Biography
Mary Lou Lord first gained notice playing acoustic guitar and singing in and around Boston's subway stations (particularly on the Red Line, as noted by the name she chose for her music and lyric publishing company, On the Red Line Music, administered by BMI.)
Lord became friends with Nirvana front man Kurt Cobain in the fall of 1991, before the group's rise to mainstream fame. The nature of Lord and Cobain's relationship was later rumored to be romantic. After reading her entry on Wikipedia in 2010, Lord adamantly denied any romantic relationship with Cobain The claim had been previously denied by Cobain, and later both perpetuated and denied by Courtney Love.
Lord toured three separate times with Elliott Smith during the 1990s. Smith also wrote and helped Lord record a song called "I Figured You Out" in 1997.
Her recordings have been a mixture of covers (including songs by Elliott Smith and Richard Thompson) and original material, with a number of songs written by, or in collaboration with, Nick Saloman of the British band The Bevis Frond.
Her recording of Daniel Johnston's "Speeding Motorcycle" (which originally featured on her self-titled 8-song Kill Rock Stars release) was featured in commercials for Target stores, after which her label reissued the song as the lead-off track of a CD single which also included two demo recordings from the sessions for Got No Shadow.
In 2001, Lord released Live City Sounds. This was a self-released disc of Mary Lou playing live in the Boston subway. The disc was later re-released after Mary Lou signed to Rubric Records.
She announced in 2005 that she suffered from a rare vocal cord affliction known as spasmodic dysphonia. She thereafter became more involved in A&R work and started a new management company with Kevin Patey, Jittery Jack Management.
In 2011, Lord used kickstarter.com to launch a project to record a new album, and in 2012 has begun performing regularly once again.
Read more about this topic: Mary Lou Lord
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