Lucy sends periodic notes to everyone on her email announcement list. The most recent few will also be posted here.

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December 26, 2003

Hi everyone,

I know I haven't written in a while, but I have a really good excuse and wonderful news: in November, my husband Rick and I traveled to China to adopt our baby daughter Molly!!! We are totally in love with her and have been since the moment we saw her, in Chongqing, one of the largest cities in the world, with 10 other families. They brought out the babies one at a time, and Molly was second to last, and I was weeping by the time they put her in Rick's arms. She smiled at us and was laughing within 15 minutes, and that was it, she's been smiling and laughing ever since.

Molly is one year old, and she's incredibly happy, sweet, easygoing, a GREAT sleeper (everyone tells us that we don't know how lucky we are, I told Richard Shindell about Molly's sleep habits and he said "Nobody sleeps like that!"), very silly and funny and goofy, alert and observant, and just BEAUTIFUL. We are truly blessed to have found her.

The trip to China was the most extraordinary experience of our lives, and the Chinese people were sweet and warm and were literally coming up to us on the street smiling and touching Molly, we're told they're happy for the babies who are adopted by American families.

So I've been taking time off from performing, staying at home just being Molly's mom, which is as wonderful as everyone always told me it would be. And she definitely knows we're her mommy and daddy, and she's even started saying "Mama" and "Dada."

So that's by far the biggest news in my life. But one other thing I want to tell you about, the second biggest news, is that my new album is going to come out on February 10!! It's called The Red Thread, which refers to the ancient Chinese belief that when a baby is born she's connected to everyone she'll ever know in her life by an invisible red thread. The thread can stretch or tangle, but it will never break. The album is really about those kinds of ties, to my husband and daughter, to my family, to my friends, and to the people around me in New York City.

The album was produced by the great Ben Wittman, who produced my last two albums, and the band includes Jon Herington and Duke Levine on guitar, and Zev Katz on bass. I also had some pals of mine sing teriffic harmonies: Eliza Gilkyson, Jonatha Brooke, Richard Shindell, and John Gorka.

The album has 6 original songs and 4 covers, by James McMurtry, Bill Morrissey, Dave Carter, and Buddy Miller/Jim Lauderdale. My song "Land of the Living", about the aftermath of 9/11 in New York City, is on the album. And there's also my very first piano-vocal performance, a new song about New York called "Brooklyn Train", (an homage to Walt Whitman's "Crossing Brookyn Ferry.")

The album will be available in stores and on the web at places like Amazon.Com. I'm really looking forward to getting back on the road, starting in mid-January (I will have copies of The Red Thread available for sale at my shows). Some of the shows will be benefit concerts for a wonderful organization called Half the Sky, a foundation that improves life for children in Chinese orphanages. I'll have more info about the specific shows in the next few weeks. To find out more about them, go to their web site: www.halfthesky.org.

Take care everyone!

Love, Lucy

August 22, 2003

Hi guys,

I'm in the middle of working on my new album, planning to finish it up by mid-September. It's looking like the release date will be the first week of February 2004. I'm really happy with the way it's coming out! I'll fill you in more when it's actually finished.

That's all for now, take care!

Love, Lucy

June 10, 2003

Hi guys, hope the weather's good wherever you are. It's been so miserably rainy and cold here in New York, and today it's finally sunny and warm, and it feels kind of like a miracle!

I just did a really fun couple of tours with Richard Shindell. We went all over the place, including the Mid-Atlantic, the Pacific Northwest and Alaska. Alaska was stunningly beautiful, as always, and we even saw a few moose right next to the road. My husband Rick was along and the two of them were so funny (and the jokes got dirtier and dirtier), I don't think I've laughed so much in a long time. And it was so great to sing with Richard again.

I also did a few gigs with the wonderful Susan Werner, who I also love singing with, and in addition to singing "The Water is Wide" together, at the very last gig, in Chicago, we took 5 minutes before the show and worked up a pretty unique version of The Beatles' "If I Fell", and it brought down the house. And we didn't get it on tape!

And I did a fun show at The Brooklyn Botanical Gardens (which, by the way, is the most beautiful set of gardens I've seen anywhere), and the fabulous Jon Herington played guitar with me. It was an afternoon show and there was an entire mosh pit of toddlers dancing and playing right in front of me and it was unbelievably cute.

