Blues
Charlottesville and Richmond, Virginia

Virginia’s female blues artists have made tremendous contributions to American music, with the likes of Ruth Brown, Pearl Bailey, Gaye Adegbalola, and others at the genre’s forefront. Following in the footsteps of these legends is Waynesboro’s Lorie Strother, who is one half of Dr. Levine and the Dreaded BluesLady along with guitarist Stephen Levine. This energetic duo performs a diverse selection of acoustic music styles. Though blues is their focus, they also sometimes surprise audiences with jazz, R&B, soul, and classic rock tunes. Lorie can't remember a time when she wasn't singing because it came so naturally. She has been performing and recording her interpretation of acoustic blues since the early 1990s. Corey Harris has called her "a real blues woman [who's] got soul," and Living Blues Magazine described her singing as "assertive, expressive and sensitive." She apprenticed with Gaye Adegbalola, a founding member of the award-winning all-woman blues band, Saffire: The Uppity Blues Women, in the Virginia Folklife Apprenticeship Program in 2013.