Lucy Kaplansky returning to CSPS Hall in Cedar Rapids

When Lucy Kaplansky was growing up in Chicago during the 1970s, her father fed her a steady diet of songs from the Great American Songbook.

How much did those songs have an impact on the young future singer/songwriter?

“I’ve never been asked that question before,” Kaplansky said. ”That’s a good question since I never did think about it. I’m sure it had an effect. Those songs are just incredible and they were just part of what was played every day when I was a kid.

“My dad was a math professor at the University of Chicago, but he was a gifted pianist. He wasn’t a singer, but he enjoyed playing the songs he grew up with. I have so many memories of childhood with those songs being played.”

Kaplansky, 63, attended Barnard College in Manhattan, and spent much of her time during the early ’80s as part of an emerging and vibrant Greenwich Village scene. The folk singer/songwriter cut her teeth in Bleeker Street bars along with such contemporaries as Suzanne Vega, John Gorka and Shawn Colvin.

“Suzanne and I went to the same college and I remember seeing her for the first time, and I was just so surprised how great she was at 21,” Kaplansky said while calling from her New York City apartment. “She is a year older than me and she just blew me away when she played ‘Gypsy,’ which is one of her finest songs. You don’t expect that kind of a song from someone so young.

“When I first heard Shawn, I just couldn’t believe how great of a singer she is. We all became friends and it was such a great time back then.”

Kaplansky took a hiatus from music during the mid-’80s, earned her Ph.D. and became a clinical psychologist.

“I left music when I was 23 and went into another direction,” she said. “I loved my patients, but I had to go back to music.”

Kaplansky sang backup on Colvin’s Grammy-winning debut album, “Steady On,” which won Best Contemporary Folk recording from 1990. Kaplansky signed with Red House Records and released her first album, “The Tide,” in 1994.

In 1998, Kaplansky and her pals, Dar Williams and Richard Shindell, formed the folk supergroup Cry Cry Cry.

Returning to C.R.

“I remember coming into Cedar Rapids for the first time with Cry Cry Cry, and there was the aroma of cereal,” Kaplansky said. “Every time I’m going back to Cedar Rapids, I think about that aroma. That memory has stayed with me.”

Maybe she’ll get a whiff of nostalgia when she returns Nov. 9, 2023, to perform at CSPS Hall. She’ll draw from nine solo albums, but also expect to hear a number of tunes from her latest album, 2022’s “Last Days of Summer.”

“I play songs from that album even though it’s not summer,” she said. “I don’t see anything wrong with that.”

The title track was inspired by her daughter leaving home for New York University.

“It was an adjustment,” Kaplansky said. “My daughter grew up. It’s something every parent has to deal with.”