Laura Allen Sandage
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Born in Iowa, raised in California, I grew up with a mother who played Scott Joplin on the piano and show tunes on the cello and a father who sang me to sleep with haunting folk songs like Go Tell Aunt Rhody. At age 14, I made up advertising jingles and pop songs for fun, while teachers encouraged me to study classical voice. I also kept diaries, wrote poetry, read about the paranormal, and took dance and drawing classes as a teen.
I earned a B.M. in voice performance at the UOP Conservatory of Music in Stockton, then married a charming East Indian pharmacist and went on to graduate studies in French Literature and Comparative Literature at Indiana University, Bloomington. Before my Ph.D. dissertation was complete, babies came along and snapped me out of my academic groove.
While caring for my two daughters, I wrote poetry and humor published in small magazines, performed and painted faces at birthday parties, taught drama and improv classes for kids and adults, led creative writing groups, struggled with chronic fatigue syndrome for several years, studied hypnosis and meditation, and eventually found my way back to songwriting at age 37. In songwriting, I felt I could make use of anything I had ever done or been or wished to be.
When the family settled in Davis, California, I took up singing and playing (string bass, percussion, guitar, etc.) with various local musical collaborators. The acoustic trio MudLark was born during work on my eclectic 2005 solo CD, Bloom, and included Alaskan singer-songwriter
and banjo mistress Katie Henry and guitarist/singer Ray Frank, originally from the Bronx. Together, the three of us created powerful new work deeply rooted in American musical tradition: MudLark’s debut CD, Nest, was released in 2007.
I completed another community-based solo project in 2009, a CD titled “In Equal Measure: Songs for the Tender Witness.” This collection of sensitive original songs was created with the support and guidance of Yolo Hospice, where I had been a patient care volunteer since 2003, and was funded in part by a City of Davis Art Contract. Many local musicians donated their
efforts and John Rose generously engineered the project. This work led me to speaking and singing engagements at churches, memorials, meditation circles and support group meetings.
I joined the Vocal Art Ensemble in Fall 2008, and the joys of choral singing gradually took over my world. For a number of years I sang with the Vocal Art Ensemble and directed both the Free Range Singers and the UU Sparks Choir, while teaching singing to students from age 2 to 72+, as well as composing music for Winters Shakespeare Workshop and leading sound effects orchestras and singing classes at Camp Winnarainbow during summers.
