Jo D'Anna's Style:
If you do not mind letting the seductively soothing, rhythmic vocalizations and passionate poetry of Jo D’Anna’s songs – so reminiscent of many of those well-known and loved 60's folk/rock icons -- lead you to, quite possibly, the unfurling of your own story, then allow yourself to take a chance. If you do not mind letting go and feeling those feelings, perhaps long buried, to see what comes up for you, Jo D’Anna’s haunting and poetic lyrics -- which come from deep within her own well-traveled soul – will surprisingly seduce the hidden corners of your memory: your lost but never-quite-forgotten loves; those childhood memories of playful joy and discovery; the first time you felt that humbling union with the Earth’s boundless beauty and love; your deep anger and sense of injustice over the ones who wreak havoc in this world through domination, destruction and narcissism. Her voice will carry you through an intimate, personal journey so that you will feel grounded, yet never lost. At one time her voice may be playful and seductive, at another time it may be exuberant and powerful. Always expressive, Jo D’Anna’s voice is syncopated in a free, untethered and creatively loose style, yet always comes back to the beat so you know where you are, and you are never lost or left alone. Her expressive voice is perfectly married to the poetry in the lyrics -- along with her masterful rhythmic alternate fingerstyle & strum technique -- so you cannot help but be moved; you are caught in her vision, and you feel blessed in that sacred intimate place within yourself. And once in that special interior place, you may feel sad, or you may feel released, or you may feel inspired. Jo D’Anna is not a songwriter to listen to for passive entertainment. Rather, by listening to her songs, you will be actively participating in a journey through and to your own personal repertoire of feelings and memories. You will never be able to forget the signature sound, guitar style and songs of Jo D’Anna because, if your heart is open, you will begin to realize on a deeper, subliminal level that she is singing to you with supreme clarity and truth – as one spirit might communicate to another.
Jo D’Anna is best known for her heartfelt, storytelling lyrics, expressive voice, mesmerizing melodies and classic fingerstyle folk guitar.
Jo D'Anna - Bio Info:
Currently residing in Marin County, California, Jo is a native to the San Francisco Bay Area. She was born and raised in Palo Alto, California where she came of age in the 60's. Her music is strongly influenced by the 60's folk-rock icons who inspired her at that time. Those influences naturally found their way through her own music when she began writing songs seriously and performing in the early 90's, after performing as vocalist and guitarist for the prior eight years with McTune, a former local South Bay acoustic folk trio which performed covers and originals (before becoming a folk trio, the original McTune was comprised of the folk/songwriting/vocal harmonies duo of Dean McComb and Jo D’Anna performing in Santa Barbara, California, and later in the SF South Bay area).
As a fundamental part of her musical background, Jo D’Anna has studied guitar with three South Bay masters (including the notorious Jerry Garcia, who inspired her own signature fingerstyle guitar style), has studied private voice and piano, and has a college music degree from UC Santa Barbara.
In Spring of 1995, Jo D’Anna released her first CD entitled Alouwenja, a thematic compilation of her earlier songs in which her lyrics are replete with symbols of nature as a theme for inspiration, healing and transformation. Soon after the release, the title track of Alouwenja was included in a compilation CD entitled OasisAcoustic Vol. III, presented by the well-respected Oasis CD Manufacturing Co., the duplicating company that manufactured Alouwenja.
In early 2004, another one of the songs on Alouwenja (“Warrior Queen”) was selected for inclusion in yet another compilation CD presented by “Artists for Change” (www.artistsforchange.bz) released in October 2004. The compilation CD is entitled The Goddess Within, whose purpose is to empower, inspire and encourage women who wish to move beyond the cycle of domestic violence. Proceeds from the sales of the CD, The Goddess Within, are donated to women’s shelters and organizations.
In March of 2007, Jo D’Anna released her second album, As She Is, a delightful collection of her original songs in the folk/pop genre which were inspired mostly during her participation in the San Francisco Song Group, a local informal songwriter’s exchange. In As She Is, Jo combined her songwriting style (primarily fingerstyle guitar and folk-based songs) with the more urbane style and seamless sound-blending talents of Ben Leinbach, an amazing percussionist and multi-instrumentalist, who was also her producer and recording engineer for As She Is (www.benleinbach.com). Also in 2007, the song “Living In Dreams” was selected for a second Oasis CD compilation, entitled “Oasis Adult Contemporary Volume VII #2" put out by the same CD duplicating company as her first album, Oasis CD.
Along with being an award-winning songwriter as a member in WestCoast Songwriter’s Association (WCS - formerly known as Northern California Songwriter’s Association, or NCSA) since 1990, Jo D’Anna has also been an ongoing member of an the San Francisco Song Group, an informal meeting ground where local songwriter members exchange and share new songs for inspiration and peer critique, as well as occasionally perform together as a group once or twice a year in a local venue.
