50 Questions w/ Lis...

Lis answers 50 questions in 60 seconds. CLICK HERE TO READ IT.
-- Arizona State Press Magazine; interview taken during Lis's 50 State Tour, when she played all 50 US states in just 60 days, setting the Guinness World Record.

BRIEFLY... (July 04)

At age 25, Lis Harvey waged a solo concert tour on the United States, and came away victorious, with a Guinness World Record in tow. She played all 50 US states in just 60 days, completely solo, clocking over 25,000 miles without so much as a tour manager. With her thirst for extreme touring and a deadlock on storytelling as art, Lis Harvey has been featured in one capacity or another on CNN, NPR, Acoustic Cafe, and even in Ripley's Believe It Or Not. "She's a butterfly right out of the cocoon," writes the Cleveland Free Times. Catch her next show before she flies away.

BIO (June 04)

"Think Victoria Williams meets Ani Difranco... [LIS HARVEY] is a romantic, all right,
but not the empty-headed sort."
- The Washington Post, August 2002

Lis Harvey loves a challenge. Oregon Trail, Scrabble, and Julia Childs have provided the template for her renegade career: an independent success story steeped in adventure, experimentation, and the careful crafting of everyday material into art. As a teenager, she left the theater for a life of songwriting and travel, and hasn't had time to look back.

In the fall of 2002, Lis Harvey set a Guinness World Record (TM) with her gravity-defying "Fifty State Tour" - a completely solo effort, during which she played 52 shows in all 50 states in just 60 days. But a penchant for "extreme touring" is just the butter in the pan for this tiny redhead. Aptly branded one of the youngest and fastest-moving independents on the American folk scene, Lis remains devastatingly optimistic, infectiously upbeat, and truly devoted to her fans - clocking over 300 performances in the past couple years. At times delivering shades of Erika Badu, Suzanne Vega and a young Shawn Colvin, Lis blends her jazzy, fingerstyle guitar-playing with sweet, spring-stream vocals. Lyrically, she models herself after her favorite poets and non-fiction writers, then carves each song as though it were part of the collective unconscious. The result, quoth Dirty Linen, is "worth a bit of effort. Harvey's little-girl voice, edgy, start-and-stop vocal delivery, and crisp acoustic-guitar puncuation are well-suited to her oblique, stream-of-consciousness lyrics."

Championed as quirky and memorable (The Washington Post), "one to watch" (mainstream radio's Acoustic Cafe) and "kick ass" (pop icon Jill Sobule), LIS HARVEY is a three-time Jam Music Magazine nominee for Best Female Artist, Best Folk Artist, and Song of the Year (2003). She has been featured by CNN Headline News, NPR's Cartalk, Rewind, and What'd You Know?, and drawn into immortality by Ripley's Believe It Or Not. She has three records to her credit: her first studio effort, Human After All (2000) Ð one of the "Top 10 Independent CDs," the currently sold-out EP Teen Angst (1999), and Topography (2002), an ambitious live collection of performances in Alaska, Wisconsin and New Hampshire. The fourth installment, currently being produced at Kanuba Digital with the help of several members from famed New England rock band, thanks to gravity, is due in stores this fall.

An Erlendahle Records recording artist, LIS HARVEY is the founder of the fledgling safe-house benefit tour, Will Folk For Food. Her music can indeed be heard on actual radio stations, sometimes even outside the US, and she has opened for Alana Davis (Sony), Dayna Kurtz (Kismet), Louise Taylor (Signature Sounds), Melissa Ferrick, and Jerry Joseph and the Jackmormons, among others.

College students may be interested to know... LIS HARVEY has been praised as "a true folk poet" (Columbia University), "an amazing guitarist with a beautiful voice" (Miami University of Ohio), and "one act worth seeing" (University of Nebraska*), LIS HARVEY is a sprite-like reflection of the way we all wish we could behave in front of hundreds, who has occasionally been likened to Alanis Morrissette-on-a-happy-day. Appropriately, she was selected as a Club Showcase Alternate for the 2003 Mid-Atlantic NACA Conference in Baltimore. To find out how to get Lis to rock your college, hard, please visit our pals at The College Agency.

