A dreamer and visionary by nature, Elizabeth Day Lawrence believes that life's possibilities can be limitless beyond the imagination. From the time that she got her first electric guitar at age eleven – a Squier II Strat – and played it for months before acquiring an amp, she was rarely seen without it strapped across her body.
A middle child in a rurally isolated home, raised by a single mother, Elizabeth was often left to fend for herself – meaning that she could essentially play guitar as much as she liked. As a result, she played almost all the time. She would walk, talk, and cook while playing. She slept with her guitar every night, woke up with it every morning, and upon waking immediately started strumming. Her guitar was her hope for a better future, her security blanket, her best friend, her lifeline.
And it wasn’t just guitar that Elizabeth was drawn to; it was everything musical. At age nine, she dedicated herself to learning every musical instrument she could get her hands on – clarinet, tenor and bari sax, oboe, upright bass, banjo, dulcimer, dobro, autoharp, digeridoo, pedal steel guitar, even bassoon. Public school band programs and scholarships to music summer camps allowed her to further indulge her fixation. Jamming with her little brother in the Maryland woods, she reveled in the connection of their shared musical experience and the sheer joy of making sound. And she found that when she was playing music, she could make time stop.
Elizabeth initially learned the basics of guitar from her father, a lifelong musician and professional bassist. The first song that he taught her was The Beatles song “Blackbird,” and seeing how quickly she picked it up, he knew he had a budding pro on his hands. He proudly proclaimed of his young daughter, “She didn’t choose music; music chose her.”
Elizabeth’s relationship with her father, a brilliant musician struggling with the disease of addiction, was complicated. When he wasn’t lost in his addiction, she went to visit him about once a month. During these visits, he nurtured her natural talent, intent on teaching her everything that he knew. He also facilitated her entrée into the professional music scene, beginning with bar venues in Frederick, Maryland. He arranged jam sessions and introduced her to the musicians he felt were the ones to watch, study, and learn from. And so it was that at the age of thirteen, Elizabeth found herself onstage at Bentz Street Raw Bar, sitting in with the band, playing Jimi Hendrix’s “Purple Haze” note-for-note.
It was terrifying, electrifying, and just right, all at the same time. No matter what was happening around her, behind her guitar, she was safe and perfectly at home.
Launched into the professional music world at such an early age, Elizabeth quickly became seasoned beyond her years. Once she’d learned all she could from her father, she began working with more advanced private instructors. She learned to navigate the challenges of being a young female guitarist in a male-dominated music industry. And she developed a wide and supportive network of blues and rock n roll musicians, many of them one step removed from the late and great local guitarists Roy Buchanan and Danny Gatton. It was hardly a “normal” upbringing for a teenage girl, but it was what she knew.
From backwoods Maryland, Elizabeth eventually found her way to an artist community in Lowell, Massachusetts, where she continued expanding her musical horizons. She played guitar, pedal steel guitar, and tenor sax in a roots-rock-reggae band. She joined a New Orleans style horn band, playing tenor sax. Only in her early twenties, she already had over ten years of professional experience – and she realized she had something to share through teaching others. Her passion for music education and community music led her to found Root Note Studio, an online and in-person guitar lessons platform.
After three years in Lowell, Elizabeth, like so many musicians before her, decided to try her professional luck in Music City. She moved to Nashville, Tennessee in 2014. Making a go of it in Nashville required unwavering professional structure and discipline, and her playing improved still further. Her long-honed guitar skills put her in high demand as a session musician and side musician, and she developed a reputation as a strong and dependable player who could hold her own with the best of the best.
Most recently, Elizabeth has toured internationally as a side musician with Jim Dolan’s “JD & The Straight Shot” and “Back to Avalon – a Tribute to Heart.” Since moving to Nashville, Elizabeth has opened for The Doobie Brothers, Chicago, Kool and the Gang, George Benson, Zucchero, Patricia Kaas, Christine and the Queens, Tanya Tucker, Richard Hogsdon (Supertramp), Lynyrd Skynyrd and Martina McBride – to name a few. In 2018, she took a year-long hiatus from playing due to an overuse injury, which she used as an opportunity to delve deeper into music theory, music cognition, philosophy, and the further development of her teaching curriculum.
Now fully healed and back to actively working as a musician for hire, Elizabeth has been delighted to find her playing enriched and enhanced by her time away from actively performing. The experience served to prove to her, yet again, that in music, there are no limits to learning and growth. In fact, music is so limitless that it resists even being defined – which is one of the things she loves most about it.
After over twenty years of playing guitar, Elizabeth has just about seen it all when it comes to audiences (although a mid-show full minute of spontaneous, synchronized applause from a crowd in Denmark did mark a new first). What still never fails to surprise her, though, is the music itself. Even now, she wonders at the experience of watching her own hands take over and do things she never expected them to do. It’s almost like being possessed.
In many ways, much has changed for Elizabeth since those childhood days jamming with her brother in the rural Maryland woods. She’s no longer an isolated country kid but a sought-after professional thriving in Music City. And she’s traveled the world with some of the biggest names in the industry. In other ways, though, not much has changed for Elizabeth at all. She still feels safest and most at home behind a guitar. Music is still her driving purpose and joy – the way she communicates and connects, the way she shows up in the world.
And, more than anything else, it’s still the way she can make time stop.*