Laura Boosinger

When she was eighteen years old, Laura Boosinger started at Warren Wilson College, and she soon enrolled in a banjo class. That class proved to be the beginning of an acclaimed career as a traditional musician. In 1984, Boosinger heard a rumor that the Luke Smathers String Band of Canton, mountain swing virtuosos, needed a new banjo player. Shyly, she approached Smathers and asked to be considered. Within a month she was rehearsing in “Bea’s Kitchen” (the kitchen of the Luke and Bea Smathers’ house), and performing with the band on stage. Boosinger was a member of the band for the next thirteen years, until Luke Smathers’s death in 1997.