Louisa Stancioff has an upcoming performance as part of the Under the Oaks Music Festival in Farmington on Friday, Aug. 30. Matt Gaillet

It’s neat when Mainers hit the national scene and the latest example of that, for me, happens to be singer/songwriter Louisa Stancioff.

CONCERT INFO

LOUISA STANCIOFF
TIME: 7 p.m.
DATE: Friday, Aug. 30
VENUE: Whistlestop Concerts
ADDRESS: 123 Narrow Gauge Square, Farmington
TICKETS: $37.89-$132.43
EMAIL: goldenoakband@gmail.com
WEBSITE: louisastancioff.net

The musician has traveled around the country working on farms in Alaska, assisted a director on a TV series in Hollywood, worked shifts at a grocery store in Echo Park and picked apples at an orchard in Maine (sadly not Pietree Orchard here in Sweden).

She recently released her first album “When We Were Looking” on Yep Roc Records that was recorded at Sam Kassire’s Great North Sound Society in Parsonsfield. I learned about her from her publicist, Lellie Capwell, and requested a phoner to help support Stancioff’s upcoming performance as part of the Under the Oaks Music Festival in Farmington on Friday, Aug. 30.

Q: I dialed a Maine number that Lellie gave me so I could chat with you — so you’re in Maine now.
A: I’m in Denver right now, I just flew in last night, but I am from Maine. I live in Maine, I am from there.

Q: What part of the state?
A: I live in mid-coast Maine but I’m from Western Maine — the Farmington area.

Q: When was “When We Were Looking” released?
A: It came out April 12, 2024.

Q: Are you in Colorado performing or visiting?
A: I’m about to head out on a tour. I’m opening up for Blitzen Trapper on that tour.

Q: Now, are you opening solo or with a band?
A: I switch it up every time but this time my cousin, Matt, is going to be accompanying me, we’ll both be playing guitar on stage.

Q: When you said that you ‘switch it up,’ do you know how you’ll be performing for that show in August at the Under the Oaks Music Festival?
A: Oh, that’ll be with a full band.

Q: I’d like to talk a little about your vocal stylings on this debut album, there’s a real angelic quality to your voice that is wistful, poignant and,  if I understand it right, a bit cathartic.
A: Yeah, for sure. It was recorded during COVID times in 2020. I wrote all the songs around that same time, too, and it was mostly just kind of processing a lot of old things that had happened over the last few years: my early to mid 20s, just that traumatic time in your life (chuckle). A lot of those songs probably wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t been in lock-down mode.

Q: I guess the pandemic has some small positive parts to it in hindsight. Seeing your album came out five months ago, is it too soon to ask if you are working on new material?
A: Well, I have a lot of new songs and I do like to perform new stuff that’s unrecorded at shows, but I really like all the new stuff, it’s really different. And it’s more based around playing with a full band because the songs I wrote for the first album I didn’t have anyone I was playing with, I was just playing in my room by myself. Now that I know I’ll be with a band a lot of it is going to be filled out by instrumentation and percussion, very lyrically driven, intense songs that you can move a little to.

Q: So it’s a little more upbeat?
A: Yeah.

Q: I know you have traveled and lived all around this country, literally from coast to coast, so I’m curious to know how, if at all, has being a Mainer formed what you do?
A: It’s a whole kind of lifestyle, a lot of driving, homesteading, gardening, collaborating with the people that are around. There are really talented, lovely people where I live. And I think it often creates things that are more authentic then you’d find in a city where it’s so distracting. I love nature so much, I love being in the woods and being able to swim, skate in the wintertime and walk quietly through the woods, it’s a totally beautiful thing we have.

Q: As someone who is nestled in 50 acres of ancestral land, I resonate to what you’re saying, for sure.

What can folks expect from your show in Farmington on the 30th?
A: It’ll be a full-band show. We’ll play some of the songs from the record, some new stuff, maybe a cover or two, it’ll be a really fun time. I sing lead the whole time but my band-mates sing harmony with me, we’ve got some three-part harmonies, and we might even have a keyboard by then, I might be switching between guitar and keyboard that night. And I’m old friends with the Goldenoak folks who put on that festival, we went to high school together, so hopefully we’ll sing some songs together, too, definitely around the campfire later on.

Q: Is there anything you’d like to pass on to the folks reading this article, especially seeing this is a homecoming concert there in Farmington?
A: Yeah, I grew up in that area and I haven’t played a show there in a couple of years, so I’m definitely really excited to come back through. In fact, I actually have a whole song about where this festival’s taking place and it’s called “Red Neck Yaught Club,” it’s on Spotify and it’s my first release ever, and it’s written about this area and growing up in rural Maine and being a teenager that feels a lot of things. I’m just so excited to be playing a show right there, I think it’s going to be really cathartic in a lot of ways.

Q: How so?
A: Well, it’s like peering back into the energy of that time of my life, it’s not really a real story.

Lucky Clark, a 2018 “Keeping the Blues Alive” Award winner, has spent more than 50 years writing about good music and the people who make it. He can be reached at luckyc@myfairpoint.net if you have any questions, comments or suggestions.