Carsie Blanton

folk · jazz · rock

Carsie Blanton is a singer-songwriter based in Philadelphia who mixes folk, jazz and rock with politically pointed lyrics. Born Carson Amanda Blanton on July 22, 1985, in Luray, Virginia, she grew up on a former cattle farm and was unschooled, starting piano at six and guitar at thirteen. She was singing backup for a touring funk band at fifteen, moved at sixteen to an artists' collective in Eugene, Oregon, and settled in Philadelphia in 2006. She has released eight studio albums, among them Ain't So Green (2005), Idiot Heart (2012), So Ferocious, Buck Up (2019), Love & Rage (2021), Body of Work, which she issued a song at a time across 2022 and 2023, and After the Revolution in March 2024. More recent projects include The Red Album Vol. I and Vol. II, the latter released in January 2026 as an eight-song set of short protest songs closing with a Malvina Reynolds cover, and Everything Is Great, a collaboration with The Burning Hell. She cites the activist-artists Nina Simone and Woody Guthrie as models and describes her approach as combining humour, classic melody and the spirit of punk rock. Live she performs either solo on electric guitar or fronting a four-piece band, most recently with Joe Plowman on bass, Sean Trischka on drums and percussion and Isa Burke on guitars and fiddle, all three singing harmony. Her records are sold on a pay-what-you-want basis and her work is funded largely through direct fan support on Patreon and Kickstarter rather than through a label. She toured with The Wood Brothers beginning in 2010, appeared in an early staging of Anais Mitchell's Hadestown in 2011, and has opened for Paul Simon. Several of her songs on wealth inequality and feminist themes have circulated widely on social video platforms. In October 2025 she joined the Global Sumud Flotilla carrying aid toward Gaza and was detained by Israeli authorities for about a week.

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