Album Notes

With her fifth release—"No Easy Way"—Laughlin showcases her talent, polished technique, and insight as a composer lyricist and producer.

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"No Easy Way" is now available on iTunes! You can now purchase and download either individual songs or the whole album.
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This is Jean’s fourth collaboration with gifted arranger and co-producer Jim Martin. There is a wonderful group dynamic between Jim, Jean, and co-producer/sound engineer Freddie Breitberg, which helped create an album full of warmth and love.

Adding to the mix, Jean is backed by a full orchestra, including top-notch Chicago jazz musicians, whose tasteful and inventive improvised solos enrich each piece. Thomas Yang (Chicago Musical Connection) and his masterful string section complete the orchestra which, with Jim’s superb charts, help make Jean’s music come to life. Her ballads, which range in genre from jazz to Broadway musical to cabaret, touch on the everyday challenges of our lives. In her big band jazz tunes, she shows us her sense of humor as she contemplates life’s absurdities.

"I've been singing for as long as I can remember. I came from a very musical family—mother, father, aunts, uncles, the lot of them. Though I studied piano from a very early age, my voice has always been my instrument. I started performing when I was quite young—on the nationally televised Bob Crosby Show at the age of 11—then throughout my high school years and college. After college, where I majored in Speech and Drama, I settled in Chicago where I worked in recording studios doing work in television commercials,voice overs radio spots, and performing in live musical industrials and cabarets. It is after I took a very long break from work, to raise my children, that I started writing songs."

"I had returned to singing, was recording an album and found that, though I loved the standards that I had been exposed to all of my life, I wasn't able to fully express myself singing them."

"I started out slowly, including only one of my own songs on that first CD. I've recorded exclusively my own songs since. It's been very cathartic for me, as well as a little frightening in that I'm exposing my personal feelings for all to hear."

- Jean Laughlin

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Jean released her first album–"I’m Glad There Is You"—in 1992. She wrote and produced "Confessions of a Woman", released in 1996, "Who Am I?" in 1998, and "What Am I Looking For?" in 2001. Many of Jean's songs are receiving international radio airplay.