Joanna Caroline Newsom (born January 18, 1982) is an American singer-songwriter and actress. Born and raised in Northern California, Newsom was classically trained on the harp in her youth and began her musical career as a keyboardist in the San Francisco-based indie band the Pleased.
After recording and self-releasing two EPs in 2002, Newsom was signed to the independent label Drag City. Her debut album, The Milk-Eyed Mender, was released in 2004 to critical acclaim and garnered Newsom an underground following. She would receive wider exposure with the release of Ys (2006), which charted at number 134 on the Billboard 200 and was nominated for a 2007 Shortlist Music Prize.
She released two further albums: Have One on Me (2010), and Divers (2015), the latter of which outsold all of her previous albums. Newsom has been noted by critics for her unique musical style, sometimes characterized as psychedelic folk, and for her prominent use of harp instrumentation. She has also appeared as an actress with roles in the television series Portlandia and in the 2014 film Inherent Vice.
Early life
Newsom was born on January 18, 1982 in Grass Valley, California. Her parents, both doctors, were "progressive-minded professionals" who previously lived in the San Francisco Bay Area. Newsom was raised in Nevada City along with her older brother, Peter, and younger sister, Emily. She is the second cousin, twice removed, of Gavin Newsom, Governor of California.
As a child, Newsom was not allowed to watch television or listen to the radio. She describes her parents as "kind of idealists when it came to hoping they could protect us from bad influences, like violent movies, or stupid stuff." She was exposed to music from a young age. Her father played the guitar, and her mother was a classically trained pianist who played the hammered dulcimer, the autoharp and conga drums. Newsom attended a Waldorf school where she studied theater and learned to memorize and recite long poems.
At the age of five, Newsom asked her parents if she could learn to play the harp. Her parents eventually agreed to sign her up for harp lessons, but the local harp instructor did not want to take on such a young student and suggested she learn to play the piano first. She did, and later moved on to the harp which she "loved from the first lesson onward." She first played on smaller Celtic harps until her parents bought her a full-size pedal harp in the seventh grade.
After high school, she studied composition and creative writing at Mills College, where she played keyboards in The Pleased. She dropped out, however, in order to focus on her music and returned to live with family in Nevada City.