I'm going to start recording my new album next week and I'm really excited. It's going to be produced by Ben Wittman, who produced my last two albums, and he'll play drums too. I'm so lucky to have snagged him and the rest of the band: Duke Levine and Jon Herington on electric and acoustic guitars, and various other guitar-like instruments, and Zev Katz on bass. We're going to record the album live, so I'll be singing while the band is playing. It's going to be a mix of original songs and covers (some of the original songs are really, really new). It should be coming out in February or March 2004. I'll fill you in more as things progress.

Thanks, once again, for all the wonderful emails!

Take care,
Lucy

March 11, 2003

Hi everyone, hope you're surviving winter, it's been pretty rough on the East Coast this year. I have to admit, though, that I still love snow. Whenever it snows it just reminds me so much of having a snow day when I was a kid, maybe I'll never get over that.

I had a great time performing on the radio show "Mountain Stage", which will be broadcast on public radio stations the week of April 11. It was the weekend of the huge east coast blizzard, and I just barely made it to Charleston, WV before all flights were cancelled. Unfortunately, my bags and guitar didn't make it, so I bought a Charleston t-shirt at the hotel gift shop and performed in that and blue jeans (I actually kind of liked it as a new look.) And I borrowed a beautiful Taylor guitar from Julie Adams, who sings on the show. So it all turned out okay. I performed a new-ish song, "This is Home", and a beautiful Dave Carter song I've been doing live called "Cowboy Singer".

Also, the Indigo Girls were on the show. I'd never met them before, though I've been a fan for a long time (I just LOVE their singing and their harmonies). They were great, and they were two of the nicest people I've met in a while. I've always heard that about them, and it was true.

It happened to be my birthday, and to my huge surprise the Mountain Stage folks gave me a birthday cake (Larry Gross, the host of the show, told me his wife baked it!) I still don't know how they found out it was my birthday.

Then I got stranded in Charleston for a day because of the snow, but my husband was with me, and we were across the street from a mall, so it wasn't exactly a punishment.

I'm making plans to record a new album this summer, it should come out sometime next winter. I'll fill you in more as my plans solidify. I'm thrilled to report that Ben Wittman is going to produce it. He produced my last two albums, and I think he's amazing.

I'll be doing a whole bunch of shows with my pal Richard Shindell, see details below. Should be a lot of fun, and there'll be lots of harmonies, that's for sure. And I'm doing some shows with Susan Werner too, details below. We've done a couple of shows together, and we just love singing together, we've had some magical moments onstage.

Thanks again for all the emails, I love them, and I'm sorry I can't respond to all of them.

Take care, Lucy

October 23, 2002

Hi guys,

Hope you're having a nice autumn, it's just beautiful here in New York. I just got back from the U.K. and Ireland, where the weather was also beautiful, which was a first for me - no rain! I'm happy to say I survived London's one day Tube strike, which just happened to be on the day of my London show - I've never seen such bad traffic in my life. And I did a live interview on a nationally broadcast BBC radio show called "Woman's Hour" - the last time I was on the show, Bryan Ferry heard me and hired me to sing on his album. It was scary being on live, but fun, and after my interview I had a rather interesting experience. They had me stay on to join in a discussion about playing air guitar, which as far as I know is when you PRETEND to play guitar. It was a bit surreal, me sitting there along with a professor and a young woman who performs as an air guitarist. Apparently, air guitar is a big thing in the U.K. (they just had some big competition of air guitar players).

Anyway, the whole tour was a lot of fun, I even got to play in Wales, which was incredibly beautiful, and everyone talked like Tom Jones, or so it seemed to me.

In August I did some West Coast gigs with the wonderful Nina Gerber, and as always my dad accompanied me on some of his songs. I also did a very fun show with Beth Nielsen Chapman, Janis Ian, and Rita Coolidge, all of whom were incredibly nice, and we sang together at the end of the show. My parents were travelling with me, and backstage Janis Ian and my dad bonded over their love of science fiction (I didn't even know he loved science fiction), which was a very cool thing to see (my dad had no idea who she was and I'm quite sure never heard her hit songs, but my mom was very excited about meeting her).

