Rollin'!.....

Here's a cool feature about a recent session here at Okey Doke Studio working on Eric McFadden's latest CD co-produced by our own Philbillie. This was produced by SPINearth.tv correspondent Narayana and you can check out the full story at:
http://spinearth.tv/city/san-francisco
and...
http://7x7.com/blogs/clamour/studio-local-singer-songwriter-eric-mcfadden

See full report...

The Red Light Is On

Here at Okey Doke Studios, at a secret location somewhere in San Francisco, we have been making the Jenny Kerr Band records for, lo, these many years. And although mainly a private project studio, our facility has been host to some very special outside projects as well. Most recently our man, Philbillie, has been engineering and co-producing the latest effort from our good buddy and local guitar legend Eric McFadden. This one is the long awaited follow-up to the deeply acoustic "Devil Moon" CD of 2003. Also mainly acoustic based, Eric and Philbillie have brought in some more orchestral textures to this one.


Carla Kihlstedt, of "Sleepytime Gorilla Musuem" who has recorded and toured with none
other than Tom Waits, lays down her trademark ghostly violin.










Sam Bass of "Loop Station" and "Les Claypool"on cello












The Ringleader.



















Accordion Goddess (and Accordion Babe calendar girl)
Isabel Douglass. She also plays with "Rupa & The April Fishes".
















A fine, handsome group of kids and talented, to boot. This new disk is slated to drop this spring, including wide European release on Bad Reputation records in France, and we here at Okey Doke Records couldn't be prouder.

Well, it is inexcusable, even my mother has noticed the absence of a new blog, and you know mom's ALWAYS right.

So here we are back for 2 weeks from Zihuatanejo where we played for the International Guitarfest. It's our fourth time there. And this I think was the best festival yet. Over the course of the four years, we've made some wonderful friends, Jeanne, Rick, Catherine, Kelli Ali (from previous years) and of course, Heidi Nygaard, who was our most gracious hostess. She has the most beautiful house. Eric McFadden came with us for his second time on the festival. We all got to stay in this fab house! The house became music central for the festival, and there was jamming many a balmy Mexican night into the wee hours.

www.tomatis.no/mexico/Zihuatanejo.html

Eric's friend and mentor, Stan Hirsch, and supercool wife Trish came too. They stayed in the bungalow which is also on the property.

Stan does blues yes, but also mixes in his own edgy thing...he had some hispanola trippy melange in there...and he's got this crazy thumb/tremolo fingers isolation technique that is humanly impossible, yet he does it. It's been driving me crazy for years. How, Stan? How do you do it? www.stanhirsch.com

Stan and Trish shared with Patrick Sweany, one of my fave new players on the festival this year www.patricksweany.com. He made a grand arrival, getting totally soaked by the cabbie who had driven Pat way out of his way, on purpose and was trying to charge him like $100 bucks for a $10 ride. So there was a big yelling match in the street.

Now Patrick has the most soulful voice, plays gutbucket guitar, blues, ragtime, R and B, great obscure tunes and great tunes of his own...and knows song after song after song after song. But GOOD ones. The last night of the festival he was one of the last guys standing, 5:30 AM, I think it was, and he was still singin' 'em, fresh as a daisy. Well, maybe not that fresh, but at least he sounded good...







Here's the bungalow where those guys stayed: Oh yeah, I almost forgot this totally crazy kid guitar player, Lenny or Jay Leonard, Juatco...a young sweet guy, pretty fresh outta Berklee, and played as fast as a jackrabbit. What the heck IS your name, Lenny? Anyway, a whole lotta talent, and hysterically funny guy. The kind who leaps flying fully dressed with a guitar into the pool, although he didn't actually do this, it would be easy to imagine him. Hope I get to see him again sometime...

A special hello to Marianne, who inspired me and taught me a couple of truly magical things, but they're secret!

So here we are back in cool San Francisco, with only a few mosquito bites that are fading along with the memory of this year's Guitarfest.

Desert Dream

As to the great length of time between my first entry and this, it can be attributed to a couple of reasons, the least not being sheer phlegm. No, not the kind you get in your nose and throat, but rather the kind of psycho-torpor that sets in from October to February. But aside from that, there was the issue of my biography that my trip to Phoenix begged me to reconsider.

If I do say so myself, I have had a pretty interesting life and never wanted to brag about such matters in the bio on my website, wanting to keep it professional and let the music speak for itself. So I’ve always felt a little cagey and withholding, and have left myself out of the mix. But isn't authenticity the singer/songwriter's stock in trade, raison d'etre, bird in the proverbial hand? And besides, it makes for a good read and back-story. And they always say to 'salt the story', so here goes.

