Lucy Kaplansky

Lucy Kaplansky grew up in New York City listening to folk music, and started performing in the early 1980s with guitarist Richard Shindell. Their duo played on the folk circuit for a while before she went solo in 1993. Her first album, 'The Tide,' came out the next year.

She kept making records through the 1990s and 2000s, like 'Red Horse' and 'Ten Year Night.' One of her best-known songs is 'Broken Things,' from the 1999 album 'The Red Thread.' It's a quiet, steady song about holding on when things fall apart. She also wrote 'By Way Of Sorrow' and 'Cowboy Singer.'

Her singing is clear and direct, without much ornament. She doesn't shout or swoop; she just lays the words out where you can hear them. That plain delivery suits the kind of stories she tells, small moments, ordinary regrets, the kind of broken things that don't get fixed but don't disappear either.