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Laura Pursell

Laura Pursell is one of those singers/songwriters who fully utilizes her arsenal of personal experiences to inform her lyrics. She’s fearless when it comes to baring her all. And her current project, SOMEWHERE IN THIS ROOM, reflects this in that it is a very personal and candid aural exploration of romantic relationships ��" both good and otherwise. From the beginning, Laura’s voice ��" at turns wonderfully smooth or intense and emphatic ��" invites the listener into her personal interior landscape, another world where one is gently buoyed upon waves of peace and calm. Yet, she’s almost an accidental vocalist who didn’t begin to take her musical gifts seriously as a singer and lyricist until she moved to Los Angeles in 1991 after graduating from the University of Tennessee, in Knoxville where she majored in advertising. After deciding it wasn’t in her heart or destiny to pursue a career as a copywriter, Laura decided to pull up stakes and relocate to Los Angeles. When Laura arrived in the ‘City of Angels’, her initial goal was to embark upon a career as an actress. She studied under the tutelage of renowned acting teacher and drama coach Milton Kateselas at the Beverly Hills Playhouse and with Georgia Phillips at Orange County’s South Coast Rep. She went on to appear in the feature film “The Landlady,” which starred Talia Shire as well as on a television soap opera, on the boards of local theatres in and around the Los Angeles metro area, and in the Weird Al Yankovic video which spoofed a popular song first made famous by the Crash Test Dummies (“Mmmmmm Mmmmmm”). Still somehow music won out. It had always been present in her childhood home in Nashville, Tennessee, a city best known as the seat of country music, largely because of the influence and presence of her father, Bill Pursell, the famed piano recording artist of the 1963 Columbia Records hit single, "Our Winter Love." At the height of his career, Pursell worked as one of Nashville’s core sidemen and arrangers, and he’s played with some notable music icons including Patsy Cline, Johnny Cash, Marty Robbins and Bob Dylan, among others. “I remember how excited my sister and I were when Art Garfunkel was at our house to rehearse for a country club appearance he was making. We thought that was really cool,” remembers Laura. “Concert artists regularly showed up at our home, people like Andre Watts and Pulitzer Prize-winning pianist/composer Morton Gould, not that I knew what to say to any of them!” Once she decided that she wanted to focus her energies on creating music and singing, Laura took songwriting classes, learned how to play the guitar, and began to explore her range and abilities as a lyricist.

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"The album is not meant to be sliced into pieces on an iPod; it must be experienced from beginning to end, letting its various parts melt into each other to produce a massively satisfying and hauntingly pretty whole. Somewhere in this Room is nothing less than a work of art." Vivian Fields, Midnight Jazz

"Laura Pursell (http://www.somewhereinthisroom.com) has released an album that has the studio glow and airtight professionalism of a classic major-label release." Adam Harrington, Whisperin and Hollerin

"Those who prefer the less-is-more standard of today’s pop craftsmanship might be puzzled by all the added instrumentation here, but Pursell and Bonime are reaching for the artistic heights set by the jazz and soul artists of the past when having a Big Band behind you was considered cool." Brooke Curtis, Twangtown

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Music

Recordings: As Leader | As Sideperson

Somewhere in this Room

Cloudshine Global Music
2008

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Unkissed

Netcom Music
2000

buy

It Had to Be Swing

Netcom Music
1999

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