Album Notes

"Poetic, forthright, redemptive songs." Andrew Calhoun, Waterbug Records

Asked to open for a friend's band after he heard her sing some of her own material in Los Angeles in 2004, Jennifer has been touring her own spin on alt country and folk/blues rock with her band ever since. It's gotten her songs included on compilations with folks like John Hiatt, Bobby Bare and Johnny Cash and on stage and festival bills with fellow Americana artists Kevin Gordon, Mark Curry, Doug Burr, Caroline Aiken, Gram Rabbit, Marc Broussard, Los Lonely Boys, and Tom Freund.

Being born into a musical family out of Ft Worth, TX, home to native sons Townes van Zandt and T Bone Burnett (a band mate of one of her uncles back in the '60s) helped develop her flexible approach to interpretation. Not allowed to listen to recorded music until her late teens, she spent long hours teaching herself piano and guitar after school and eventually listening in secret to Thelonious Monk on the radio in her room late at night. Composing and taking part in living room jams --harmonizing to Appalachian melodies or keeping time with old-time spirituals-- gave her a broad musical vocabulary, and became the groundwork she needed for keeping in line with her own vision: "Music brings people home to themselves."

Releasing five albums in as many years has apparently been a necessity for a songwriter compulsively writing songs for survival- the soul kind. The first was 5-song EP Homeless (2004) recorded with just her and an acoustic guitar, the second, a live take off the soundboard at a show in Los Angeles. In the fall of 2005, after performing at a roots festival in pre-Katrina New Orleans, she began work on a full length studio album in New York City, completed a year later in Seattle. Compelled by stories of survivors of the hurricane and her own recent visit there with friends, she wrote it in a month and enlisted noted blues guitarist and producer Marc Copely (James Montgomery, Tracy Bonham, Jess Klein) who helped her lay down the first three tracks, including "Homeland", a "Top 20 Americana Songs of 2008" by KRVM (Eugene, OR). Copely's signature blues guitar helped to define the sound for the rest of the record, completed by guitarist/producer Matt Brown (Lucinda Williams, Bill Frissell, Trespassers William) the following summer who added lush pop layers. A collection of alt country songs is still unreleased; other singles are out on compilations via ShutEye Record's United State of Americana Vol 4 (2006), A Taste of Triple A and samplers from Pop Culture Press and Texas Music Magazine.

This year she completed Minstrel's Daughter (2009) and dedicated the album to her parent's influence. Recorded at the kitchen table in her east side Austin home with band members and musician friends and co-produced with guitarist/producer Jeff Rady with whom she co-wrote one of the tracks, the majority of the record got put down on an old Shure 57 mic. They went for a stripped-down, homemade concoction of sounds, compared to the much more produced Gods & Nations, and made a gentle but gritty referendum on love and survival by an artist clearly thinking for herself.