| Carrie Ferguson was born in the foggy little North Coast town of Arcata, California. Carrie started taking piano lessons when she was eight, and began writing her own compositions soon after. The instrument she grew up playing was an enormous upright, chocolate-brown (to put it politely) piano inherited from the family of one of her father's third-grade students. This piano, built from the parts of several old pianos by students in a local instrument building workshop, had a darkly booming, slightly furry quality to it, not unlike the weather outside. In order to write good music you had to play the way the instrument itself demanded, which to her ear meant sticking to the lower three quarters of the keyboard, and using plenty of rolling arpeggios and minor chords. Carrie credits the stubborn and sonorous voice of her childhood piano, combined with the perpetual fog and clamminess of coastal Northern California, as instilling in her the baseline aesthetic of melancholy that still permeates her music today. As a teenager in the Eighties, Carrie developed her sweet tooth for melody by listening to pop radio: Duran Duran, The Police, Journey, The Talking Heads, and later R.E.M, U2, Tracey Chapman, and Peter Gabriel. She saw the GoGos play "Our Lips Are Sealed" on MTV and realized that THAT'S what she wanted to do with her life. At home she began writing lyrics and experimenting with her piano, trying to imitate the driving bass lines and moody synthesizers of eighties pop. Carrie left California to attend the University of MA in Amherst. Suffering from homesickness and deprived of regular access to a piano, she began writing acapella tunes. At first these quirky, rhyming songs were written primarily for personal use, functioning almost as mnemonic devices, helping her to remember life lessons and parts of herself she didn't want to lose. Gradually she began performing her songs, both acapella and piano based, in local coffee houses. In 1996, Carrie formed the folk-rock band Plump, with singer-songwriter Chris Scanlon, later rounded out with Bruce Todd on drums and Emily Breines on fiddle. Known for their catchy songs and infectious stage presence, Plum garnered a strong following in Western Massachusetts, performing in numerous venues and events throughout the region. Playful one minute, ethereal and melancholy the next, Carrie Ferguson's music has always reflected a need to find balance and to make sense of life's constant changes. Her intimate, energetic solo performances offer a compelling mixture of hilarious storytelling, passionate piano playing, haunting melodies, and the occasional in-your-face acapella song. |
| Biography |