Recent Performances:
Since 2002, Jo has performed at various venues either as a featured act, a solo two-hour set, or otherwise sharing a showcase gig with other songwriters. Such venues would include Simple Pleasures Café, Sacred Grounds Café, and the Bazaar Café, all in San Francisco, California. In early 2004 she performed in a Local Songwriters’ Showcase at the Park Branch of the San Francisco Public Library. She also performed at the annual Fairfax Festival Peri’s Park Stage (Marin County) in June of 2002, and performed several times in 2002 and 2003 as either a featured act or solo act at the BookBeat Bookstore and Café (Fairfax). In July of 2003 she performed a set on the Cabaret Stage at the San Francisco Free Folk Festival (www.sffolkfest.org) In July 2004, she performed a set at a benefit concert called “Artists Speaking Out!” for MoveOn.org, a grass roots democratic organization. On August 28, 2004 she hosted and performed in a showcase of three other San Francisco women songwriters at the Sacred Grounds Café in San Francisco. About a year ago, Jo also appeared in a live performance with three other local songwriters on San Francisco Liberation Radio 93.7 FM. She also had her CD, Alouwenja, on the playlist at KWMR (West Marin) Radio 90.5 FM and KSVY (Sonoma) Radio 91.3. In August 2004, she performed two separate songs to compete for Best Song of the Year” at the West Coast Songwriters’ Association (“WCS”) judged playoffs for the North Bay and South Bay regions (she has also won“Best Performance” categories twice this year in other WCSA open mic judged competitions). In 2007, Jo played in a local women songwriters-in-the-round at the Ordinary Miracles alternative health store (www.ordinarymiraclesonline.com) for one of their Songs of Sonoma concert series in Cotati, California, along with other local women songwriters. Jo has also headlined twice at the Red Victoria Bed & Breakfast’s Haight Street Review for the “Summer of Love” series in San Francisco, as a benefit for the new non-profit Peaceful World Travel (www.redvic.com). Also, this will be the second year that Jo performs at the San Francisco Free Folk Music Festival’s Songwriter Showcase event. She also performed at a local Songwriter Showcase in a house concert in Novato, California, sponsored by the North Bay’s favorite house concert promoter, Drew Pearce. (www.drewpearce.com). Check Jo’s calendar page for upcoming events in 2007 and beyond!
Past Performances:
From 1993 to 2002, Jo D’Anna has played in such venues such as showcases at the Freight and Salvage Coffeehouse in Berkeley, California; a set at the Berkeley Free Folk Festival; the former Red Café in Berkeley; a Hootenanny showcase performance at the Café International in San Francisco (a monthly show sponsored by the San Francisco Folk Music Club); a featured act at The Starry Plough in Berkeley; a songwriter showcase for Local Gold, a monthly show at the Sweetwater Saloon in Mill Valley; a CD release performance at the San Geronimo Valley Cultural Center (West Marin); the BookBeat Café and Bookstore and the Café Amsterdam in Fairfax; a performance at an photographer’s gallery reception at the Marshall Arts Community Center (West Marin); a showcase at the Performance Art monthly show at the Fairfax Community Church; San Rafael Farmer’s Market and Fairfax Common Market; the former Artist’s Café in San Francisco, a showcase at the Hotel Utah in San Francisco; the former Mama Bears Bookstore in Oakland; a featured act at the Casanova Lounge in San Francisco, a showcase on the Late Night Acoustic Cantina at the High Sierra Music Festival; the Blue Rock Shoot in Saratoga (South Bay); San Gregorio Store (Coastside); the former St. Michael’s Art Café in Palo Alto, Café Reyes (West Marin); City Lights Espresso in Cupertino and LaDiDa Café in Half Moon Bay. She has also had her CD on the playlist on KPFA 94.1 FM and KKUP 91.5 FM (as well as performing a live show on KKUP’s Friday Folkoff program and on KZSU - Stanford University Radio).
Artistic Vision of "As She Is":
This album, released on March 9, 2007, is a spicy mix of 12 of Jo D’Anna’s original tunes, many of which were inspired and re-worked during her participation in the “San Francisco Song Group”, a local peer group of songwriters who meet for potluck, new song sharing and peer critiquing twice a month at one of the members’ homes. This collection of Jo D’Anna’s tunes was hand-picked by Ben Leinbach, the producer of As She Is, as being those on which Ben believed he could best create something with his amazing brand of seamless, rhythmic soundscaping and flawless production techniques. What resulted was a blending of two very fine opposing styles: Jo’s more folk-based, fingerstyle guitar 60's-influenced roots songs – which became the inspiration and the starting point for Ben Leinbach’s more urbane and worldly jazz fusion percussive and multi-instrumental talents – to create a third style which is a beautiful and seamless collaboration of urban/world rhythms mixed with organically blended soundscapes that invoke the precise mood and intention of Jo’s songs. The beautiful flowing organic rhythms one cannot help but dance to, while Jo D’Anna’s passionately expressive and improvisational vocals – her trademark – brings any listener into a space that is at times internal, heartfelt and ecstatic.
