Christine Lavin started her professional life as a waitress/bread baker at the Caffe

Lena in Saratoga Springs, NY in 1975 where she met Dave Van Ronk who encouraged

her to study guitar with him in NYC. She took his advice and is now a singer/

songwriter/guitarist/recording artist/author/videographer based in New York City. Her

latest solo album, her 26th is DRUM SCHOOL DROPOUT, 13 new songs and joins her

25th album, ON MY WAY TO HOOTERVILLE, 10 new songs and one re-worked song,

"Ramblin' Waltz," a re-telling of her time in 1975 when she was an entourage driver for

the first week of Bob Dylan's iconic "Rolling Thunder Revue" tour.

In 2023 Christine released "The Seasons Project," an 80-song seasonal compilation that

features the work of 63 American, Canadian, British and Irish singer/songwriters.

Christine assembled this compilation to help guide future historians and folklorists to

authentic music being written in the last two decades of the 20th Century and the first

two of the 21st Century.

In October 2024 there were 11 performances of "InunDATEd," a 90 minute theatrical

production that showcased nine of Christine's songs by the York Theatre in NYC. There

will be one more workshop production before the show is released world-wide. The most

recent production starred two thrilling Broadway veterans, Kate Rockwell and Taylor

Crousore.

HONORS AND AWARDS: In May 2021 Christine received an Honorary Doctorate in Fine Arts

from her alma mater, the State University of New York at Brockport. In an odd twist, she has a

younger brother also named Chris (born on Columbus Day) who also in May 2021 was awarded

an Honorary Doctorate in Humane Letters from his alma mater, Hobart/William Smith Colleges

in Geneva, NY.

What are the odds there would be two Chris Lavins from the same family to both be awarded

honorary doctorates one week apart?

In September 2019 Christine spent a month at the artist retreat Yaddo in Saratoga Springs. Three

of the songs she wrote there are included on her latest HOOTERVILLE album. In April 2019 she

was inducted into the Rochester, NY Music Hall Of Fame along with Al Jardine of The Beach

Boys. She received a 2012 Nightlife Award given annually to the best concert and cabaret

performers in New York City. In November 2011 her book COLD PIZZA FOR BREAKFAST: A

MEM-WHA?? (Tell Me Press, New Haven) won the 43rd Annual ASCAP Deems Taylor

Award for excellence in writing about music. is available in paperback, kindle, and audio book

formats, with the foreword written by actor/playwright/singer/songwriter Jeff Daniels. Christine

has also won five ASCAP Composer Awards, The Kate Wolf Memorial Award, and her album

Good Thing He Can't Read My Mind won Album Of The Year from the National Association

Of Independent Record Distributors.

She has produced 12 compilations, and so far these compilations have showcased songs of over

100 songwriters whose work she admires. The food-themed compilation, ONE MEAT BALL,

includes a 96-page cookbooklet that Christine edited — songs and recipes by Pete Seeger, Tom

Paxton, Dave Van Ronk, and many more, including a surprise appearance by international --

and now late -- gigastar of all gigastars, Dame Edna. Sigh.

For four years she hosted "Slipped Disks" on xm satellite radio, playing CDs slipped to her

backstage by compatriots, and was occasion guest host for City Folk Sunday Supper on WFUV-

FM at Fordham University. She also writes freelance for various publications (The Washington

Post, Huffington Post, St. Petersburg Times, Performing Songwriter, and Delta "Sky"

Magazine). Her song AMOEBA HOP is a science/music book by illustrator Betsy Franco

Feeney (Puddle Jump Press), receiving the stamp of approval from The International Society of

Protistologists, and a "Best Book Award" from The American Association for The

Advancement of Science.

THE PLUTO FILES: THE RISE AND FALL OF AMERICA'S FAVORITE PLANET (W.W.

Norton) by Neil deGrasse Tyson, head of the Hayden Planetarium in NYC, includes the

complete lyrics to Christine's song "Planet X," which details Pluto's history and planetary status

debate in rhyme. Neil included Christine in a live concert event at The Beacon Theater in NYC,

"Comedians & Astronomers," and his voice is on that recording, her 23rd album,

SPAGHETTIFICATION.

Christine performs concerts all over the US, Canada, and points beyond (Australia, Germany,

Israel, Greece, Ireland), often hosting knitting circles and Downton Abbey-style napkin folding

backstage at each show. Songs of hers have been performed by artists as diverse as Broadway

stars Betty Buckley, Sutton Foster, Karen Ziemba, and Klea Blackhurst, cabaret divas

Andrea Marcovicci. Barbara Brussell, and Colleen McHugh, the a cappella Dartmouth

Decibelles, and The Accidentals, winners of the National Harmony Sweepstakes Championship.

On A Winter’s Night, her first seasonal compilation project, (20 artists) became a four-artist

national tour that first hit the road back in January 1991 and was a five-artist tour that hit the road

November 2019, including Christine, Cliff Eberhardt, Patty Larkin, Cheryl Wheeler, and

John Gorka -- only to be abruptly sidelined by the pandemic on March 12, 2020. The remainder

of those dates went on as rescheduled in February/March 2022.

LATEST PROJECTS: Christine started creating videos for her songs in 2011, and now creates

them for other artists (including Michael Feinstein, Noel Paul Stookey, Janis Ian, Judy

Collins, Craig Werth, Julie Gold, David Ippolito and others).

Christine was the keynote speaker in November 2016 at the annual North East Regional Folk

Alliance Conference (NERFA) in Stamford, CT, and that keynote address has become the basis

for her next book, which will take up where COLD PIZZA left off. She was also keynote speaker

at the Lifespan National Caregivers Conference in 2017 in Huntsvile, Alabama.

Until November 2018, Ms. Lavin was very involved with the care of her aging mother in

Geneva, NY. She relocated there twice, while continuing her full time performing in 2010 - 2012,

and then again in 2016, to help out. She taught herself to make videos to help her mother

remember daily events, having no short term memory. Soon she started making videos for her

own music, and now videos for others. Her mother died in November 2018 at the age of 99-1/2,

and her family cherishes those videos, which inadvertently spurred Ms. Lavin’s career on in an

unexpected direction.

WHAT SHE IS WORKING ON RIGHT NOW

During much of the pandemic, Christine made ends meet by performing online concerts, writing

and recording songs, creating videos for other artists, and selling her books and CDs from her

website (she is the president, secretary, messenger, and complaint department of her record

company, while becoming friends with all the window clerks at her local post office). For most

of her online concerts she asked for requests, and many of her fans asked for songs she hadn't

performed in years. Much to their delight, she went about re-learning many of them, and is now

working on a theatrical presentation of her songs.

She also completed a spring and also a summer compilation to join with "On A Winter's Night"

and "When October Goes" which was a boxed set of 80 seasonal songs in 2023 (which

immediately sold out). Someday it might turn into a tour: The Seasons Project.

Christine Lavin has been called "A fearless folkZinger!" by the Orlando Sentinel, "Wildly

entertaining," by The New Yorker, and "A fresh kick in the pants!" by the late Paul Newman.

On September 1, 2021 her song, “The Best Summer,” inspired NYT columnist Jennifer Finney

Boylan to write an entire column sparked by that song.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/01/opinion/covid-summer.html

“The Best Summer” by Christine Lavin

(https://vimeo.com/828663825)