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Youth in a Roman Field is the surrealist folk project of artist, teacher, and activist Claire Wellin. Her dynamic sound (described as ‘Appalachia, cayenne pepper, and ghosts' and ‘like Radiohead but also folk music’) is created using woven string loops, soaring melodies, and powerful vocals. She is a proud member of Folk Alliance, SURJ NYC, Actor’s Equity, SAG-AFTRA, and the Poor People’s Campaign. She has showcased at NERFA and SWRFA, written for theatre, film, dance, art exhibitions, and podcasts, and is recording a new album in Brooklyn with support from the New York State Council on the Arts.

Raised in a musical family, Claire began learning classical violin and voice at a young age, supported by her performer/teacher parents. By high school, she was bummed out and frustrated with the classical world and mode of study and branched out to theatre, jazz, and songwriting. After attending college at Minnesota State University, Mankato and earning a BFA in Musical Theatre, she studied abroad in Rome for a month before graduating. At the time, she was performing in a band with her friend and Minneapolis musician Eric Mayson, but hadn’t prioritized music in college and felt there was something missing in her life. One day while walking home from class through a city park, she saw a young girl twirling in a field with her dog, and was so struck by the joy exhibited by the five-year-old in the red-checkered dress that she stopped and examined what it was that really brought her joy; she began writing music under Youth in a Roman Field that summer. She moved to Chicago in the fall of 2009 and met longtime collaborators Scott Stangland and Tiffany Topol in 2011; the three started playing around the area and recording under the name Youth in a Roman Field. Cassidy Stirtz joined in 2012 on vocals and viola.

Claire moved to NYC to perform on Broadway in Once The Musical in 2013, and went out on the National Tour in 2014. After developing a serious repetitive stress injury in her shoulders and nodes on her vocal chords, she had to leave the road and radically change her relationship to playing music. She moved back to NYC and planted roots as she embarked on a year’s long journey of going to therapists and doctors, learning new disciplines, modalities, and guiding principles which she brought into her own practice and into Youth in a Roman Field. By the end of 2014, the entire group had moved to NYC; Jamie Mohamdein joined on upright bass in January 2015.

As a band, the project has released three full-length records, an EP, and several singles. The most recent album, Get Caught Trying, released November 2023 via Brooklyn’s Better Company Records, explores self-worth, power, loss of faith, care, and collective healing. Claire recorded and released a re-imagining of the 1971 song “Bless the Telephone” by Labi Siffre on Deceber 10 under Youth in a Roman Field.

In 2024, she received a grant from the New York State Council on the Arts to pursue a more solo, intimate research project/album culminating in a new record about her family history, which she is currently recording at Better Company Studios with co-producer and longtime collaborator Allen Tate, with whom she works in San Fermin.