– about –

Lauren sings into a microphone with her eyes closed. She is playing a guitar and is wearing an ivory buttoned-up blouse, along with her compass necklace.
WindyCon Music Guest of Honor Concert, Lombard, IL, November 2022

writing a biography about yourself is really hard, good grief

like, really hard! this is so much space to fill up—what was i thinking

Lauren, with her brown hair in a bun, straight-across bangs, and black glasses, wearing yellow shorts and a flower-patterned black and white top, sings into a mic with her eyes closed. She is playing her vintage acoustic guitar, which is black along the edges with an orange-ish brown sunburst in the middle and a cream-colored pickguard.

Stage 11 concert at Walnut Valley Festival, Winfield, KS, September 2022

Seven women play as a band on stage; from the left, a woman with a red cardigan and white hair plays an Irish drum, an auburn-haired woman wearing jeans and a dark purple hoodie plays clarinet, a woman wearing a green long-sleeved shirt and multicolored skirt plays banjo and sings, a woman with short and wavy brown hair plays a big pedal harp, a woman with purple and blue hair in a matching dress plays violin, a brown-haired woman in a blue t-shirt and jeans looks up into the distance, and a tall woman in a red jacket with rainbow sleeves plays mandolin.

Mini Concert, Ohio Valley Filk Festival, October 2022

from left to right: Brenda Sutton, bodhrán; Dr. Mary Crowell, clarinet; Lauren Oxford, banjo; Jen Midkiff, harp; Sunnie Larsen, violin; Cathy McManamon, recorder; Dr. Cat Faber, mandolin
A black and white image shows Lauren, a woman with straight-across bangs, mid-length brown hair, and black glasses, sitting on a wooden stool. She is wearing flowy, plaid palazzo pants and a light-colored sleeveless blouse. With her right foot on the seat, she rests her chin on that knee, and her right hand holds her knee. Her left foot rests on the second rung on the stool. She holds a banjo with the neck pointed up to the right, and a vintage guitar leans upright against the plain, light-colored wall on the left.

more bio will go here? maybe? if i ever get around to actually finishing this ding dang website

Self-portrait outtake for album art photoshoot, August 2022

Four friends stand side by side with grass in the foreground and water in the background. From left to right: Gray, a person in a yellow, floral-patterned skirt and black tank top with black glasses and tattoos, holds a fiddle; Siena, a person with short, dark brown hair, pointy dangling earrings, and a mauve patterned long dress, holds a black guitar; Emily, a woman with long brown hair with straight-across bangs and a patterned burgundy dress holds a dark brown guitar; and Lauren, a woman with mid-length brown hair with straight-across bangs and black glasses, wearing an indigo skort and beige cropped t-shirt, holds a vintage sunburst guitar.

The Starlight Darlins

from left to right: Gray Buchanan (they/them), Siena Christie (they/she), Emily Johnson-Erday (she/her), and Lauren Oxford (she/her)

Lauren is also one-fourth of folk “queertet” The Starlight Darlins, who formed at Walnut Valley Festival in 2022. She first met Siena and Emily at John McCutcheon’s songwriting camp in August of 2021, where the three became instant lifelong friends. When they all convened at Winfield the next year, Emily’s longtime friend Gray was enveloped into the cluster, and the four musicians threw together a four-part harmony set of originals for their concert on Stage 11, Winfield’s songwriter stage. Their live EP, The Winfield Sessions, Vol. 1, was recorded in one take around one mic in a recording studio on wheels at the festival and released in December of 2022. Countless Zoom calls and song swaps later, The Darlins embarked on their first tour together February 1-11, 2023, with shows in Kansas City, Pittsburgh, Morgantown, and Knoxville. Their second tour was April 6-14, 2023, in the Pacific Northwest.