Come here, little birdie, and show me your tale....

While in Phoenix, I visited the Kerr Cultural Center, which my grandmother, Louise Lincoln Kerr, bequeathed to ASU. This is her adobe house and music studio which was converted to a cultural center after her death in 1977. Normally they program a mix of classical and folkloric shows, but Chris Smithers had played there recently so they feature a pretty broad mix. The main adobe contains the green room, ticket office and gift shop. It made me just a bit uneasy seeing my grandmother's teacups and photos in a glass case near the cash register.

The house was built of all native materials, and she designed the "studio," a concert hall which apparently had extraordinary acoustics and were studied by many architects. There were also small adobe houses on the property called the 'shacks', which were used as guest houses for great musicians and artists such as Pablo Casals, Isaac Sterns, and the Juilliard String Quartet. I imagine there were some really swingin’ times out there what with party animals like that hanging out. The plans for the house's construction somehow fell into my hands, and I saw that she plotted every native plant and tree so the ecological balance would be undisturbed. And all this in the 1940's... Now the house and studio are surrounded and dwarfed by horribly chic designer malls and green lawns. It's so incongruous as to seem almost ridiculous.

You can read up on it here.
http://www.asukerr.com/more/aboutkerr.shtml

Regrettably, I was never especially close to my grandmother. I met her only a couple of times. But I did end up with several of her scores, papers, recipes and some furniture. I’ve heard some incredible stories about her, which my father told me: that she was friend to the Hopi, had organized caravans of food and medicine for them long before it was "PC." to do so. In fact, they called her “Mother”. Often in the house there was a cacophonous mix of chamber music, a Hopi chief drumming and children yelling. The house was full of Katchina dolls. In her scores, there are a number of songs based on Hopi texts, very lovely. Here's an excerpt:

Indian Serenade

Neither wind nor bird, that was my flute you heard last night by the river
When you came with your wicker jar where the river drags the willows,
oh that was my flute you heard, Wacoba, calling come to the willows
neither wind nor bird rustled the lupine blooms, that was my blood you heard
answer your garments hem, whispering whispering through the grasses

She was one of the first two women to win a seat with the Cleveland Symphony, performing as first violinist there. She also wrote symphonic works that were performed during the 1950's, a era not especially known for nurturing women composers.

More info on Louise Lincoln Kerr here:
http://www.iawm.org/articles_html/broe_kerr.html

So in short the Phoenix Folk Alliance trip turned up much more than ever expected...

All the best and a Happy New Year,

Jenny

Fair to Middlin'

Yet another JKB road trip with Jenny and the band headed down to sun-splashed San Diego for the San Diego County Fair at the Del Mar fairgrounds. What was originally planned as a quick 4th of July weekend run out turned into a nice, week-long mini vacation when Vanholio (our '91 Ford Clubwagon XL) decided that NOW would be a good time for a new catalytic converter. Yes, NOW. On. the. 4th. of. July. weekend. As luck would have it, though, we are staying with some very dear, generous friends who pulled together to get us and all the gear to the show on time and a little extra time in sunny SD was most welcome.













Philbillie & Jenny.... Mike Anderson wailin' the bass while Dana and Marisa look on.
















Harry O tickles the keys, while the band rips it up in the Del Mar sunset.



















Our host Jeffie-Scott and our sound-gal Page are the only ones with the cajones enough to brave the ride-of-doom. The rest of us look on in terror.

Nothing, though, is more horrifying than this:




















And finally, a thousand thanks and a million kisses to our Hostess wit' 'da mostess, the Baroness Jeanne-Renee' Pezzi for opening her home to a bunch of sun-burnt, road-weary musicians.

Just putting my toes in.

Uhhhh......Hi?

Well, this will be a first for me, this blog thing, but with a spankin' new website up soon, some great new band members and a new record in the works I reckon it's time to jump in, better late than whatever.

The new website that brought you here was designed by a really talented guy by the name of Steve Wilkison at Digital Vision Media who has done designs for many other great musicians including one of my faves Buddy and Julie Miller, and I'm thrilled with the spiffy new look he's helped me out with, web-wise.

I'll also use this forum soon to introduce some new players that I'm real happy to have on stage with me now and we may even post some bonus live recordings soon, if the stars line up right.
We've even got ourselves a full-time sound gal to help out Philbillie on the technical end.

We're headed down to San Diego for the county fair in Del Mar next week and I'll have some news for you all then, so come on back. In fact, you could even hit the subscribe button if you're so inclined.

Best,
Jenny