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Alicia Bay Laurel
Composer
 Born
May 14, 1949 in Hollywood,
California, to sculptor Verna
Lebow, MFA, and surgeon Paul Kaufman, MD, Alicia grew up in a bi-lingual,
intellectual, artistic, musical and politically active household. A
passionate follower of her muse since early childhood, Alicia was influenced
and acknowledged by three major figures in art, music and literature by her
mid-teens. Her multi-instrumental music studies lead her to learn open-tuned
guitar improvisation from John Fahey, then married to Alicia's cousin Janet
Lebow. A summer scholarship to Otis Art Institute enabled Alicia to study
with Charles White III in 1965. While working as a graphic layout artist at
the infamous Los Angeles Free Press in 1966, Alicia submitted a piece of
writing that Joan Didion selected as the quintessential example of
alternative press writing for an article titled "Alicia and the
Underground Press" in her Points West column in the Saturday Evening
Post.
At seventeen, after six weeks at San Francisco State College, Alicia began a
productive career as a free-lance artist/writer/musician. She sang and played
guitar at coffee houses in the Bay Area, wrote songs, drew reams of line
drawings, worked occasionally as a cook, and attended a semester at San
Francisco Fashion Institute (long enough to learn pattern drafting). In 1967
she moved to the houseboats off Sausalito
where she adopted collage artist Jean Varda as a mentor. At eighteen, she
worked out of her own art studio in the Industrial
Center Building
in Sausalito.
At nineteen Alicia moved to the Wheeler Ranch Commune in Sonoma County,
California and began writing, illustrating and designing Living On The Earth,
a handwritten guide to bohemian country living illustrated with line
drawings, initially as an informational pamphlet for fellow commune dwellers.
Published in 1970 by The Bookworks in Berkeley,
the book sold out its first edition of 10,000 copies in two weeks. Bennett
Cerf, then president of Random House, purchased the rights to publish it for
Random House.
The 1971 Random House Vintage Books edition sold over 350,000 copies,
becoming the first paperback book ever on the New York Times Bestseller List.
It was favorably reviewed in Time, New York Times Review of Books, Publishers
Weekly, the Whole Earth Catalog, Library Journal, Christian Science Monitor,
Look, and dozens of other publications, and Alicia was recognized as a Woman
of the Year in 1971 by Mademoiselle Magazine.
Over the next three years she created seven other illustrated books, five of
which were published by Soshisha, Ltd. in Japan. (Living on the Earth
has remained in print continuously in Japanese since 1972, and Being of the
Sun was re-released by Soshisha in March 2007.) In 1974, Alicia went on
a book tour to Japan,
stopped on the way back in Maui, and stayed
to learn traditional Hawaiian slack key guitar.
Over her long residence in Maui, Alicia studied Hawaiian music, worked as an
underwater photographer, taught yoga, performed extensively as a
vocalist/guitarist, had several one-woman art shows, taught art, music,
writing and dance at two alternative schools, and illustrated books. Over
eleven years she produced 3000 weddings as the owner of a legendary Maui wedding company. In 1999 she sold the company,
produced a CD of her original folk songs, Music From Living on the Earth, and
toured the USA
for eight months telling original comedy stories, singing original songs and
promoting the 30th Anniversary Edition of Living on the Earth.
Following the tour, she produced a second CD of original and historic
Hawaiian songs, Living in Hawaii Style, toured in Hawaii
and California,
and headlined in the Big Island Slack Key Guitar Festival. Both of her first
two CDs were released in Japan
by EM Records in September 2005. Alicia released her third CD, What Living's
All About, 12 jazz and blues songs, 10 of them original, in May 2006. The CD
was one of 12 Editor's DIY Picks in the May 2007 issue of Performing
Songwriter Magazine, and the opening song, Floozy Tune, placed in the Top 20
Finalists in the Jazz Category of the 2007 Unisong International Songwriting
Contest. Living on the Earth was published in its 4th Edition in 2003 by
Gibbs Smith, Publisher.
In October 2006, Alicia toured Japan
for a month as the guest of Artist Power Bank, an environmental arts
organization in Tokyo,
performing eight concerts. Fashion designer Aya Noguchi created a line
of clothing celebrating Living on the Earth for release in September 2007.
Alicia returned to Japan
for a fifteen concert tour from April 26 to June 19, 2007, which included
being the subject of a documentary on Asahi Broadcasting Station. She
will return to Japan for a
gallery show at Artist Power Bank's bookstore in Tokyo, and another musical tour, in May
2008. Aya Noguchi is planning to release a new line of clothing with
Alicia's color drawings and paintings on them to coincide with the gallery
opening.
Alicia is currently based in Los
Angeles, writing and illustrating a treatment for a
children's animated television series and creating a new CD of songs for the
show.
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