Carla comes from South
Carolina, has a BA in Music and is now resident near New York. She has built a
reputation around the coffee house, festival and house concert circuit
all over the US, performing her (mostly) comic
compositions.
Song topics
include such socially relevant themes as dating for the food, the Guinness
Book of Records and Star Wars. In 2002 she suffered two strokes and kidney
failure (she talks about it in her act). Undeterred, she re-learned the guitar
from scratch, spending many hours in doctors' waiting rooms penning funny
parodies about her maladies and the absurdity of the American medical system.
The result was her third CD, "Sick Humor: The Lighter Side Of
Illness".
Carla has taught guitar at
several colleges, Hummingbird Music Camp and the National Guitar Workshop, and
published a book of music theory for children. She is in demand at such
major folk and acoustic festivals as Kerrville and Falcon Ridge, medical
conventions (thanks to Sick Humor!), science fiction conventions (known as
filk festivals) and radio and TV shows local and national. She lists a
highlight of her career as sharing the bill with Twiggy The Waterskiing
Squirrel (which is where you will begin to realise she doesn't take
herself too seriously, though when she wants, she can deliver a beautiful
love song).
Her now notorious protest song
against swearing, "If I Had The Copyright (The F-Word Song)" will be raising
her profile in the States shortly, as it opens a documentary film on the
subject of that epithet which features such disparate contributors as Billy
Connolly, Pat Boone (!) and in one of his last interviews, writer Hunter S
Thompson. For a family-friendly rendition of this song, visit www.carlau.com, scroll the home page to Live Streaming Videos, and
click F-Word. How she self-censors live is a hoot.
She has scored in many
song contest awards at events such as South Carolina Folk Festival,
the afore-mentioned Kerrville and Falcon Ridge (Most Wanted Emerging Artist)
and has appeared in well-known music venues across the USA from Kuumbwa
Jazz Centre, Santa Cruz, California, to the legendary Bitter End, where the
folk boom of the 50s and early 60s began, in New York
City.
The latter is where I saw Carla
delight the crowd (and me) with her wit and warmth, and I decided it
would be fun to help with her desire to perform in the UK, providing as I
do the technical (PA & lights) side of performance, together offering a
complete professional presentation, including good quality posters and flyers,
and of course full commitment to obtaining maximum publicity via radio and
press.