Joanna Newsom - Discography (2002-2015)

Joanna Caroline Newsom (born January 18, 1982) is an American harpist, pianist, vocalist, lyricist and actress.

Newsom was born and raised in the small town of Nevada City, California. Her mother, Christine (née Mueller), is an internist, and her father, William Newsom, is an oncologist. Her parents were "progressive-minded professionals" who had previously lived in the San Francisco Bay Area.

As a child, Newsom was not allowed to watch television or listen to the radio. She describes her parents as "kind of idealists when it came to hoping they could protect us from bad influences, like violent movies, or stupid stuff". She was exposed to music from a young age. Her father played the guitar and her mother was a classically trained pianist who played the hammered dulcimer, the autoharp and conga drums. Newsom attended a Waldorf school, where she studied theater and learned to memorize and recite long poems.

At the age of five, Newsom asked her parents if she could learn to play the harp. Her parents eventually agreed to sign her up for harp lessons, but the local harp instructor did not want to take on such a young student and suggested she learn to play the piano first. She did, and later moved on to the harp which she "loved from the first lesson onward." She first played on smaller Celtic harps until her parents bought her a full-size pedal harp in the seventh grade.

After high school, Newsom studied composition and creative writing at Mills College in Oakland, California. While at Mills, she played keyboards in The Pleased. She dropped out of school in order to focus on her music