KARLA
BONOFF

The Songwriter

From the Troubadour to The Bend

Born and raised in Southern California, Karla Bonoff was writing by fifteen — studying guitar with Frank Hamilton of The Weavers, lining up at noon for the Troubadour Monday “hoot,” sharing air with Jackson Browne, James Taylor, and Elton John. With Kenny Edwards, Wendy Waldman, and Andrew Gold she formed Bryndle — one of the early songwriter bands, even before the Eagles.

“Long before Alanis and Jewel, there was a breed of singer/songwriters whose earthy anthems of soul-searching, heartache and joy touched souls in a way few can muster today.” — Billboard on All My Life

Linda Ronstadt heard a demo of “Lose Again” and put three Bonoff songs on Hasten Down the Wind. Columbia signed Karla as a solo artist in 1977. “All My Life,” her duet with Ronstadt and Aaron Neville, won a Grammy. Wynonna took “Tell Me Why” to the top of country radio. She still tours America — and Japan has long been a second home — often with guitarist Nina Gerber as her ally on stage.

The Songs

• Someone to Lay Down Beside Me
• Personally
• All My Life
• Tell Me Why
• Home
• If He’s Ever Near
• Lose Again
• The Water Is Wide

What the night feels like

Guitar · Piano · Stories · Room listening

Reviewers describe a Karla Bonoff evening as a living-room narrative: warm unpretentious vocals, confident guitar and piano, and Nina Gerber’s delicately coloring Strat and acoustic lines. Anecdotes from the road. Songs that improved with age. A soft landing on “The Water Is Wide” — back to her earliest Weavers-rooted studies.

It’s the catalog of a writer’s writer — the ones other artists made famous, and the ones that still feel most true when she sings them herself.