother, who came from a Polish Jewish emigrant family and ended up running a bakery in Toronto in Canada.  It also traces her father’s debt to his brothers who introduced him to “all the things he loved … mathematics and opera and Gilbert and Sullivan”.  The track also features some fine mandolin picking by Duke Levine and an excellent backing vocal from Richard Shindell.

By contrast, I’ll See You Again borrows a few lines from the Noel Coward song of the same name. As the song shows, this was the piece her father was playing when he first met her mother. The song also hints at her mother’s gradual decline with Alzheimer’s. She explores this topic further in the beautiful piano-driven ballad, Sleep Well. This is another of those Kaplansky songs which sneak up behind you gently and quietly break your heart.

My final selection, Last Days Of Summer, is a beautiful meditation on the passing of time, inspired by her daughter’s move away from home. Like the other tracks in this selection, it demonstrates that if you like to hear literate, intelligent, finely crafted and melodic folk/country/pop music performed by a songwriter of a very high calibre indeed then you should be exploring Lucy Kaplansky’s music.

Bonus Track

The rendition of Mary And The Gallant Soldier by Andy Irvine and Paul Brady on their renowned self-titled 1976 album is probably my favourite version of this classic folk song (for comparison’s sake you can hear it here). Nevertheless, Lucy’s fine version runs it pretty close and it is great to hear it sung from the female perspective for which it was written.

The Lucy Story – unreleased and rare tracks (1976-2023)
Only available on Lucy’s website and at her shows

Official Website

Press Coverage Highlights

Last Days Of Summer (Folk Alley review 2022)

UChicago Magazine article (2017)

Lucy reflects on her mathematician father, Irving

Lucy shares insights on her creative process

Andrew Shields is a freelance historian, who grew up in the West of Ireland and currently lives in Sydney, Australia. Along with an interest in history, politics and literature, his other principal occupations are listening to and reading about the music of Bob Dylan and, in more recent years, immersing himself in the often brilliant and unduly neglected music of Phil Ochs.

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