In September I had a fun swing through the midwest, including shows in Iowa and Chicago, as well as in Minneapolis where the great Jon Herington joined me on guitar and he was AWESOME.

On Sept. 11 I was interviewed on "Morning Edition" on National Public Radio about my song "Land of the Living", which, if you haven't heard it, is about the aftermath of 9/11 in my neighborhood in New York city, and I performed an excerpt from the song. I received a few very moving emails afterward from people expressing appreciation for the song's message of tolerance. Many people have asked me if the song is available anywhere, and I'm sorry to say it isn't, but it will definitely be on my next album.

Last weekend I got to do a couple of shows with Duke Levine, whose playing was truly incendiary. One of the gigs was in Alexandria, VA, and I really didn't know if anyone would show up because of the terrible situation with the sniper, and amazingly enough lots and lots of people came. I'm very grateful to all of you who made it.

There's a brand new album that I'm on, "Going Driftless", a tribute to Greg Brown. I sing Greg's song "Small Dark Movie" and the other artists, all women, include, among others, Lucinda Williams, Shawn Colvin, Mary Chapin Carpenter, Gillian Welch, and Ani DiFranco. It's a benefit CD for the Breast Cancer Fund, and I think it's pretty teriffic.

Thanks again for all the emails, I just love getting them.

Love, Lucy

September 5, 2002

Hi again,

Just want to let you guys know that an excerpt of my song "Land of the Living" will be broadcast on National Public Radio sometime on 9/11, along with a brief discussion how the song was written. Unfortunately I don't know anything about what time this will happen, NPR is going to have many hours of programming that day and I think it could be anytime. If I find out more I'll certainly let you know.

Take care, Lucy

July 18, 2002

Hi everyone! So my interview on Weekend Edition with Scott Simon on NPR aired on Saturday, 7/13 so you can hear it on NPR's website. Their website is www.npr.org and you can either do a search with my name or go to the "Weekend Edition Saturday" page and you'll find the interview, along with a bunch of other stuff about me.

I'm a huge fan of Scott Simon and his show, I try to listen to it every Saturday, and I thought he did an absolutely teriffic job with the interview. They played excerpts from five songs from Every Single Day and we talked about the songs and about my former life as a psychologist.

I also want to tell you that the day of the interview my husband and I took a look at Amazon.com to see what the sales rank was for Every Single Day and we were astonished to find that it was #1 (which means it was the best selling album that day of every album they sell, it was above the brand new albums by The Red Hot Chili Peppers and Dave Matthews!!!) And if that wasn't exciting enough, when I scrolled down the top 20 bestselling albums, Ten Year Night was #12, and my other two albums were in the top 50!! We both just sort of sat there looking at the computer screen thinking that this was a really, really special moment.

So it seems a whole lot of people heard the interview and went and bought my albums, and I couldn't be more thrilled.

Anyway, I'll let you know if anything else happens.

Take care, Lucy

July 11, 2002

Hi everyone! Good news: I'll be interviewed on National Public Radio, on Weekend Edition with Scott Simon, on Saturday July 13. They're also going to play some music from Every Single Day.

I'm told that the interview will probably air toward the end of either the first hour or the second hour of the show. The show airs for 2 hours on Saturday morning, you'll have to check your local listings to find out what time. I believe in New York it airs from 8-10 A.M. If you hear it, I'd love to know what you think!

Take care, Lucy

June 26, 2002

Hi everyone! It's been a while since I had a chance to fill you in on what's been going on, so here are some of the highlights. In April I had the honor of performing with Judy Collins, who was one of my most important musical influences when I was a teenager, especially the way she covered other people's songs and made them her own. I figure I must have listened to "Colors of the Day" and "Wildflowers" each a million times when I was 16. So I was excited and thrilled to meet her, and she couldn't have been nicer and more gracious. And then I sang harmony with her on "Amazing Grace" at the end of the show, and it was kind of like a dream coming true. And she sounded spectacular, as good as I've ever heard her. I'll be doing another show with her along with Arlo Guthrie on July 12 in Westbury, NY.

