I'm from Minneapolis, MN, and I've been writing songs on piano & keyboard since I was about 8. But I've never formally learned how to play which sometimes makes it difficult in a band situation when I can't say what key a song is in for example, but we manage. I've had the privilege and honor of working with Twin Cities musicians including Dan Greenwood (drums), Deborah Copperud (cello), Sean Hoffman (bass), Adam Marx (bass), Cody Weigel (guitar), and many more.The things that are currently important and inspiring to me are: my house which is very old, canning & pickling things, hand embroidering things, trying to grow things (especially to make into medicine), enjoying the St. Croix River valley, researching my ancestry (which includes executed "witches" in Salem, Dutch traders marrying Mohawk "princesses," Irish castles and other fruits of the family tree), and maybe most significantly, my spirituality.
I do most of my recording at home, and I have 2 cats named Leo and Lola who try to help me record songs by always being in my face. I don't always know what to put in a bio*, so I like answering questions. If you have some, you can send them to me at info (at) glossyshoebox.com or Facebook me or Tweet me
XO,
Jenny
*scroll down for the longer version
Connect!
As far as family goes, I suppose I can begin in the 17th century when a Dutch trader named Cornelius Anthonisse Van Slyck came to America and ended up in the New York area where he married a Mohawk (that’s actually a bit of a derogatory word, Algonquin is the PC way to go) woman named Ots-Toch (a woman who gets compared to Pocahontas in lore and legend). They raised their children in the Algonquin tradition, and some generations later, their progeny produced a girl named Dorothy (Dot) Van Slyke in southern Minnesota. That’s my grandma.
Dot’s mom also has an interesting ancestral story that leads back to the Salem Witch Trials of 1692. Three sisters whose maiden name was Towne, were accused of witchcraft, and 2 were hanged at Gallows Hill. Also among the executed were Giles and Martha Corey, an elderly couple who were pressed to death under the weight of stones and hanged respectively. As we know, the trials and executions were a tragic product puritan insanity and mass hysteria. Seven generations later, a surviving Corey ancestor and Towne ancestor united in southern Minnesota and had a baby girl. That’s my great-grandma, mother of Dot.
While I can trace my grandma Dot’s ancestry back to the 17th century, I’ve been unsuccessful in tracing my other grandparents. All I know is that Dalton and Hayes (mother’s maiden name) are Irish surnames, and Dalton has a pretty awesome coat of arms involving a lion with two tails and five fleur de lis (which is why I have a fleur de lis tattoo on my back and also why I titled my first album Fleur de Lily).
My geographical origins are just as influential. I grew up near the Minnesota River in Bloomington, a suburb of Minneapolis. I spent a lot of time in the river bottoms and forest where I observed the ecology, springtime floods, forest animals including deer, beavers and bald eagles, and nighttime canoeing in the backwaters to observe the carp sucking food off the water’s surface. My family frequented the river bottoms for bonfires when I was little. (Later, during high school, my friends had bonfire parties down there and we called them “burns.” The burns were usually held at an old, Blair-Witchy house foundation about a mile’s hike in and featured beverages such as Canadian Windsor mixed with Cool Aid and induced lots of vomiting). Minnesota’s environs and history have provided an enchanting backdrop including the forested and rocky shores of Lake Superior, the packs of wolves and bears that live there, and the rich history of the Anishinabe (Ojibwe) people that once ruled the region (all of which directly inspired the album Rusalka’s Umbrella).
My parents were 20 years old when I was conceived. My dad had just moved to California to continue training to be a world-class bicycle racer and had given my mom a promise ring of cat’s-eye stone. Two weeks later, when my mom found out about me, he moved back to MN and married her. Then came my brother, then came my sister, then my mom said no more because she didn’t want to go down the road her parents had gone down (my mom is one of a triplet birth with 14 brothers and sisters).
