music by val blaha

Fun facts...

As a child, Val practiced at least an hour every morning before school.

Val used to play washtub bass with the Buck Dance Medicine Show, a ragtime country blues trio with members of Grafton Street and the Pagan Jug Band.

Val's bio...

Born and raised in southern California, Val Blaha started singing almost before she could talk. According to recollections of her Colombian grandmother, Val would sit in her crib early in the morning and sing while waiting for each new day to start. At age 6 Val started taking piano lessons. She soon was performing at student and public recitals and received an award for Individual Achievement from the Motion Picture Council of Southern California at age 12. She performed at countless public and private events throughout her teens, and also studied music theory, hymn playing, guitar and voice.

At UC Santa Barbara, Val studied under Wendell Nelson and Thomas Russell. After concentrating on piano accompaniment for 3 years she decided to save the world through anthropology and went on to get an MA in Anthropology from Western Washington University. Upon realizing that she was not going to solve global warming by working day jobs to pay off her student loans, she devoted herself to teaching music, playing guitar, piano, mandolin and washtub bass, songwriting, and small-scale farming.

Val's favorite classical composers are Chopin, Mozart and Debussy. Her other musical influences include Emmylou Harris, Nanci Griffith, Patty Griffin, Johnny Cash, John Prine, Michelle Shocked, Guy Clark, Dave Carter and Tracy Grammer, and the Indigo Girls. More recent influences include Kris Delmhorst, Missy Higgins, Brandi Carlile, Martha Scanlan, and Miranda Lambert.