Liz Bowman, a student at the Kentucky Center for Traditional Music released a self-titled folk album.
Bowman was not alone on the album. She found a lot of help and inspiration from fellow musicians, one of them being Raymond McLain who introduced her to a new way of writing
“Raymond McLain is the director of the KCTM, and he knew John Hartford and he talked about they would write words and phrases they would want in a song and put them on index cards,” said Bowman, a Morehead State University graduate. “They would put them on the table and rearrange them, and that was a new way of writing songs that I hadn’t heard about before, so that helped write a lot of songs on the album.”
With Bowman playing folk music along with following her dream for music teaching, she does not label herself as being only one genre. She loves all genres of music.
“I don’t like calling myself one genre because that’s very limiting. I like all kinds of music and whatever I write just happens and you just kind of know what goes with the song when you write it,” said Bowman. “You know what instruments it calls for. I’m not going to write a song and be like, ‘This is way too rock-ish. I can’t put this on an album.’ Like, I don’t mind. I think letting songs happen is more important than picking what you want to be.”
Bowman is not afraid to accept and challenge herself with different genres, but values bluegrass and traditional music for its difficulty and unique qualities.
“I’m more, I’m not like a traditional bluegrass musician really. I lean towards more like independent folk, but a lot of the musicians on the album are bluegrass musicians like Kendall Potter, and Thomas Albert is a country musician. He plays with Nicholas Jamerson," said Bowman. "Andrew Preston of the Woodsheep mixed and mastered. I love playing with other people any chance I get.”
Jesse Wells, who works with Tyler Childers, was also a big help.
Bowman believes music is a universal language in that there aren’t any set rules in making or listening to it.
“Any music that means anything to me, and then listening to a song, and then being inspired to write a song, they don’t ever sound the same,” said Bowman. “It’s just the things you feel. Just like there’s no manual for traditional music, there’s no manual for relating to music.”
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