Lafayette Mom Paints Life In Song

Folk music is not dead.  A petite Lafayette mom would rather call it modern acoustic eclectic… but it is decidedly folk music in the tradition of Lead Belly, Glen Yarborough and Bob Dylan (no Kumbayah here).

Laura Zucker's music is not about trains runnin' down the tracks.  She is not a restless wanderer or a prison inmate.  She is a mother, a lawyer, a teacher and now a singer/songwriter.  This Lafayette mom, in just five years of professional singing/songwriting, has released two CD's, won the attention of folk music critics across the country, received multiple awards and is now up for the West Coast Songwriters Association Song of the Year.

Zucker has been building up to a career in music all of her life.  She can remember singing loudly as a tiny child, playing guitar at YMCA summer camp in Pennsylvania as a tweener, writing songs in high school, and playing gigs during college… but, "the music thing was just kind of tolerated.  I grew up in a family of people who took education seriously."

 Just after finishing Rutgers Law School, she met her life partner and they eventually began a family.  When Laura had their second child, she quit her law practice and became a stay at home mom.  After 20 years, the partnership broke up. 

"Everything was so blown to bits, I thought, I might as well take a shot at this (music)," Laura says. "You know those traction cars kids have?" Laura revs up an imaginary friction car on her floor. "I was just revving up and getting ready to go."

Five years ago, she set the car down and let it race away. 

The resulting music is mostly about love, loss, heartbreak and in spite of it, hope.

"Love is undaunted," she sings, "love is sublime. Love doesn't come when you want it.  Love comes just in time." 

In between festivals, local gigs and house concerts, Laura writes.  Her third CD is coming out this fall. 

When asked what her three kids think of her new career, she speaks as a mother.  (She always speaks first as a mother.)

"Our work is pretty much irrelevant to them and I don't want to impose it on them," she says. "I write, sing and do gigs in my spare time." 

But at some point, the work that was pouring out of her was not irrelevant to Laura's middle child, Julia, who said: "Mom, I know how hard of a life this is and I don't want your heart to be broken." 

An astounding and poignant role reversal, Laura agrees.

"This seems to be so much about me that I feel a little indulgent.  And yet, I am calmer, I feel more authentic in my life than I ever have, and I realize that this could be the best gift I could ever give my children."

Patch Note: Singer/songwriter Laura Zucker sings in the finals round of the West Coast Folk Songwriters Song of the Year this Sunday, August 22, 8pm at Freight & Salvage, 2020 Addison Street, Berkeley.