Caroline Cotter's sun-kissed songs honor the countless ways of being human. With her honey-sweet voice and disarmingly honest lyrics, Cotter sings about connection, nostalgia, gratitude, loss, and wanderlust. Lyrics like "Find me somewhere out on the road / Take me into your heart and into your home" make absolute sense for a touring artist who has played over 1000 shows in 45 states and 16 countries. She has performed in churches, art galleries, barns, yoga studios, punk bars, Parisian living rooms, and even on a schooner off the coast of Maine. Wherever she goes, her oracular songs evoke emotions and ignite insights – medicine for our collective longing.
Growing up in Rhode Island, Cotter played piano and listened to records by icons like the Beatles, the Beach Boys, the Carpenters, and Bob Dylan. She spent her early twenties in Spain, Thailand, and India; studying yoga and meditation; sleeping on train station floors; washing laundry in sinks; and witnessing the countless ways of life of people. On the Camino de Santiago, a pilgrimage route through northern Spain, she felt "wildly alive. As I woke with the sun in the east and walked west each day, I felt free yet full of purpose" – a feeling she would recognize and reclaim later as a touring musician.
As a songwriter, Cotter waits for the source of emotions to rise and then expresses her experiences in rhymed couplets. The process typically begins with nostalgia or longing – wondering how things were or how they could be. She endlessly interrogates existence, weaving her worries, hopes, and joys into the fabric of her songs. Cotter has released three albums, "Dreaming as I Do" (2015), "Home on the River" (2018), and "Gently as I Go" (2023). The magazine Under the Radar says her music "evokes a lasting sense of warmth and welcome, offering an uplifting reminder to make the most of every moment."
Cotter's songs effortlessly move from the small to the grand. Take "Coming Your Way," the anthem of a traveler about the people who keep her afloat by opening their hearts and homes. Or "The Year of the Wrecking Ball," in which the narrator visits her childhood home and grapples with the dissolution of her family and the feeling of continuity. And then there’s "Gone Away," an anthem for the lost and oppressed. With the precision of an analog photographer, Cotter adjusts the aperture of her attention to move between the particular and the universal qualities of our lives.
Cotter has performed at the Freshgrass Festival (North Adams, MA), the Rocky Mountain Folk Fest (Lyons, CO), the Ossipee Music Festival (Ossipee, NH), the Falcon Ridge Folk Festival (Hillsdale, NY), at the Rockwood Music Hall (New York, NY), at the Isis Music Hall (Asheville, NC), in the Alberta Rose Theatre (Portland, OR), at Swallow Hill (Denver, CO), and many others. She won the Maine Songwriters Association contest and was a finalist in the songwriting competitions of Freshgrass and the Rocky Mountain Folk Fest. When she is not roaming as a nomad, Cotter lives on the coast of Maine.
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