Album Notes

Made up of equal parts soul, folk and blues, JoAnna James is a gifted singer/songwriter signed to Eclectone Records from St. Paul, Minnesota whose live performances leave her audiences longing for more. The way she wails would make Motown proud. Her delicate phrasings would have made Nina Simone grin. Her heartfelt performances would elicit a knowing wink from Bonnie Raitt. Whether singing in a sultry whisper or a gale-force wail, JoAnna James was born with "a voice guaranteed to make the hairs on the back of your neck stand up" (Pulse of the Twin Cities).

JoAnna got her start in music when she was seven years old on a violin her grandfather purchased from a nun for $100. It wasn't too long before the guitar lured her in and she began to teach herself chords by listening to everything from Patsy Cline, Prince and Nirvana, to Otis Redding, Jeff Buckley and Bob Dylan. Singing was next, and it wasn't long before she found herself on stage at local coffee shops. Fast-forward ten years, which found JoAnna playing nearly 250 dates over the course of 2005 and 2006, in addition to receiving two consecutive Minnesota Music Awards for "Female Vocalist of the Year." (For a select list of past tour dates, click HERE )

In the past two years, JoAnna has also enjoyed the privilege of sharing the stage with national and international touring musicians such as UK jazz sensation Jamie Cullum, Australian singer/songwriter Missy Higgins, Ken Stringfellow (of REM, The Posies and Big Star), Joseph Arthur, A Girl Called Eddy, The Honeydogs, Mason Jennings, Steve Poltz, The New Standards, Slim Dunlap (the Replacements), Cloud Cult, and Dan Wilson among others.

JoAnna currently has three full-length recordings. She released a self-titled CD in the spring of 2004 and her sophomore album, Desire, in the summer of 2005. This past autumn she travelled to Lexington, Kentucky and teamed up with producer, Duane Lundy, to record a new EP that has just been released, this spring of 2007.