Laura Veirs: Portland singer, songwriter, children’s author, Midnight Lightning podcaster, visual artist , songwriting workshop leader, teacher and mother
LAURA Veirs’ diary for 2025 is filling up. Not only is the Portland, Oregon singer-songwriter working on an instrumental guitar album, new paintings and a book on creativity, but she is tying the knot and doing up her house too.
All that on top of playing her latest British tour, heading to The Crescent in York on Thursday in her 22nd year of visiting these shores. She last released an album, Found Light, her first without long-time producer and ex-husband Tucker Martine, in July 2022, so what brings her here this time?
“I just need the money,” she says frankly, on her morning phonecall from the USA. “That’s how a lot of musicians make their living these days. This year I’m getting married in the summer, going on honeymoon, and we’re remodelling the house.
“I’ll be trying out new material in the shows, going on this trip with my fiancé (Morgan Luker], my first with just the two of us. He’ll be selling the ‘merch’, as he likes talking to the locals! He’s a music professor, an ethnomusicologist, at Reed College, who I met when I taught a songwriting workshop in his class.
“Back home, we’ll be adding two bedrooms and a bathroom to the house as we’re blending two families. There’ll be four teenagers and two adults: we’re very outnumbered!”
By way of contrast, 51-year-old Laura will be playing solo on tour, performing songs drawn from 14 albums spanning 25 years on her trusty nylon string guitar. “I like to keep my materials limited, my paints, my palettes, the tools at my disposal, so I have only three guitars,” she says.
“One is the nylon string guitar that used to lie around in the house, which my dad had bought from a thrift shop in Chicago. It dates from the Fifties or Sixties; it’s my family guitar, my favourite guitar, that’s been on all my records, except for the first one.
“I also have a Martin steel string guitar and an electric Les Paul, and they’re kind of equal on the albums. I just don’t have the urge to get more instruments as I feel I haven’t explored these ones deeply enough – and I do have a piano too.”
She is not drawn to the infinite possibilities of multiple tracks on recording studio equipment. “I’m getting a four-track,” she says. “I did an album of demos recorded on my phone [November 2023’s Phone Orphans], so they were one-track recordings! You can become overwhelmed by all the tracking, when it should be,’what is the song?’. ‘Can you write the lyrics?’. That’s why I like to keep my tools minimal.
“I just feel like it’s so easy to get lost in overdubs, when you can lose the core of what matters, which is to write a compelling song, and that’s the hardest part. Then you can add other stuff. It requires focus, discipline.”
Constructing a set list from 25 years of songwriting, “at this point it’s a combination of my choices and giving people what they want. I always take requests as that adds an element of surprise for me and it makes them happy too,” says Laura.
“It means I stay engaged with my material, bringing in songs I haven’t played for years, modifying them, harmonising with them, improvising new guitar stuff and vocal stuff while playing, improvising my set list and my banter, all of this to keep me from feeling that I am ‘puppeting’.”
Artist Laura will be selling new paintings on her tour. “I can bring paintings on the road as I make works on paper, so they’re easy to transport. I’ve been doing that for the last couple of years, and I bring prints too, and I can personalise them by signing them,” she says.
“I want to keep exploring myself as a multi-faceted artist. I’m not sure where that’s taking me next, but I’m remodelling the house, I’m painting, I’m working on the instrumental album, I’m being the mother to four teenagers in the house now.
“I’m not an artist whoever sees myself retiring, and I feel grateful for that, though I do sometimes feel confused about my direction but that’s all part of being an artist, Like, what is my next big project with all these irons in the fire?”
Laura continues: “I’ve been in this business long enough to know that sometimes I’ll be in a dabbling phase, and I’m more than comfortable now to allow projects to percolate. I realise that sometimes you need to pause and collect thoughts and move on to do the next thing.”
She is collating such thoughts for her book on creativity, now 18,000 words into its own creation. “It’s both about learning about myself and helping others: how I’ve done things and how I would recommend people to do things; how I write songs; how I schedule what I do,” says Laura, who is also a children’s author and host of the Midnight Lightning podcast. “It’s a book about how to do it, how I’ve done it, and how you feel less dead, more alive, more fulfilled, by doing it.
“I like to see how other people do things, learning better methods, reading about how to write – Stephen King has written a cool book on writing – and I think it’s always interesting to read about creative processes.
“I don’t know when the book will come out. It’s still a pretty young project, but I’m a persistent person, so it will happen.”
Over the years, Laura has collaborated with such musicians as kd lang, Neko Case, Sufjan Stevens, Bill Frisell, Jim James, Colin Meloy, This Is The Kit’s Kate Stables, Sam Amidon, Karl Blau and Shahzad Ismaily: experiences she can bring to providing her Stanford University songwriting workshops and teaching her weekly lessons too.
“They can sign up on Zoom. I’m teaching a woman in her 70s how to make her first album, a guy in Boston, who’s doing his first record, and a woman in Australia, who’s writing a book,” says Laura, who also has an ongoing workshop residency at Rancho Loa Puerta in Tecate, Mexico.
Inducted into the Oregon Music Hall of Fame in October 2024, in her songs Laura draws on her childhood in Colorado Springs, Colorado, spending summers camping with her family, as much as her fascination with the intersection of art and science from days of studying geology (and Mandarin Chinese) at Carleton College in rural Minnesota.
“Nature is a huge part of my work, from my background in science and going to perfect places in Oregon. Whether you want it or not, nature is everywhere, and I’ve found it a fruitful place lyrically, so it’s a full-on regular inspiration.”
In turn, her songs have been an inspiration for a French children’s choir, run by an old friend of hers, Patrice, in Angeloume, where she will travel to perform with the choir on May 25. “They’re a choir of around 30 children, almost all of them girls. Patrice has chosen 18 songs and arranged them for the choir, I’ll be on guitar, Patrice on keyboards,” says Laura.
“He’s sent me a video of them singing one of the songs, Black Butterfly, and it’s beautiful. We first did a concert of my songs with the choir 17 years ago, before I had kids, which we put out on CD – it’s sold out now – and we’re going to record this one too. If it sounds good, I’ll release it.”
Laura is in good company. Patrice has presented choral concerts of grunge iconoclasts Nirvana and Modesto, California indie rock band Grandaddy songs too.
Please Please You & Brudenell Presents present Laura Veirs at The Crescent, York, supported by London soul/rock’n’roll singer Lucca Mae, on March 27, 7.30pm. Box office thecrescentyork.com/events/laura-veirs-2/. Also playing Upper Chapel, Sheffield, March 26, 8pm; doors 7.30pm; wegottickets.com/event/638480.