Lynn Hollyfield has been writing songs since her teenage years, shaped by a Staten Island upbringing where the soundtrack in the air could shift from the elegance of Ella Fitzgerald and Frank Sinatra to the restless spirit of The Beatles and Neil Young. That wide-open listening became a kind of compass—one that led her to local stages early, and eventually into broader recognition as one half of the duo Hollyfield & Spruill, with appearances at beloved gatherings like the Falcon Ridge Folk Festival.
As a solo artist, Lynn’s catalog has continued to deepen with each release. Albums including Layers (2010), In the Balance (2014), and Look Up (2024) earned national and international airplay, alongside multiple songwriting honors—among them recognition in top artist and top album listings for the International Folk Alliance. During the pandemic, her creativity expanded into children’s literature with The Tree, The Ship and Me, a book paired with an accompanying song that went on to become a finalist in the Mid-Atlantic Songwriting Contest. It’s a fitting detail in Lynn’s story: she’s an artist who doesn’t just write songs, she builds worlds—quietly, carefully, and with intention.
Now, she’s preparing to release her fourth album, Diving In, produced by Grammy-nominated Seth Glier. The project came together through a chain of moments that feel almost destined: a spring songwriting challenge, a summer songwriter’s retreat, and then a serendipitous meeting with Glier that quickly turned into something real. In the week before Christmas 2025, they recorded 11 songs in five days at Ghost Hit Recording Studios in West Springfield, Massachusetts—an historic New England church turned studio, made even more cinematic by snow falling on the first day like a blessing.
Rather than feeling like a typical studio session, the recording unfolded like a gathering. They played in a circle, leaning into the intimacy of the space and the songs, joined by an extraordinary group of musicians: Seth Glier, Abbie Gardner, Reed Sutherland, and Rob Griffith, with Kelly Halloran arriving mid-week. The result is an album that holds a mirror up to the twists and turns of being human—loss and love, the times that shape us, and the paths we choose as we move through them.
Stylistically, Diving In lives largely in contemporary folk, but it isn’t confined by genre. Some tracks carry a more traditional feel, threaded with a timelessness that never reads as retro—more like a return. Lynn captures that spirit beautifully when she reflects on the quiet power of folk tradition: there is a sacred space in this music where songs can paint landscapes, where melodies can settle into the roots of Americana without ever feeling dated. In her hands, tradition becomes less a museum and more a refuge—something real in a world that constantly pushes us to live too fast, want too much, and never feel satisfied.
One of the album’s most emotionally charged moments arrives in “Blindspot,” written in the wake of losing both a family member and a friend to the fentanyl crisis. The grief is not abstract here—it’s personal, and it’s complicated. Lynn speaks to the questions that linger after loss, the self-interrogation that can haunt you: whether you were open enough, caring enough, present enough. She began shaping the song with Seth Glier at the Dar Williams Songwriter’s Retreat in August 2025, and it became the first track they recorded for the album—an early anchor for everything that followed.
Lynn’s music doesn’t demand attention. It earns it—through patience, through grace, through the kind of songwriting that trusts the listener to meet it halfway.
Beyond the studio, Lynn continues to perform and tour along the East Coast, while also giving back to the community that has long sustained her. She hosts an open mic for the Songwriters’ Association of Washington and serves as music director at the Celebration Center for Spiritual Living in Falls Church, Virginia—roles that reflect what her work has always suggested: that music, at its best, is both offering and connection.
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