Producer and sound engineer for “As She Is”, including multi-instrumental tracking and arrangements, by Ben Leinbach, San Anselmo, California. www.benleinbach.com
Song Insights: "As She Is"
Track 1: As She Is
I was inspired to write this song on a camping trip I took to Big Sur. I was struck by all the things in nature - sometimes microscopic - that we take for granted and that the human eye often overlooks. I thinking about the way the Earth guides me when I just open to her abundant love and take in the small, simple often unnoticed examples of her beauty, and that when I just let myself “. . .feel the Earth . . . as She is . . . and She will guide me.”
Track 2: Roll On To The Void
This song pulls together a combination of my feminist, Buddhist and existential philosophies which I culled together in order to survive the loss of an important relationship. It is about how I survived the loss - by having the courage to face the void of going on alone and moving from the pursuit of physical ecstasy towards a more spiritual kind of love.
Track 3: Take Me Home Again
This song was inspired by an Irish lad I fell in love with. He evoked in me my own Irish roots in this song, and brought me “home again” on many levels. The song has a definite Irish folk song feeling with catchy, waltzy rhythms and a melancholic bittersweet, storytelling lyric. Ben Leinbach does a great job of simulating a Bodhran drumbeat in this tune.
Track 4: Living in Dreams
This is one of my favorite tunes on the album - catchy folk/pop melody with lively, danceable, groove rhythms developing through the piece. The song is confirming – albeit somewhat tongue-in-cheek – that I prefer to live in dreams and poetic musings about the one I love, even if it is never returned. The seductively danceable groove rhythms and vocal harmonies drops the listener – and even musically seduces him/her want to stay for awhile – in that groovy dream space.
Track 5: Already Fallen
Sometimes, when we fall in love with someone, it seems like we are living out a story - that it was meant to be, according to a story written long ago, according to Nature’s will. It is a song of potential and hope. It is one of my truest and most heartfelt love songs.
Track 6: Driftwood Man
This political rock song was originally inspired by a trip I took to Mendocino, when I saw a man lying on the beach that, at first glance, I mistook for a piece of driftwood because of the way he blended in with his immediate environment of sand and wood. At a closer look, I realized he was a homeless man. I was very much inspired by the image of this “driftwood man” who evoked a story from me of a drifter who might have forsaken the luxuries of a more common life as his way to protest the global violence and often incompetent leadership of this country.
Track 7: Circle
This song, with its haunting, eerie grooves provided by Ben Leinbach, is one of the most beautiful on the album. While watching the moonlight on the bay, I am remembering someone who left suddenly in my life one winter night when the moon was full. A year had gone by, and I was wondering where he ended up, hoping he was safe, wishing he would just pick up the telephone and call; yet also finding solace in the realization that our lives are like a circle, and all will be safe and well in the end, regardless of the outcome.
Track 8: Blackberry Hill
This song was inspired by a relationship I had with someone that I first knew when we were only 17 years old, but then our paths crossed again 30 years later. It is a reminiscent love song, recalling the grace and power of youth and the innocence of our dreams we shared that summer on “Blackberry Hill” (an allegorical state of mind, more than an real place in time). The songs calls for a hope that now, with his own children at the age we once were, he gives them the same freedom to dream, explore and enjoy their youth, as we once did at age 17.
Track 9: Every Night, Every Day
This is a slightly tongue-in-cheek, melodic groove tune with a danceable, bossa-nova beat in which I recount each night that the clock is chiming when it has turned back an hour to Fall. All I seem to be able to do, while remembering my lost love as Fall descends, is listen to the hoot owl cry while I hum a haunting tune in the moonlight. In my dreams the leaves, turning autumn red in my bedroom window, melt into teardrops in the rain.
Track 10: My Heart Will Live
In this song, I am reminding myself of how the wonders and beauty of nature bring me back to life when I’ve been knocked down for whatever reason. And it’s reminder to all of us that, if we just look at the beauty around us in nature, a benevolent mirror of our own state of being, we will be healed and transformed, and yes – we will survive, and thrive. It’s a matter of allowing the cycle of loss to run its course, and when a heart really wants to live, it will, no matter what the loss.
Track 11: Widow’s Watch
I was inspired to write this tune while walking on a desolate strip of land known as Tomales Point in Marin County. It was a cold, December day. There was a chilly wind, and warning signs everywhere about mountain lions, rattlesnakes, herding Tule Elk, and the like. The Cypress trees were howling in the wind as I walked through the nearby historic Peirce Dairy with its rickety, old, white abandoned buildings. The scene was a perfect backdrop for this ghostly sea chantey I created about a woman who kept vigil every night by burning a candle in the Widow’s Watch for her lover who was lost at sea one night. Until one cold December morning, years later, when her shipwrecked sailor finally returns as a ghost. This song is a showcase for Ben Leinbach, who does an amazing production in which he creates subliminal clanking of chains and ghostly moaning sounds throughout the mix.
Track 12: Red Rhapsody
This is a nakedly vulnerable and innocently moving love song, stripped of any musical production, in which I am recorded live singing while playing my guitar solo. It paints a picture of two lovers by the sea, and the true words of love – or no words at all – that they speak to each other. It reminds us how sweet and tender the early days of love are – all at once both confusing, and yet also so grounding – like coming home, at last.
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