ABOUT 

Isa Burke is a multi-instrumentalist, singer, songwriter, and producer based in Portland, Maine. Using electric and acoustic guitars, fiddle, voice, and sometimes other instruments, she creates music that draws from traditional folk, modern indie-rock, and beyond.

Raised in a musical family in Maine, Isa came up through the Northeast’s thriving folk music community. She studied at Berklee College of Music, where she was awarded the 2014 Fletcher Bright Scholarship, given annually to an outstanding fiddler, and studied with Darol Anger, Bruce Molsky, and Bonnie Hayes. Meanwhile, she began paying her dues and building her performance chops playing hundreds of shows in tiny basement clubs around Boston and Cambridge.

She spent the first years of her music career as one-third of the band Lula Wiles, which released 3 albums and an EP on Smithsonian Folkways Recordings and toured internationally, appearing at Newport Folk Festival and winning acclaim from NPR Music, Rolling Stone, WNYC, and Paste Magazine. Their third album, Shame and Sedition, prominently features Isa’s sonic sensibilities and electric guitar work.

Isa has been touring internationally as a member of Grammy-winning singer-songwriter Aoife O’Donovan’s Age of Apathy Band since fall 2021, including appearances at the Kennedy Center, NPR’s Tiny Desk, Jimmy Kimmel Live, CBS Saturday Morning, Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival, and Telluride Bluegrass Festival. As of October 2023, Isa is touring with cult-favorite indie band the Mountain Goats on violin and electric guitar.

Isa has spent recent years building a reputation as a versatile and in-demand collaborator, a musical Swiss Army knife at home in many styles and contexts. Whether singing harmony vocals, playing traditional fiddle tunes, or crafting spiky yet atmospheric electric guitar sounds, she brings a voracious musical appetite and a diverse skill set to a vast array of projects. As a side musician, she has toured and recorded with artists from across the folk/roots/Americana spectrum (Jake Blount, the Brother Brothers, Darlingside, Lindsay Lou, Mipso, Laura Cortese, Rosier, Kris Delmhorst, Sam Moss, Stash Wyslouch, Carolyn Kendrick, Session Americana). In large part due to her work with Aoife O’Donovan, Isa received a nomination for Instrumentalist of the Year at the 2023 Americana Music Awards. Isa also served as producer for Nashville singer-songwriter Liv Greene’s debut record Every Bright Penny and has additional production projects forthcoming. A bandmate at heart, she enjoys nothing more than the interlocking of harmony vocals, of guitar and drums, of banjo and fiddle. Isa is also an experienced and devoted educator, focusing on helping musicians to internalize the sounds that inspire them and build a skill set that will allow them to thrive in many musical contexts. She teaches private lessons and group workshops in guitar, fiddle, harmony singing, ensemble playing, performance, music theory, improvisation, and songwriting.

PS: There WILL be an Isa Burke solo project soon.

PRESS

“Band member Isa Burke was a triple-threat on vocal, guitar, and fiddle, showing herself to be the band’s not-so-secret weapon. Her guitar work, echoing and atmospheric on ‘Sister Starling,’ stinging on ‘Hornets,’ was a particular highlight.” — Boston Globe

“As versatile a musician as they come, and a true showwoman who commands the stage and the audience’s attention” — Red Line Roots

“A sharp takedown, riotous and righteous… a radio-gold chorus so catchy it becomes easy to forget that Lula Wiles is singing, as they put it, about the ‘inevitable downfall of capitalism.’” — Rolling Stone