Liz Meyer, one of Europe’s adopted American bluegrassers, passed away on Friday 26 August after a decade-long battle with cancer.
In April 2009 doctors discovered severe bone dancer that led to a long stay in the Klinik St. Georg, Bad Aibling, Munich, Germany, from June of that year onwards. She had already beaten cancer six times prior to that. Sadly, in July Meyer had to return to the cancer hospital.
Born March 7, 1952 in Washington DC, the award-winning singer-songwriter had lived in the Netherlands since 1985.
Her songs have been recorded by bluegrass and folk acts in the USA and Europe, including Del McCoury, Laurie Lewis & Tom Rozum, Emmylou Harris, Kate MacKenzie, Acousticure, Red Wine and Nugget.
She has several albums that feature her own material also, starting with the 1982 release on Adelphi, Once a Day. Since 1995 most of her recordings have been on Strictly Country, the label that she helped her husband from October 1986, Pieter Groenveld, run. The first of these was Womanly Arts (SCR 37), actually recorded in Nashville. That was followed by The Storm for which she penned all but one of the dozen songs featured.
In addition to the two studio albums was the folk-orientated Regions of the Soul that consisted of live recordings of duets with guitarist Mark Cosgrove (actually released on the Strictly Music label) and the collection of recordings on-stage with the Czech group: Live at the European World of Bluegrass, 1999-2003.
She was a very pro-active and vocal promoter of the European World of Bluegrass (EWoB) and European bluegrass music in general.
During the past two decades Meyer produced more than 30 albums, including CDs by singer-songwriters David Olney and Jonathan Edwards and those in the European World of Bluegrass series.
She is a Leadership Bluegrass alumnus.
Condolences to Pieter, daughter Liz and family.
