Album Notes

Jody's latest release Come and Gone is a a groove-oriented journey through songs of nostalgia, change and letting go, invoking an earlier era of tube amplifiers, hammond organs, soulful harmonies and songs written to stand the test of time.

Band roster: Jody Blackwell – guitars, vocals; Duke Levine – guitars, lap steel, mandolin; Mike Mele – electric guitars; Steve Chaggaris – drums, percussion; Joe McMahon – bass; Ken Clark – electric keyboards; Dan Baker – lead electric guitar (6)

Born and raised in the South Carolina foothills of the Appalachians, Jody Blackwell grew up in a house filled with many musical genres, from her brother's R&B 45's and the family's Joni Mitchell albums, to the Appalachian hymns that her dad would play on the piano at night. Jody picked up guitar in high school, a pastime which grew into a calling during her college years at Brown where she honed her open-tuning, rhythmic style in East Providence bars and cafes at night with her first college band.

Having put down roots in Boston after college, she began playing in the subways and coffeehouses around Cambridge, MA, including the venerable Club Passim, and recorded her first solo acoustic CD Volcano in 1996, the first of four records she has independently released since moving to the Boston area. Jody claims both the north and southeast U.S. as home in her songwriting, invoking with equal intimacy the sunlit rapids of a beloved creek in rural South Carolina, or the story of a refugee newly arrived to Boston. Jody's eclectic blend of folk, jazz, and R&B has found an enthusiastic niche among lovers of roots music in its original sense, inspired by the American experience in all of its variations.