Seeing young parents grow up as I was growing up was a rare gift. I was exposed to many things other kids might have been more shielded from. I hung out with my dad at the local bike shop that sponsored his racing (I wasn’t allowed behind the work benches because the mechanics had pictures of naked ladies taped to their toolboxes), and I attended “burns” thrown by the lead mechanic nicknamed “the hipster.” These parties were all 20-something yr olds, there was pot growing hydropinically in the living room, and my whole family would show up in the station wagon (they called us “the Griswolds”).
When I was little, the music at home ranged from Elton John, Michael Jackson, Prince (my mom’s records) to Yes, Supertramp, Pink Floyd (my dad’s picks). I preferred Cyndi Lauper, Culture Club, and I believe Technotronic was my first tape. All of this probably influenced what I write. I’d “jam” with my dad – he played drum set, and I made up tunes on the piano. I taught myself how to play the piano. The first song I played by ear was “Chariots of Fire.”
I spent a lot of time at the piano. It was fun for me. When I came home from school, I’d work on the challenge of getting my left hand, right hand and voice to all be doing something different. Then I discovered Tori Amos in high school and thought, “Hey, that’s the kind of music I have in me. It’s like we have the same creative DNA.” I thought of Tori Amos as a musical godmother.
Speaking of godmothers, my real godmother, Donna, has always been a source of inspiration for me. She’s glamorous, worldly, independent, funny and always had dates. She wasn’t married, and she didn’t have kids. Instead she traveled and lived in a small house that was awesomely decorated. I always thought of her as a princess in a palace and queen of her own kingdom. I like to think that my lifestyle is modeled after hers.
I got to see my mom go through college while I was in high school. Thank goodness, because college scared me. I had no idea what to expect, where to go, or how to do it. My mom did it with grace and determination, which inspired me and put me at some ease. I really didn’t want to grow up though. (Maybe TMI, but I got my period when I was only 10 years old. My mom knew it was coming because I got really klutzy and kept falling down the stairs etc; when I got it, she said it was a reason to celebrate because I’m a woman now…which REALLY depressed me because I was SO looking forward to being a teenager. Molly Ringwald made it look so fun. Now I had bypassed being a teenager and went straight to being a woman. I thought it meant I had to wear pantyhose and polyester all the time).
I got to be a teenager after all. I occupied both sides of the pendulum: the troublemaker who made teachers and parents nervous to the socially involved, academically motivated star student. I had friends in low and high places, and I was having fun on both levels. In a class of 450 or so students, I was voted Most Musical and Most Likely to Win an Academy Award. I cried at my high school commencement ceremony not out of happiness & relief, but because I knew my best friends and I would all be going our separate ways. After the big ceremony, there was the all-night senior graduation party.
It was a fateful party, as it turned out. There was a husband and wife team of palm readers, and while my classmates were being ushered into the auditorium for a magic show, I was engrossed in a discussion with them. I remember they told me that I needed to follow my true path and that I should get my hands on a book called “The Artist’s Way.” I wrote it down.
I looked for that book, but it seemed to be out of print. I couldn’t find it in new or used bookstores, but the title never left my mind. I went to college. I didn’t like it. I only took classes that I was interested in, and I wasn’t following a major or plan. I realized I’d be in school forever unless I convinced the inter-college program that my wide array of course work made some kind of sense. So I graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree in Psychology, Anthropology and Environmental Science within 4 years. I didn’t want to spend an extra second in college. I hadn't been playing piano or writing songs during that time, and I realized that I need a creative music outlet in my life in order to stay sane.
An interesting thing happened during my junior year though. I started dating one of my professors. We eventually got engaged. After I graduated with my BS, I decided to pursue a masters program for teaching because I thought it’d be nice to have a career with summers off. Not the best reason to pick a profession. So I was engaged to be married, and I was half-way through earning a master’s degree for a profession I had no real enthusiasm for, and I felt stuck. That’s when “The Artist’s Way” somehow caught my peripheral vision up on a used bookstore’s endcap.
