Lauren O'Connell

Lauren O'Connell was born in Rochester, New York on December 10, 1988. They began playing guitar at the age of twelve and wrote their first song by the age of fifteen. Their early performing experience came from playing open mic nights with their high school friend, Julia Nunes. In 2007, O'Connell went to Saxon Recording in Rochester at the suggestion of a friend and recorded their debut album Sitting in Chairs with engineer Dave Anderson. They recorded the entire album in one day, using single takes of each song.[1]

Shortly after releasing Sitting in Chairs, O'Connell began attending Binghamton University.[2][3] Throughout their first year they continued to write and perform. They began uploading videos of their original songs to YouTube so that they could share them with their friends from Rochester, including Nunes. Nunes made videos as well and garnered an unexpected following, and her videos led audiences to find O'Connell's work. O'Connell's first videos were simple one-takes of original songs with guitar and voice, but they soon progressed to include cover songs with layered harmonies and accompaniment, usually with O'Connell playing all of the instruments themselves. Though they generally use traditional instruments in their songs, O'Connell has sometimes used unconventional means when recording, including wine glasses, a metal tool cabinet, kicks to a garage door, a tennis racket covered in change, and a deck of playing cards.[4][5] In late 2008, they decided to leave school and pursue music full-time.

Shortly after leaving school, O'Connell began recording their follow-up album The Shakes, which was released in early 2009.

During the summer of 2009, O'Connell met Jack Conte and Nataly Dawn of Pomplamoose when they came to New York to produce Nunes' I Think You Know EP. In 2010, O'Connell moved to Sonoma County, CA where they moved into a house with Conte and Dawn.[6] A few months after moving to California, O'Connell and Dawn began a collaboration called My Terrible Friend.[7] The duo recorded an EP titled Room for Ghosts in their home studio and released it on July 7, 2010.[8][9] On July 20, 2010, O'Connell and Dawn were featured on the YouTube homepage for Music Tuesday, both individually and as My Terrible Friend.

Though O'Connell's fanbase was initially centered on the local area where they performed, their YouTube presence exposed their music to a much wider audience. On November 8, 2009, they played with Pomplamoose at the wedding of Take That member Mark Owen and English actress Emma Ferguson in Cawdor Church, Scotland.[10][11] Ferguson, a fan of Rufus Wainwright, discovered Nataly Dawn's cover of Wainwright's song "Cigarettes and Chocolate Milk" and invited Dawn to play the song at the wedding. They then discovered Pomplamoose and O'Connell and Dawn's "The Daylight Here" and invited Conte and O'Connell to play as well.

In September 2010 O'Connell was chosen as the West Regional Winner of the 2010 Mountain Stage Newsong Contest. On October 22, 2010, they joined eleven other finalists from across America and Canada at Arts World Financial Center's Wintergarden in New York City for the Award Round performance competition and an opportunity to record an EP with Grammy winning producer Jacquire King.[12][13]

On December 14, 2010, O'Connell announced that they were raising money to record a new album and were working with Pledgemusic in order to give fans an opportunity to help fund studio time, with the goal of being in the studio sometime in January 2011. In return for pledging O'Connell decided to include personalized merchandise ranging from autographed CDs and T-shirts, handwritten lyrics, and hand-drawn artwork to house concerts, their personal iPod filled with music, and even grocery shopping or mini-golf with the pledger when they come to their city for a show.[14] The project was set for a sixty-day pledge period, however, fan pledges exceeded the target amount in the first 24 hours, making it the fastest Pledgemusic project ever to reach its goal at the time. One week later they added more of the incentives that sold out quickly as well as new incentives like the harmonicas they used for their videos and albums, a Photoshop vacation photo with the pledger, and a volleyball painted with the pledger's face in the style of "Wilson" from the movie Cast Away, joking that their New Year's resolution was to make progressively weirder arts and crafts.[15] The project raised 268% of the original goal by the time it concluded on February 14, 2011.[16]

In March 2022, O'Connell came out as genderqueer and switched to they/them pronouns.[17]

• Official website
• YouTube
• Lauren O'Connell Patreon
• Lauren O'Connell on Bandcamp