About Lorina Harding

Born on the sweeping Canadian prairies, Lorina was the eldest daughter of a Swedish painter and a Lebanese opera singer. "My dad was the opera singer. He also had a day job (civil engineer) to support the six kids and we were forever moving as he chased the next promotion."

One of those promotions led to the small northern port of Churchill; arrived at by a train nicknamed the Muskeg Express because "the tracks ran over shifting muskeg and the telephone poles had to be propped up by two additional poles to prevent them from sinking!"

It was in Churchill, at the age of eight, that Lorina picked up her first guitar ("it was actually my oldest brother's guitar, an old sunburst arch top with strings as thick as my fingers!") and learned her first song on it ("Little Red Riding Hood by Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs which was playing on the radio at the time").

It was also in Churchill where Lorina met some colourful new friends including a "...14 year old hooker who had her eye scooped out with a spoon by a drunken boyfriend", and where she had her first close up of native people and of real poverty. "It was common to see people at the dump rummaging for food. My mom would knowingly throw out perfectly good food; her family was hard hit by the depression so she understood that kind of poverty."

As a young teenager, Lorina's family moved back to Winnipeg where she "suffered the slings and arrows of outrageous adolescence", and where she started playing in her first bands. "I ate up all the 60's stuff -Janis Joplin, Grace Slick, Jimi Hendrix, Frank Zappa, Capt. Beefheart etc."

The mid-70's were a musical wasteland for Lorina but she was brought back to life by musicians like Joan Armatrading, Ricki Lee Jones, Elvis Costello and Tom Waits and got her first taste of alternative country music with songwriters John Prine, Steve Goodman, and swing masters Dan Hicks, and Asleep at the Wheel.

Lorina credits the end of her marriage to a songwriter for inspiring her to write her own songs. "At first, I did it out of spite, but then, kind of like a bucket being tipped; the songs just poured out!" After moving to New Zealand in 1988, Lorina released her first album Lucky Damn Woman. It won Best Folk Album at the NZ Music Awards and attracted the attention of record company Real Groovy Records who re-released the tape as a CD in 1993.

Lorina took a break from touring to raise her daughter Hannah who like her mother is a natural performer. The duo wrote and recorded a song for Lorina's latest album due for release in March/April 2005. The album is called Clean Break.