Country music fans remember Donna Ulisse from her days when she was signed to Atlantic Records in the early 1990’s where she released a critically acclaimed album Trouble at The Door with three singles and two videos. She was also a guest on many national television shows including Hee Haw, Nashville Now, Crook and Chase and NBC’s Hot Country Nights.
These days Donna Ulisse is a key figure in the bluegrass, folk and acoustic music scene as a singer and songwriter. She released her ninth bluegrass album, Hard Cry Moon, in 2015, making a return to mostly original material. The single “It Could Have Been The Mandolin” topped the Bluegrass Unlimited chart at #1 for two months in a row and the album topped the Roots Music Report chart at #1. She also won the award for 2016 International Bluegrass Music Association’s Songwriter of the Year.
Her past albums have charted prominently in the Bluegrass Unlimited charts, The Folk DJ National chart, The Americana Music Charts and Billboard Bluegrass chart. while her 2012 Christmas album All The Way To Bethlehem was called “a masterpiece” by Kyle Cantrell, host of Bluegrass Junction on SiriusXM Satellite Radio. Edward Morris, writer for CMT.com dubs her “one of the most commanding voices in bluegrass music.”
As a songwriter she has had songs recorded by bluegrass artists Claire Lynch, Darin and Brooke Aldridge, The Bankesters, Doyle Lawson, Larry Stephenson Band and Nu-Blu, as well as a song on the 2014 Grammy winning album Streets of Baltimore by the Del McCoury Band. She has been nominated for the International Bluegrass Music Association’s Songwriter of the Year award for four years in a row, including 2015, and authored the book The Songwriter in Me: Snapshots of My Creative Process. She is also a sought after songwriting instructor at workshops across the country when she is not touring with her band performing at festivals and concerts with her band The Poor Mountain Boys.
