Brian Laidlaw is a folk poet, songwriter, and performer from Northern California. He studied creative writing at Stanford and spent a term abroad, taking tutorials in formal poetry at Corpus Christi College in Oxford. While in England he began setting his poems to music, and performed them to enthusiastic crowds at small cafes and underground pubs. One of these pieces, “The Ballad of Jotham,” later won American Songwriter Magazine’s lyric contest in March, 2007. 

Brian’s early compositions became Quarter-Life , a self-published chapbook of poetry that included a CD, affixed inside the front cover, with musical versions of the written work. Since then Brian has recorded several more albums, the most recent of which, Fond Memories of Sound, was released by Garagista Music. 

After a few years of rambling and performing around the U.S., Brian entered the University of Minnesota creative writing program in Fall ‘08, where he is working toward an M.F.A. in poetry.  He continues to perform regularly in the Twin Cities and the San Francisco Bay Area.