She grew up in Fredericksburg, Virginia, and now lives in Massachusetts. McKeown began her career in the folk scene. She released her first album, Monday Morning Cold in 1999 on her own label, travelling throughout New England while a student at Brown University in order to promote the record. Although she had begun studying ornithology, she graduated from Brown with a degree in ethnomusicology. Early in her career, she collaborated with Beth Amsel, Jess Klein, and Rose Polenzani; the four of them performed as Voices on the Verge. McKeown's 2005 album, We Will Become Like Birds, served as a departure from her earlier work, with a more rock-oriented sound. At a September 1, 2008, concert at The Gravity Lounge in Charlottesville, Virginia, McKeown told the audience that she wrote this album "in an attempt to write myself out of the worst heartache I'd experienced up to that point." Her next studio release, Sing You Sinners, was released in Europe on the 23 October 2006 and in the United States on January 9, 2007 by Nettwerk. It consists mostly of covers of jazz standards from the 1920s through 1950s. McKeown's record, Hundreds of Lions, was released under Righteous Babe Records on October 13, 2009. McKeown is currently member of an unsigned band known as "emma", which she created with her friend Allison Miller. McKeown has plans to write a book of poetry. McKeown released "Manifestra" on January 15, 2013. Physical copies also came with a bonus album, "Civics", where she performed the entirety of "Manifestra" solo acoustic in an historic library. McKeown performs regularly, spending much of her time touring throughout the world with artists such as Ani DiFranco, Josh Ritter, the Indigo Girls, Martin Sexton, Andrew Bird, Thea Gilmore, Melissa Ferrick, Allison Miller, and others. McKeown also took part in Queerstock, a music festival dedicated to promoting LGBT musicians. McKeown is noted for her energetic stage presence and her habit of wearing tailored suits, often with ties and Fluevog shoes to performances. She occasionally performs big band music with the Beantown Swing Orchestra. McKeown was selected to be a 2011–2012 fellow at Harvard University's Berkman Center for Internet & Society. There, she will "work to connect the worlds of policy, art, and technology while considering questions about how to make a creative life a viable vocation." In October 2016, a new musical McKeown wrote with the playwright Quiara Alegría Hudes titled Miss You Like Hell opened at the La Jolla Playhouse directed by Lear deBessonet and starring Daphne Rubin-Vega. The show opened Off-Broadway, April 20, 2018 at the Public Theater. A cast recording of the project was released October 5, 2018 on Ghostlight Records.
Critical reception
"Her operative mood is effortless grace" – LA Weekly "Her set had an exquisitely open airiness, rich and pastoral for being so stripped down." – Philadelphia Inquirer "That's McKeown's genius: her ability to take what is, twist it into something more relevant and maintain whatever it is about the music that makes it work. Smarter pop? Seductive commentary? REALLY? Yes." – Paste Magazine "In several distinctive ways– voice, dynamic subtlety, and sheer songwriting ability– Erin McKeown is in a class of her own." – Sunday Times "Her playing is so muscular, her arrangements so well conceived that she succeeds brilliantly. As with all truly great guitarists, the wonder is less in her chops than her choices." – Boston Globe "Her clear mezzo–soprano sounds perpetually optimistic, and so do the syncopated electric guitar parts she picks and plucks through the sparsely arranged but fully realized songs. A degree in ethnomusicology, and African undercurrents, separate her from more rhythmically earth–bound folk–rockers." – Jon Pareles, New York Times for We Will Become Like Birds "Her voice slips into the territory of Florence Welch and Elena Tonra with its depth and texture, but stands alone in its complete clarity, a dinner bell ringing through a drafty home until the whole place is warm. She is, more simply, the kind of artist who will give you a varied, confetti–colored pocketful of secrets in return for a smile and some applause. She is easy listening without anything inherently easy about it." – New Haven Independent
