Karen the LairMistress (Karen I. Olsen)
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Karen the LairMistress (Karen I. Olsen)

Seattle, Washington, United States

Seattle, Washington, United States
Band Folk World

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This band has not uploaded any videos
This band has not uploaded any videos

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Discography

• 3-Song Demo (recorded 1997): includes the songs "Amanda Dances On", "Sister of the Northland", and "Ours from the Beginning."
• 4-Song Demo (recorded 2004): includes the songs "Amanda Dances On", "Penelope", "Ours from the Beginning", and "Mo Thruantacht Mo Chumha" (lyrics in Irish).

More MP3s can be found on the LairMistress's Band Listing at the Stranger's website: http://classifieds.thestranger.com/seattle/ViewAd?oid=oid%3A91657 .

More mp3's are now available at the LairMistress's Myspace Profile: http://www.myspace.com/karenthelairmistress .

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Bio

A Maryland native, Karen the LairMistress has been living full-time in Seattle, Washington since 1991. She has had a passion for traditional and contemporary folk music from Ireland, Britain and the U.S. since grade school, and began playing in venues such as churches, nursing homes and ethnic festivals in early high school. Though mainly self-taught on acoustic guitar, she also has a background in classical violin, piano and East Indian tabla drumming. She learned to sing from her mother, a trained choral alto soloist, and from her own experience in church and community choirs.

Karen began writing her own songs in high school and college, but her songwriting truly took off in the late 1980's after graduating from college, influenced by a mixture of 80's topical/political folk, feminist/women's music, and Celtic folk and folk-rock bands. She especially loves to write songs on topics and issues that have seldom been addressed before; thus her lyrics (most notably the children's rights themes of the "Power Objects Soundtrack" collection) are often controversial and sometimes downright inflammatory. She says, "You know you're doing your job when a person or two walks out on your performance." However, her primary purpose is to inform and perhaps even enlighten, not to offend gratuitously. Even so, she was often heard deliberately singing French and French-Canadian songs in public at the beginning of the Iraq War in 2003, when anti-French/anti-Canadian sentiment was at its most virulent.

Karen has been busking on the Seattle streets and bus tunnels for over four years; she also performs at festivals, coffeehouses, open mics, art gallery openings and poetry readings. Live performances most commonly include vocals with guitar, guitar instrumentals (sometimes singing harmony over or under guitar melodies), singing over fiddle drones (in traditional English or Appalachian style), improvised joik/mouth music vocals (separately or as part of original or cover songs), and singing with bodhran (which can double as a Middle Eastern-style frame drum). All offers of gigs at both mainstream and alternative venues will be welcomed and considered!

Incidentally, the word "LairMistress" is what Karen calls her online/website persona. It's her personalized version of the term "Webmaster", as she has built and edits her website herself. "LairMistress", in Karen's case, does NOT mean "Dominatrix." She gets asked about that on occasion...

See Karen's Musician's Resume here: http://www.angelfire.com/folk/karivox/musicmarket/Musician_Vita.html .