I did a show as a co-bill with Richard Shindell in Tarrytown, NY in a really large theater that both of us had only played before as opening acts. We couldn't believe the show sold out 2 months in advance! Anyway, it had been a whole year since he and I had sung together (last time was on his live album and when he sang on Every Single Day) and it felt great and it was so much fun. We got to sing "By Way of Sorrow" together, and it brought back a lot of nice memories. I hope he and I get to do more shows together; we'll be doing one in King of Prussia, PA on 7/7, see below for details.

I just played at the wonderful Clearwater Festival in New York state, and John Gorka sang harmony with me during my sets, and he did what he aptly described as an "interpretive dance" during the guitar solo on "Return of the Grevious Angel" that included putting his hands over his head to form a halo. I was laughing so hard I thought I wouldn't be able to finish the song. I also sang with Dar Williams on her song "Iowa", and it had been over a year since we had sung together, so that was a real treat.

I was in a benefit concert for the Israeli Red Cross in New Jersey, with David Bromberg, Andy Statman, and David Grisman, among others, and I managed to rope the great Mr. Grisman into playing mandolin on "By Way of Sorrow" during my set. He had literally never heard the song before, and we had no time to rehearse at all, so he winged it, and he was phenomenal.

The Bryan Ferry album I'm on has been released, and I appear on a song called "San Simeon". When I was recording it in London, they asked me to speak the words to the song as Bryan sang them, and I remember after I did it I asked them if that was what they wanted, because God knows no one's ever asked me to speak on a record before, and the producer said something like "You've got three very excited blokes in here!" So I guess they were happy with it, and they kept it. I'm mixed pretty far down, but you can still hear me.

A tribute album to Greg Brown that I'm on will be coming out in September. I'm singing Greg's song "Small Dark Movie", and some of the other people on the album are: Lucinda Williams, Shawn Colvin, Ani Di Franco, Mary Chapin Carpenter, and Gillian Welch. So look for that in September.

I've been thrilled to have the great Duke Levine playing a bunch of gigs with me, and he'll be accompanying me for my mainstage set at the Falcon Ridge Folk Festival. Also, the wonderful Nina Gerber will be joining me for some gigs in California in August. I'll also be returning to the U.K. and Ireland in September and October.

Thanks, once again, for all the wonderful emails. And a reminder: I have a website (www.lucykaplansky.com) that lists all of my gigs as well as news and other info.

Take care!

Love, Lucy

February 15, 2002

Hi everyone,

It's been a while since I sent you guys an update about what's been going on with me. Here goes: In December, I was in the U.K. and Ireland and the great Ben Butler played guitar on a bunch of the gigs with me, which was such a treat for me. And I learned an important lesson the very first night of the tour, in Scotland, when I asked for an Irish whiskey from the stage and was told in no uncertain terms that I MUST drink scotch in Scotland, and it didn't matter to anyone when I said I didn't like scotch. Then they gave me a scotch I'd never heard of (and I can't remember what it was called) and I LOVED it. So there you go.

I did a few shows with John Gorka, Cheryl Wheeler, and Cliff Eberhardt in the midwest and those guys were all hilarious as usual. In fact, one night, I was laughing so hard on stage that I actually drooled on myself. And there were lots and lots of great harmonies.

I appeared on Mountain Stage, which will air on public radio around April 5th, check your local listings for the exact date it'll air in your area. The Mountain Stage band accompanied me and they totally rocked. And I got to meet and hang with some great musicians, including Sam Bush and his band and the Red Clay Ramblers.

Also performed in the Ann Arbor Folk Festival and got to sing harmony with the great Nanci Griffith (it's been a while since I got to sing with her). She sounded teriffic. And I did a bunch of gigs in Kansas with Jennifer Kimball and we had so much fun singing together. We basically just improvise all the harmony parts, and it's really a lot like flying, and I don't mean in a plane.

Also, I got to play a couple of shows with the great Duke Levine, who of course played a lot of the spectacular guitar parts on my last 2 albums, and he was just amazing. And I'm very happy to say that he'll be playing with me a bunch this spring.

And I was thrilled that my new album Every Single Day was voted #10 album of the year on WFUV in New York!

