Nina Gerber

folk · americana · bluegrass

Nina Gerber is an American folk guitarist from Sebastopol, California, best known for accompanying singer-songwriter Kate Wolf until Wolf's death in 1986. She was still in high school in 1975 when she saw Wolf play a Sebastopol pizza parlor, and set out to learn well enough to join her. She took lessons from Wolf's husband Don Coffin, then Wolf's regular accompanist, filled in for him on dates he could not make, and became Wolf's steady guitarist by the end of the decade. Gerber does not sing, and has built a career largely out of the spotlight as an accompanist, arranger, producer and teacher on the West Coast acoustic and folk circuit. Her collaborators include Karla Bonoff, Greg Brown, Dave Alvin, Lucy Kaplansky, Peter Rowan, Rosalie Sorrels, Mollie O'Brien, Laurie Lewis and singer Chris Webster, with whom she recorded the duo album Apple Blossom Lane in 2013. Under her own name she has released Not Before Noon (2001), the instrumental Sweet Dreams: Lullabies for Guitar (2003) and Good Music with Good People (2007); a fourth solo record, Time Is Funny That Way, was made with support from Whippoorwill Arts and built around songs by writers who gave her guitars she still plays, among them Wolf and Nanci Griffith. She describes her aim as being genuinely good at one instrument rather than passable at several, and players she has worked with tend to describe her style in terms of restraint and emotional shading rather than display. The World Folk Music Association gave her its Kate Wolf Memorial Award in 1999, and in 2021 Laurie Lewis presented her with Far West's Best of the West honor. She teaches at workshops including the Puget Sound Guitar Workshop and continues to perform around northern California.

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