| | Issue #19.41 :: 05/07/2008 - 05/13/2008 | Laugh-In
She may be a failed stand-up comedian, but Jennifer Daniels is anything but when it comes to writing and performing songs
| BY AMY FENNELL CHRISTIAN
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AUGUSTA, GA. - Attend a Jennifer Daniels’ show and you might hear her joke about her goldfish (“You’re just being koi,” she tells them as they swim away from her), talk about something she saw on Anthony Bourdain’s travel show or share an event from her personal life.
“And occasionally I’ll talk about what the song is about,” Jennifer jokes, “but not a lot.”
The singer-songwriter, who grew up on Lookout Mountain, Tenn. (a suburb of Chattanooga) and has been compared to everyone from Ani DiFranco and Sarah McLachlan, admits that she loves the in-between-song banter almost as much as she loves performing.
“I often joke about being a failed stand-up comedian,” she explains. “I just love it when people laugh at what I’m saying, and I’ll keep going as long as they’re laughing, and Jeff is always like, ‘Uh, I think we need to play another song.’”
“Jeff” is Jeff Neal, an Evans High School and ASU graduate whose parents still live in Columbia County. He’s also her husband,as well as her cohort on stage, accompanying her on guitar and mandolin.
“Jeff, he can pick up any instrument and figure it out,” Jennifer said. “I use the guitar as a kind of vehicle, whereas he’s just an incredible musician.”
In fact, Jennifer said she didn’t begin playing guitar until high school, when she picked up her dad’s old 12-string. Writing songs, however, is something she says she’s always known how to do.
“I’ve always sung, and my brother and I used to make up musical games, not really knowing what we were doing,” she says. “You know, I really did kind of have an epiphany in high school. I didn’t realize that not everybody had songwriting as a natural language of life.”
That changed when her classmates discovered her gift, told her how rare it was and asked her to perform her songs.
“Until then, I used to lock myself away in my room and write,” she says. “The performances came later.”
Now it seems that that’s all she and Jeff do, playing as many as 150 shows a year to crowds who love her songwriting skills and her voice, both of which have been praised by Paste, Creative Loafing and Performing Songwriter.
“You know, the easy answer is to say folk-rock,” Jennifer says when asked to describe her own style. “But if you’re asking me what I hope other people get from it, I mean it’s propaganda-less and thoughtful. My main influences are Robert Frost and Edna St. Vincent Millay: poets.”
Not all of Jennifer’s songs are two-person, introspective numbers designed to make you dissolve in tears into your pint glass.
“We try to do everything in the show. Of course we have the thoughtful ballads, the stories, the narratives, but we have angry songs, too,” she says. “I just really like to wrap around that guitar and slam into it… on some of them.”
Jennifer and Jeff head into a Baltimore studio this summer to record what will be their fourth release (sixth if you count the “one that we’re embarrassed to sell” and a Christmas EP). The songs, she says, are already written.
“That’s never the problem.We always have tons of songs,” Jennifer laughs. “It’s picking the ones that are going to be the best for the whole theme of the production. And getting the funding for it. It takes a while to do that, but we’re ready.”
Until then, fans can catch Jennifer at Le Chat Noir, an intimate venue that she says is perfect for her style of performing — one in which audience members feel comfortable enough to ask her questions between songs.
“I’ll probably be sitting in people’s laps by the end of it,”she predicts.
Jennifer Daniels
Le Chat Noir
Friday, May 9
9 p.m.
$15 in advance; $20 at door
706-722-3322
lcnaugusta.com
jenniferdaniels.com | |
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