Patty Larkin & Lucy Kaplansky

Patty Larkin

Patty Larkin is an artistic visionary, made of equal parts guitar wizardry, vocals infused with soul, and inventive lyrics that tug at the heartstrings. Described as “riveting” by the Chicago Tribune and “hypnotic” by Entertainment Weekly, Larkin’s imagination, enchantment, and technical artistry has been redefining the boundaries of singer-songwriters for over three decades. 

With 11 studio albums and two live recordings under her belt, Larkin intersects poetry and song with her 14th release, Bird in a Cage. The album puts poems from 10 notable poets to song, including poems from US Poet Laureates William Carlos Williams, Stanley Kunitz, Kay Ryan, Robert Pinsky, and Billy Collins. Larkin’s new and soul-stirring collection takes up the tradition of sharing poems aloud, letting each poem shine through her musical stylings. 

“Over the years I began my writing days by reading my favorite poets just to be amazed and inspired. I looked to poetry as I look at nature: with awe. This morning ritual evolved into a desire to make music of some of my favorite poems,” Larkin describes. “The rhythm and cadence of the lines felt new and fresh to me, the melody slowly revealing itself. And uncovering a melody that is slowly revealed by the words was pure joy.”

Lucy Kaplansky

Lucy Kaplansky started out singing in Chicago folk music clubs as a teenager. Then, barely out of high school, she took off for New York City and found her community of songwriters and performers. She quickly became a favorite singing partner for many, but then life took her in a different direction. 

She became Dr. Kaplansky, with a doctorate in Clinical Psychology. Yet she never stopped singing. She harmonized on Shawn Colvin’s Grammy-winning “Steady-On”, Nanci Griffith’s “Lone Star State of Mind”, and landed on Pretty in Pink’s soundtrack; all the while she was working at a New York hospital and running a private practice. 

When Red House Records got ahold of Kaplansky’s solo tapes, she was suddenly back in the music business. In 1994 she released her solo album The Tide to rave reviews. Kaplansky’s second album, Flesh and Bone, further showed her development as a gifted songsmith. From there, her success took flight with the back-to-back hit albums Ten Year Night (1999) and Every Single Day (2001). 

In January 2025 Kaplansky released her 10th album, The Lucy Story, a collection of mostly unreleased tracks that tell the story of her musical life, from her bedroom at age 16, all the way to major venues, clubs, and recording studios across the U.S. and Europe. With songs that range from jazz and bluegrass to traditional folk, country, and pop, the album is punctuated with the astonishing breadth of Kaplansky’s vocal artistry.