There's a new album out that I'm on called Shifting Sands of Time by a group called Wayfaring Strangers. It's a beautiful album that blends bluegrass, jazz and klezmer (that's a wild combination, don't you think?) and features some truly incredible musicians (Matt Glaser on fiddle, Andy Statman on mandolin and clarinet, Tony Trischka on banjo, and lots of others) and vocals by Jennifer Kimball, Ralph Stanley, Tracey Bonham, Tim O'Brien, and more. I sing lead on 3 tracks, and I'm very proud of the work I did. I highly recommend this album. It's in stores on Rounder Records.

Richard Shindell also just released a teriffic live album, and I sang a bunch of harmonies on it. And I want to personally take credit for his including a Bruce Springsteen song on the album ("Asbury Park, 4th of July" or whatever that song's called). He was playing it at the soundcheck that night and I basically insisted that he perform it at the show, because he didn't want to. So now you know.

Hope you're all having a great winter. And thanks once again for all the wonderful emails.

Love, Lucy

November 23, 2001

Hi everyone,

I was at home in downtown Manhattan on Tuesday, Sept. 11th, nervous and excited about my new album being released that morning. I heard a plane fly low over my building (too low it seemed), I heard what I thought was a very big truck backfiring, and then a few minutes later I looked out my window and saw one of the World Trade Center buildings on fire. I didn't understand what I was seeing. I had been a few blocks away from the World Trade Center just the day before doing a radio interview. Then I turned on the news and began to understand, although it was all pretty incomprehensible. A few minutes later my husband rushed in the front door from work, and throughout that day and the following days, in our apartment less than a mile from ground zero, we experienced the fear, disbelief, horror and sadness that the rest of the world was feeling. It's taken me till now to write to you about all of this.

One of the most poignant events for me personally was that on Friday 9/14 I got a phone call from Belfast, Northern Ireland, from George Jones, a wonderful radio host I've worked with over there. He wanted to know if I'd be willing to go live on the radio and talk about what it was like in New York. When we were on I tried to describe what I was experiencing, and he told me how devestated the Northern Irish people were by what had happened and that their hearts and prayers were with all New Yorkers and all Americans. I can't tell you how moved I was. After all, these are people who know what it's like to live with terror every day.

That week I also thought a lot about the fact that I had played at the World Trade Center, in the plaza, twice over the summer. Both gigs were so wonderful, the first with my band in July, the second singing harmony with John Gorka in August. Both nights were beautiful New York nights, the weather was perfect, the audiences were warm and friendly. And John's concert was, I believe, the last musical event ever held there. I'll never forget those nights.

With all of this going on, it's been a very strange time to have a new album out and do concerts to promote it, but that's what I've done, I guess in the spirit of moving on with life and the necessity of continuing and honoring what has been set in motion, and I also believe that music heals and connects us with one another. There have been many nights since Sept. 11th when the audience sang along on "By Way of Sorrow" and I was moved to tears. And so many people have come up to me after shows and said the nicest, most supportive things. I'm so grateful.

I've had some genuinely wonderful times at my shows in the last few weeks. Some highlights: rocking out with Nina Gerber on guitar in California, with my dad sitting in on piano on a couple of his songs; doing some shows with John Gorka in Alaska, with my husband along, where the scenery was so stunning I didn't mind that it was 10 degrees, and eating strange things like reindeer sausage and ostrich stick, and then feeling guilty about eating the ostrich stick when we saw what must have been yard-long ravens snacking nearby; playing with Ben Butler on guitar and throwing songs at him he'd never even heard and watching him totally tear them up; doing a co-bill with Catie Curtis in New York and having her sneak up behind me during "Scorpion" and start singing the most beautiful harmony while my eyes were closed; and the whole audience singing "House of the Rising Sun" with me in Denver at a venue that used to be a brothel.

I thought you'd also like to know that my album, Every Single Day, has been very, very well received by critics and radio. I got great reviews in the Associated Press (4 stars), United Press International, The Financial Times, and the College Music Journal, to name a few. And thanks so much to all of you who bought it; it's selling even better than my last album!

Anyway, thank you again so much for all the wonderful emails. I hope you all have a safe, healthy and happy holiday season.

Love, Lucy