Carolyn Fischer

Carolyn Fischer is a singer-songwriter known for pairing powerful, intelligent lyrics with layered arrangements of harmonies and acoustic instruments. She recently released her debut CD in Takoma Park, Maryland, with a concert sponsored by The Institute of Musical Traditions.

Simply stated, her songs are honest, drawing inspiration from life, work, and stories in the news. The title of her new CD, A Rumor in the Mill, is drawn from the first track, Donora, which tells the story of an environmental disaster that killed 20 people and sickened thousands when an air inversion trapped the smog from the local mills in this small Pennsylvania town in 1948. The song was inspired by the book When Smoke Ran Like Water, written by noted environmental epidemiologist and friend Devra Davis, who grew up in the town whose famous smog helped spur the clean-air movement in the U.S. Another track, "Dear Megan," is a letter to her best friend from the third grade, with whom she lost touch when Megan's family moved to California, written with the perspective of a little girl who still had tassels on her bike handles. "Feet of Clay" evokes the everyday human fallibility that becomes magnified in the media and the focus of modern voyeurism. Original, touching, and consequential stories are told with hauntingly beautiful vocals throughout A Rumor in the Mill; simple, driving production frames the songs so that the record plays like a photo album of candid photographs.