Joanna Newsom

Joanna Caroline Newsom (born January 18, 1982) is an American singer-songwriter and actress.

Born and raised in Northern California, Newsom was classically trained on the harp in her youth and began her musical career as a keyboardist in the San Francisco-based indie band the Pleased.

Newsom was born on January 18, 1982 in Grass Valley, California.

Her parents, both doctors, were "progressive-minded professionals" who previously lived in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Newsom was raised in Nevada City along with her older brother, Peter, and younger sister, Emily.

She is the second cousin, twice removed, of Gavin Newsom, Governor of California.

As a child, Newsom was not allowed to watch television or listen to the radio.

She describes her parents as "kind of idealists when it came to hoping they could protect us from bad influences, like violent movies, or stupid stuff."

She listened to music from a young age.

Her father played the guitar, and her mother was a classically trained pianist who played the hammered dulcimer, the autoharp and conga drums.

Newsom attended a Waldorf school where she studied theater and learned to memorize and recite long poems.

At five, Newsom asked her parents if she could learn to play the harp.

Her parents eventually agreed to sign her up for harp lessons, but the local harp instructor did not want to take on such a young student and suggested she learn to play the piano first.

She did, and later moved on to the harp which she "loved from the first lesson onward."

She first played on smaller Celtic harps until her parents bought her a full-size pedal harp in the seventh grade.

After high school, she studied composition and creative writing at Mills College, where she played keyboards in The Pleased.

She dropped out, however, to focus on her music and returned to live with family in Nevada City.

After recording and self-releasing two EPs in 2002, Newsom was signed to the independent label Drag City.

In 2002–03, after appearing as a guest musician on Nervous Cop's self-titled collaboration album, Newsom recorded two EPs, Walnut Whales and Yarn and Glue.

These homemade recordings were intended to serve as a document of her early work and were not intended for public distribution.

At the suggestion of Noah Georgeson, her then-boyfriend and recording engineer of the EP, she burned several copies to sell at her early shows.

Newsom's friend and bandmate in Golden Shoulders, Adam Kline, gave one of her CDs to Will Oldham at a show in Nevada City.

Oldham was impressed with Newsom's music and asked her to tour with him.

He also gave a copy of the CD to the owner of Drag City, his record label.

Her debut album, The Milk-Eyed Mender, was released in 2004 to critical acclaim and garnered Newsom an underground following.

Drag City signed Newsom and released her debut album The Milk-Eyed Mender in 2004.

Shortly thereafter, Newsom toured with Devendra Banhart and Vetiver to promote the album and made an early UK appearance at the Green Man Festival in Wales.

In December 2004, she performed with Smog and Weird War at Drag City's "It's a Wonderful Next Life" Christmas party.

She also appeared as a guest musician on Vetiver's 2004 self-titled album, and the following year, on Vashti Bunyan's Lookaftering (2005).

She would receive wider exposure with the release of Ys (2006), which charted at number 134 on the Billboard 200 and was nominated for a 2007 Shortlist Music Prize.

Her second album, Ys (/ˈiːs/), was released in November 2006, also by Drag City.

The album features orchestrations and arrangements by Van Dyke Parks, engineering from Steve Albini and mixing by Drag City label-mate Jim O'Rourke.

On a road trip, Bill Callahan recommended she listen to the album Song Cycle by Parks, which led to him being chosen to arrange her work on Ys.

The album was remarked as a "neo-folk benchmark" by music historian John Morrish in 2007 and was named the 12th best folk album of all time by NME.

The track "Sprout and the Bean" was featured in the 2008 horror film The Strangers.

She released two further albums: Have One on Me (2010), and Divers (2015), the latter of which outsold all of her previous albums.

Newsom has been noted by critics for her unique musical style, sometimes characterized as progressive folk, and for her prominent use of harp instrumentation.

The Milk-Eyed Mender had sold 200,000 copies as of 2010 and helped her garner an underground following.

The tour was the subject of the 2011 documentary, The Family Jams.

She has also appeared as an actress with roles in the television series Portlandia and in the 2014 film Inherent Vice.