AWARDS/HONORS

• 2004 Winner, Ottawa Folk Fest Finals
• 2004 Finalist, MN Folk Festival's New Folk Songwriting Contest
• 2003 — Nominated for 3 Jam Music Magazine Awards:
  Best Folk Artist, Best Female Artist, and Song of the Year
  (for "White Linen Evening")
• 2003 — NACA MidAtlantic Conference Showcase Alternate
• 2002 — Set first Guinness World Record for "the fastest fifty state tour"
• 2001 — Just Plain Folks Music Award Winner
• 2001 — SIBL Semifinalist for the song “Rules”
• 2001 — NeMO Music Conference Showcase Artist
• 2000 — Kweevak Viewers’ Choice Award Winner

ONE FROM THE VAULT (Old bio, 7/15/02)

At 5’2”, with eyes of blue and a guitar to match, Boston-born singer/songwriter Lis Harvey is one of the youngest and fastest-moving players on the contemporary American folk scene. Packing all the energy of a whistling teapot into each song, Lis rips through stories as though she were living them onstage. Her poignant lyrics and finger-style picking bounce between modern folk and alternative pop-rock, setting fire to expectation. “Intelligent, unnerving songwriting” is InPittbsurgh Weekly’s description — and “intellicoustic indie folk-rock,” is the genre, created by Erlendahle Records, that just barely sums up the Lis Harvey experience.

Alternately soothing and searing, Lis’s voice guides listeners through a dense forest of different characters and subjects; from the feminist anthem “Light As A Feather,” to “Gone Jonesboro” (in which the narrator is a thirteen year old gunman in the tragic Arkansas school shooting).

Human After All, Lis’s powerful first LP, was assistant-produced by Duncan Watt (former keyboardist for Deb Pasternak, Greg Greenway, Barbara Kessler). The record, funded by a grant from Carnegie Mellon University (Harvey's alma mater) and released on Lis’s own, women-run Erlendahle Records, deals with issues of independence and urban womanhood. In 2000, it took an end-of-the-year Kweevak.com Viewers’ Choice Award for “One of the Top 10 Indie CDs.”

Lis’s sophomore album, Topography (a live CD recorded in Alaska, Wisconsin and New Hampshire), is slated for release on August 1, 2002. In August, Lis will tour in support of Topography , setting a world record by playing 50 states in just 60 days. This Fifty State Tour, perhaps the first ever to be completed by a solo female musician over the course of two months, is sponsored by Oasis CD Duplication, Indiegrrl, Folkweb, Modern Postcard, Maximum Ink, Good and Loud Music, and A Room of One’s Own, a feminist bookstore in Lis’s hometown of Madison, Wisconsin.

Lis has opened for Alana Davis, Jerry Joseph and the Jackmormons, Louise Taylor, Melissa Ferrick, Michael McDermott and Stuart Davis, as well as shared the stage with Wishing Chair, Heather Eatman, Ellis, Janet Robin, Holly Figueroa, Sarah Pinsker, Edie Carey, Deirdre Flint, Chris and Meredith Thompsen, and many others.

Lis is a performing member of Indiegrrl, the largest national organization of independent women musicians. She is the founder of Will Folk For Food, an annual, co-operative tour of young feminist musicians celebrating folk-rock and independence — without Nike, Pepsi, or AOL-TimeWarner^TM. Will Folk For Food, a socially conscious departure from today’s barrage of Top-Forty-radio–infused festivals, began its maiden voyage in September 2001, benefiting battered women’s shelters local to each tour stop. Lis a proponent for many humanitarian causes, including literacy, domestic abuse intervention, the campaign for Domestic Partner Benefits, and the right to choose.