Amber Rubarth

Amber Rubarth is an American singer-songwriter and actress.

She has toured extensively throughout Europe, North America, Japan, South Korea and South Africa.

Winner of the NPR Mountain Stage New Song Contest, her eighth album, ‘Wildflowers in the Graveyard’ is engineered and co-produced (with Rubarth) by Matt Andrews (Gillian Welch, David Rawlings, Dawes) and is a concept album of self-penned songs around the cycles of life, death and rebirth as witnessed in nature and relationships.

Rubarth’s earlier studio album, A Common Case of Disappearing, was produced by Grammy Award-winning producer Jacquire King and debuted at No. 13 on the iTunes Singer-Songwriter charts.

It features duets with Jason Reeves, and Jason Mraz.

Chesky Records released two binaural albums recorded live at St. Elias Church in which Rubarth collaborated with cellist Dave Eggar.

The album received great acclaim and led to a performance with the full Ithaca College Chamber Orchestra.

Rubarth has performed twice for TED Talks.

She tours with a 1956 Gibson ES-125 hollow body electric guitar and plays piano.

In her band The Paper Raincoat she sings and plays keyboard, guitar, glockenspiel, and occasionally drums.

With Applewood Road trio, she arranges, sings, plays guitar and electric bass.

She also toured with Glen Phillips (of Toad the Wet Sprocket) as his support act and side musician on vocals, electric guitar, keys, and electric bass.

Amber Rubarth has toured extensively throughout the US, Canada, UK, France, Germany, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Belgium, Austria, the Netherlands, Switzerland, South Africa, and Japan.

Rubarth's song "Washing Day", written with Adam Levy, won 1st Place in the 2006 International Songwriting Competition in the Lyrics Only category judged by Tom Waits, Brian Wilson, and Robert Smith.

The music video was screened at the 2007 SXSW Festival in Austin, Texas

On May 8, 2008, Bob Boilen chose "You Will Love This Song" from her second album New Green Lines for his NPR show All Things Considered.

In May 2009 Rubarth joined Jason Reeves and Brendan James to create "The Vespa Experiment," a musical tour along the California coast in which the three artists traveled on Vespa mopeds, camped, and did community awareness activities for 13 days to support environmentalism.

In September 2009, she toured America and Canada supporting Gary Jules and Joshua Radin.

In the fall of 2009, they toured the U.S. as support for Vienna Teng, and their music was the subject of CNET's 'The 404' podcast The album The Paper Raincoat was released in October 2009.

The band was named "Best of What's Next" by Paste Magazine who said "We think the world might be a little better if everyone heard this record."

Their songs have been featured in Disney's The Last Song, One Tree Hill and Google and Aquafina commercials.

Rubarth was awarded Grand Prize in the NPR Mountain Stage New Song Contest for "Letter from My Lonelier Self" (2010).

The prize included recording with Jacquire King and a performance on NPR's Mountain Stage.

The album was released on September 30, 2011 through the contest organizer Newsong Recordings.

In addition to her solo work, Rubarth is the co-founder of the Brooklyn-based indie band The Paper Raincoat with Alex Wong (as heard on Google and Aquafina commercials), and the U.K.-based harmony trio Applewood Road, named in The Telegraph's best albums of 2016.

Her original arrangement for the group of R.E.M.'s 'Losing My Religion' has received over 1 million plays on Spotify, with her solo live performance video reposted by the band as a "beautiful rendition."

Rubarth has composed songs and scored for films, including collaborations with Paul Brill for Sundance Film Festival winner Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work and the end credit song for the documentary Desert Runners. Rubarth's arrangement of the traditional "My Dear Companion", performed by her trio Applewood Road, is on the 2017 BBC documentary Sisters of Country: Dolly, Linda and Emmylou and she can be heard with her band The Paper Raincoat on Disney's The Last Song soundtrack featuring Miley Cyrus and Liam Hemsworth.

In 2017 Glen Phillips of Toad the Wet Sprocket invited Rubarth to join his U.S. tour as the opening act as well as part of his trio for which she played bass guitar, electric guitar, keyboards, and vocals.

In addition to her solo work, Rubarth formed a band with songwriter Alex Wong, called the Paper Raincoat.

Rubarth explained in an interview with The Boston Globe that her solo work tends to be more personal, whereas the Paper Raincoat's songs are more imaginative, involving fictional characters Their debut EP (Safe in the Sound) was featured as an iTunes Indie Spotlight Artist

As well as co-starring in the 2018 feature film 'American Folk,' Rubarth also composed 2 original songs and is featured heavily on the soundtrack alongside Joe Purdy, John Prine, David Grisman and Jerry Garcia.

Rubarth played the lead role of Joni in the feature film American Folk, which was released in the U.S. through Good Deed Entertainment on January 26, 2018.

The film was featured at film festivals around the world, followed by a US theater release, then picked up by Hulu and Amazon Prime.

Amber Rubarth received an Ebertfest "Golden Thumb" award in April 2023.

In 2020 she produced the album Fantastic Fungi: Reimagine, featuring 24 artists (including her single "Everything I Thought I Knew) inspired by the film and mycelial kingdom.

Rubarth was born in California.

At age 17, she graduated high school and moved to Carson City, Nevada, to apprentice at a wood sculpture studio.

After three years, she quit the apprenticeship to pursue music.

She taught herself to play guitar and began performing at local open mic nights and coffee shops.

Phil Ramone in The Huffington Post describes her style as "part of the new old-soul generation."