About Karen

Karen Law is a songwriter, meditator, mother, teacher, tea-drinker, guitarist and optimist. She’s been writing songs for over 30 years and made her musical debut in the folk clubs of northern England. Moving to Australia in 1995 she soon gained a following on the festival circuit with her travelling stories and nomadic songs. Her debut CD ‘A Point on the Map’ was released in 1998 on Locrian Records under the name Karen Burton receiving airplay on The Planet and Australia All Over.

Settling in Nambour on the Sunshine Coast, Karen had a break from touring to raise a family – three kids in the space of five years – and by 2010 she had finally got them all off to school and was ready for some “me time”. That’s when she was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis. She dived back into songwriting to help with her ongoing recovery and in 2014 her second CD “Asking Questions of Your Soul” was released. Her oldest child Murray, who had just started high school, featured on several tracks playing trumpet, ukulele and 12-string guitar. By the time “The Calm after the Storm” was released a few years later, Murray was on lead guitar and backing vocals and sisters Hazel and Roanna joined him to sing three-part harmonies. At festivals they started performing as a family, including an appearance at The National Folk Festival in 2017 where they made the finals of the Ultimate Song Contest singing a version of God Only Knows. Karen’s song ‘9am on Polling Day’ took out the top prize at the Illawarra Folk Festival songwriting competition that same year.

With music once again at the centre of her life, Karen joined the I Heart Songwriting Club in 2018 to focus on her craft. Her daughter Hazel (now 16) joined too, and they each started writing a song every week, to a theme, sharing them with a small group of online writers. For Karen, this gave birth to her fourth studio album “Let the Light Back in” that was released in 2021. It features the Alistair Hulett Trophy winning song “Wildflower Woman”, written about environmental activist Kathleen McArthur. Meanwhile Hazel formed the duo North and Elsewhere with her younger sister Roanna, recording an EP that was released that same year.

Now with two distinct musical streams flowing within the same family, at times they still merged. At Woodford Folk Festival 2022/23 the whole family shared the stage for a number of heartwarming shows and soon afterwards Karen and Hazel played a rare mother/daughter show with songs they’d written for and with each other.

At the start of 2023 Karen was presented with her first Tamworth Songwriters Association award when she won the ‘Local Heroes’ category of the TSA songwriting competition. Her winning song ‘Free Again’, a tribute to First Nations singer Uncle Archie Roach, will appear on her upcoming fifth album due for release in 2024.

Still living in Nambour, Karen has also worked to turn the town into a ‘folk hub’ for the region founding two popular music events. Sunday Folk is a concert series that focusses on story songs performed to a listening audience, featuring national and international touring artists. Naamba Folk Club is a monthly grass roots walk-up event where singers and musicians perform one song at a time to a respectful crowd.