Lucy Kaplansky's Musical Therapy
Singer-songwriter Employs the Psychology of Music

Listen to Scott Simon's interview with Lucy Kaplansky.

The new album, Every Single Day

From Every Single Day "The Angels Rejoiced" "You're Still Standing There" From 1994's's Somewhere Else Before "When I Get to the Border" "Goodnight" From 1996's Flesh and Bone "What's so Funny About Peace, Love and Understanding?" "If You Could See" From 1999's 10 Year Night "10 Year Night" From Cry Cry Cry, a 1998 collaboration with Dar Williams and Richard Shindell "Fall on Me"

July 13, 2002 -- Lucy Kaplansky is a musical star who for a time removed herself from the firmament to work as a clinical psychologist.

Now back full time, Kaplansky says she sees many links between therapy and music.

As a writer, she tells Scott Simon for Weekend Edition Saturday, "one of the things you are doing is trying to find some kind of emotional truth. I think that's what a good song does."

It's the same with therapy, she says. "It's finding out what's really going on inside you, and following that lead."

Her latest album, Every Single Day, shows the links pretty clearly on several songs. One of them, Written on the Back of His Hand, is a song about physical abuse, at least ostensibly. Kaplansky says it could also be about emotional abuse -- the lyrics leave a wide berth for interpretation.

Kaplansky says songwriting is different for her every time. "Sometimes (songs) just pop out in a week," she says. Other times, it takes six months. It's a combination of hard work and sheer luck. She recalls hearing someone tell her that "you have to get yourself into a position for a song to literally fall from the sky into your lap."

Kaplansky started her musical career in the late '70s, singing in Greenwich Village coffeehouses.

She left the business for several years to pursue her degree in clinical psychology, though she continues to work with, among others, folkies Nanci Griffith and Shawn Colvin. She issued her debut album, Tide, in 1994.

"I have no plans to ever retire again," she says.


Other Resources

The official Lucy Kaplansky homepage.

An interview with Kaplansky from 1999.

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