Album Notes

"Ascend will very much touch your emotions in a most valuable way... Best thing I've heard in a long while."-STEVE FORBERT

6/26/09: Ascend is nominated for the 2009 Just Plain Folks Music Awards. It is one of 10 nominated for Best New Folk Album of the Year. Other nominees in this category include: Janis Ian, Devon Sproule and Bill Mumy. Two of Laurie's songs from Ascend, "He Smiled Like An Angel" and "Pollyanna," were nominated for New Folk Song of the Year; and another, "Somewhere in Kentucky" (which seems to be a radio favorite) was nominated for Traditional Folk Song of the Year. Ascend is an album of 14 songs, all written by Laurie.

Just Plain Folks Awards, nicknamed the "Grassroots Grammies" honor "the other 98% of the music world often ignored by the mainstream televised music awards shows." More than 42,000 albums -- that's over 560,000 songs -- were submitted for consideration in the largest music awards of any kind in world history. The awards will be presented on August 29th in Nashville, TN.