Mina Carson

Mina has been singing, writing, and playing guitar since junior high school in snowy New England. Though she is much older than that now -- and far, far away in rainy Oregon-- her obsessions with power and love, with getting and losing freedom, haven't changed much over the years. She writes about women, kids, money, longing, and bad guys. Her style weaves voice and guitar into a gentle, harmonically integrated sound. Her lyrics are sometimes poetic, sometimes conversational -- often angry, occasionally witty, always deliberate.

Mina still owns her first Gibson classical, but now she plays an assortment of steel-string guitars, big and small. She came of age during the folk revival, and her first heroine was Joan Baez. Back in the days when records resembled the dog's frisbee, she collected Baez, Dylan, Cream, the Jefferson Airplane, Richie Havens, and James and Livingston Taylor. Oh, and the Beatles. That was during the "Paul is Dead" era. In later decades she discovered the great women's music pioneers who fused folk, rock, and politics to make a new space for their stories.

Mina has performed for coffee house and university audiences in Oregon and Arizona.

In her spare time, Mina is a history professor and a mother. She has recently coauthored a book with Tisa Lewis and Susan Shaw called GIRLS ROCK! FIFTY YEARS OF WOMEN MAKING MUSIC (University Press of Kentucky, 2004). She wants to be a street musician once her kids have left home.