Laura Cossey - Folk-Rock Singer/Songwriter

Folk-Rock singer/songwriter Laura Cossey was born in Kansas City, Missouri, but moved to a small town in Arkansas when she was around 4 years old. The youngest of five children, and the only girl, Laura took up the guitar at age 10 to emulate her older brother and fellow songwriter Mike Cossey. She wrote her first song shortly thereafter, but self-consciousness made her unable to sing outside of her bedroom for many years. In Laura’s early teens, her uncle Jerry Schadd, who played the drumset and also sang, came to live with her family and with his encouragement she started playing and singing audibly enough for other members of the family to actually hear her.

Most of Laura’s earliest and lasting musical influences were songwriters found in her brothers’ album collections, such as the early Eagles and early Elton John, The Ozark Mountain Daredevils, and John Prine. Later, she discovered female artists like Tracy Chapman, Shawn Colvin and Michelle Shocked, as well as The Indigo Girls, Melissa Etheridge, and Sam Phillips, and she has recently completely fallen in love with the music of Rickie Lee Jones.

Laura attended college in Kansas, and formed a duo called The Nameless Ones with fellow student musician and songwriter Steve Unruh during her final year in college. The duo later added bass player Don Duncan, changed the band name to Sign of Saturn, and independently released a self-titled cd in 1996. Laura left the band later that year, and has only recently begun to record and perform again. She currently lives in Lawrence, Kansas.