Joyce Andersen Bio
Joyce Andersen is a veteran musician who has enjoyed a varied 25 year career as side-gal, session player, singer-songwriter, and band leader. Andersen's music has brought her from the coffeehouses and taverns of her native New England, national & international touring as a solo artist and with husband, Harvey Reid, Childsplay, Eric Andersen, Richard Thompson and a host of other artists in her side-gal days. She even made it to Carnegie Hall with a ultra high-energy celtic-bluegrass band and the Conan O'Brien show with Marshal Crenshaw.
Andersen has made 9 CDs: 5 solo and 4 with husband and folk virtuoso, Harvey Reid. She lived and toured out of Boston, Nashville, and NYC before returning to her native New England in 2000 where she lives now in York, ME with her husband and their two school-age boys.
Her live shows and recordings showcase her versatility as a vocalist and violinist and guitar player who thrives on writing and interpreting songs across many genres from old-time, rock & Americana, spirituals, folk, pop, & swing. She started getting critical acclaim and radio play in the folk world with her first full length CD "The Girl I Left Behind" (2000) for it's songwriting, breadth of styles and her unique ability to harmonize her vocals with her violin. In 2011, her fifth solo album ”SWERVE!" marked her innovative new "violin troubadour" sound which reflects her strengths as an improviser, and her new found interest in using technology (loops, effects etc.) to harness new sonic landscapes and launch into extended psychedelic jams even during solo shows. 2021 marks a decade since that recording and Andersen has been writing dozens of songs in those years that have not been released on any albums. Some can be found on her YouTube channel.
During the Covid crisis Andersen & Reid (with two fully remote school kids in the house) started live-streaming on a lark, and when they got good feedback and support from their fans they kept it up. Drawing on their vast catalog of original and public domain songs (archived on Joyce’s & The Puffin & Loon YouTube channels) they performed over 70 live-stream concerts playing over 500 songs in the years that followed. They still live stream occasionally.
Joyce is currently working on new recordings, leading resistance singing, and feeling the new reality of an"empty nest" on the horizon.
Reid & Andersen's 4 CD, 80 page hard back book "Song Train" was featured in "Acoustic Guitar Magazine" for its innovative and down home approach to helping beginning & intermediate guitar players make more music. Andersen's songs "Strange Elation" (from CD "Right Where I Should Be") and "Filled with Love" (from CD "Love & Thirst") were featured songs on Sing Out Magazine's CD compilations.
Sing Out! magazine says her CDs "...places her right up there with any of the songwriters out there performing their songs today."
The Boston Globe says "That neo-traditional current is felt among the ranks of New England songwriters...among the hottest...New Hampshire fiddler-singer Joyce Andersen."
And Minnesota Public Radio says "Strength flows through her voice. She's got power and conviction. . . She's writing new songs and retelling old stories, and there's" still something mysterious in her music that sounds like comes from an ancient and pure source."
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