Laura Boosinger and Mike Compton: An Inaugural Performance at the Brand New Burke Arts Council Theater
Thursday, June 5 @ 7PM • BAC Members $30 Non Members $35
We hope you’ll come and help us celebrate the opening of our brand new theater as we proudly present these talented musicians, Laura Boosinger and Mike Compton.
“An Amazing duet… Laura and Mike bring their love and respect of American traditional music together, preserving and sharing it for us all to enjoy! I wish I could go to every show!” ~Bryan Sutton, Grammy Award Winning Guitar Player
“The collaboration of Bluegrass Royalty Mike Compton and Laura Boosinger - “The Knackered Ramblers”, was nothing short of breath-taking. Flawless playing....the musical connection was on full display.” ~Laura Scoble, Brewgrass 2025
Laura Boosinger was born in California. After living throughout the south during her teenage years, her family came to North Carolina in 1975 when Laura was seventeen and she enrolled at Warren Wilson College where her life took a dramatic shift.
Laura learned that she could take banjo lessons for college credit! Having no idea what she had really signed up for, she met David Holt and began a lifelong friendship with her mentor. She “designed” her own major around Appalachian Music and Studies. Laura began playing and performing with Holt and numerous other players around the Asheville area, which she adopted as her home, just as the area and its musical community adopted her.
Laura has been a mentor for numerous young musicians in western North Carolina, always happy to sing another chorus or play a line one more time for inquiring young ears. One of those young musicians is Josh Goforth, with whom she has toured extensively in the US and Scotland. Their music is a combination of mountain standards, traditional ballads, and old pop songs.
Her latest collaboration is with Mike Compton, mandolinist extraordinaire and the mandolin voice of the movie soundtrack “Oh Brother Where Art Thou.” They call themselves the “Knackered Ramblers”.
Laura has recorded numerous solo albums, including Let Me Linger, Down the Road, and Sing it Yourself. She serves as a consultant to the Blue Ridge Music Trails of North Carolina project which strives to sustain the rich music traditions of Western North Carolina and the region. She is the creator and host of the “Down the Road” podcast.
Mike Compton is a Grammy- and IBMA award-winning artist and a passionate teacher and advocate for the mandolin. Mandolin Magazine calls him “a certified mandolin icon”.
Born in Meridian, Mississippi, Compton grew up hearing old-time country music and took up the mandolin as a teenager, drawn to the powerful mix of old-time fiddle stylings, blues influences, and pure creativity embodied in Bill Monroe’s playing. By the mid-1980’s, he was a founding member of the Nashville Bluegrass Band, which quickly became one of the most prominent and admired in bluegrass.
He has recorded a half-dozen albums and toured extensively with the legendary John Hartford in the Hartford String Band. Working with producer T-Bone Burnett, Compton performed as a Soggy Bottom Boy on the Grammy-winning soundtrack to 2001’s “O Brother, Where Art Thou?” and on the subsequent Grammy-winning “Down From the Mountain” soundtrack and tours.