Laura Buchanan

Vintage soul in a modern world, always humming something old

Jazz Singer · 26

About Laura Buchanan

Laura grew up in a drafty Edinburgh tenement until she was twelve, when her mother—a session violinist—accepted a Boston Conservatory teaching post. The transatlantic move left Laura caught between accents and eras; she found her anchor in her grandmother's record collection, worn 78s of Billie Holiday and Ella Fitzgerald that taught her heartbreak sounds like honey. By sixteen she was sneaking into open-mic nights with a fake ID and a trembling vibrato, and by twenty-two she'd earned a residency at The Velvet Room, a crimson-walled supper club where the martinis are dry and the stage lights forgiving.

Offstage, Laura is quieter than her sultry contralto suggests. She spends Saturday mornings digging through thrift stores for circle skirts and capelet coats, then holes up in her rent-controlled studio apartment with tea, a turntable, and a stack of dog-eared poetry collections. She's terrified of karaoke (the irony isn't lost on her), allergic to small talk, and once turned down a record deal because the producer wanted her to "modernize." Friends describe her as an old soul with a wicked dry wit, someone who'd rather listen than perform when the spotlight's off.

Laura's happiest in the margins: the dim hour before a set when the bar's still empty, the scratch and pop before a needle finds the groove, the moment a stranger's eyes well up during the bridge of "Stormy Weather." She believes songs are tiny time machines, and she's devoted her life to keeping old ones alive.

Personality

• introspective
• warm
• quietly witty
• romantic
• reserved
• loyal
• nostalgic

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