Claire Lynch

With a high-pitched voice that's been compared to Nanci Griffith and Alison Krauss, Claire Lynch has successfully fused a background in popular music and a love of bluegrass. Together with the Front Porch String Band, the group she shares with her husband, Larry, Lynch has been garnering attention as one of the most emotive vocalists in contemporary bluegrass. A native of Poughkeepsie, NY, Lynch moved with her family to Hazel Green, AL, at the age of 12. Inspired by the pop songs of Joni Mitchell and the Beatles, Lynch sang as a youngster in an informal trio with her sisters. Lynch met her future husband in high school. After their graduation, Claire worked at an insurance agency while Larry attended the University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa. A turning point came when Claire was invited to hear a bluegrass band that Larry was forming with fellow students, called Hickory Wind. She was so taken by their performance that she accepted their invitation to sing with them. When Hickory Wind were hired as the house band of a club in Birmingham, they changed their name to the Front Porch String Band. Over the next seven years, Claire and Larry, who were married in 1976, and the Front Porch String Band became one of the hardest-working groups in Alabama. Their self-produced debut album, Smilin' at You, released in 1977, was followed by Country Rain later the same year. In 1981, the Front Porch String Band released a self-titled, nationally distributed album on Rebel, while Claire released her solo debut, Breakin' It, on the smaller Ambush label. When Lynch became pregnant with the first of two children in 1982, she and her husband disbanded the Front Porch String Band and settled in northern Alabama. Although Larry returned to college to earn a degree in accounting and Claire...