Zen masters say that when you’re ready to learn, your teacher will find you. Had I found that book any earlier, it may not have had the same effect. That day, I took it to Hidden Beach on Cedar Lake to read the first chapter. It inspired me to perform for the first time at an open mic. That very same night. At the Terminal Bar. I kept going to the open mic nights as my boot-camp for stage performance (I quickly learned that knowing my songs in my living room was not quite the same as knowing them on stage…deer in headlights).
I was writing more and performing more, and I was less and less able to plan for the wedding that was now only a couple of months away. I had planner’s block, and I had Cold Feet. I told my fiancé about it, my friends, my family, and they all said ‘It’s okay, cold feet are common.” Yes, but so is divorce. I felt a crisis coming on. Although he and I got a long just fine, I saw my future as a caged-bird. I needed some answers. Fast.
My author friend, Martin Powell, had given me a deck of Tarot cards for my birthday one year. But I’d never used them because I was raised as a fair-weather Catholic (not very strict) and had the vague sense that doing Tarot was somehow evil or a sin. But I was desperate for answers, and when I went to the St. Paul Cathedral to pray about it, the doors were locked (this small mechanical problem was a huge dent in my faith). So Tarot it was.
I went back to the warehouse district condo that I lived in with my fiancé, and I did my first Tarot reading. The spread spelled-out my situation exactly, and the meaning of the final card, the card which answers my question, was “a promise needs to be broken.” As if to punctuate the importance of this surreal experience and precise answer (I was hoping for a “don’t worry about it, just get married”), a raven flew down and perched on the balcony railing just outside the open window I was sitting next to. And it started cawing. It kept talking to me even when I went right next to it and asked out loud “what are you doing?”
I had my answer. Marriage wasn’t the right move for me at that point in my life. I called off the wedding and moved back in with my parents (I boomeranged). Two weeks after I’d done so, I had another bird sign: an owl swooped down at high noon, mid-suburbia and flew next to my car for a couple seconds. I took this as a sign that I’d made the right decision and was on the right track.
In not too long, I got involved in another relationship (I’m always getting distracted by boys). It got serious quickly, and while we were planning our big trip to Europe together, he got called-up for deployment to Iraq (he’d been in the National Guard since he was 17 to help pay for college). It was an agonizing, dramatic separation. On the bright side, I suddenly had free-time (I was no longer able to spend every available minute with him) and plenty of emotional energy to channel into my first recording project.
I found Matthew Freed via MySpace. He played bass with Cloud Cult and was a recording engineer at Essential Sessions Studio in St. Paul. I worked with him to record Fleur de Lily, and he introduced me to lots of session musicians, of which drummer Dan Greenwood (who was also a member of Cloud Cult) would become a band member. The record was self-released and well received locally and also had some national and international attention. My first CD release show sold out an 800 person theater…not a bad start!
I decided I wanted to produce a remix album, so DJs from the UK, Germany, Greece, and LA reinvented various songs from Fleur de Lily. The remix album was called Carbon Lily Remixes. Then I started working with Matt again on the next studio album, Rusalka’s Umbrella. Production was a start and stop operation because Matt and Dan were touring heavily with Cloud Cult, but it came together complete with a book of poetry that I released along with it called “Daughters of the Dead Sea.”
By this time I was single (the soldier relationship didn't last), dating here and there, living in a studio apartment in Uptown, but mostly having a fun time going shows in the Twin Cities music scene. Then I got myself involved with a guitarist (I’m always getting distracted by boys). Somewhere in the middle of all this, the opportunity to buy my dream house in my dream town fell into my lap. So I did it. Then I became a small town girl and my boyfriend moved in with me. And that’s what I did. Sometimes I tried growing things in a garden. And I tried to keep the music going, but it all felt off.
I had to go to see a doctor because I was having shortness of breath and the return of good-old chronic insomnia. My doctor asked me a million personal questions, and I ended up bursting into tears realizing I was stressed-out, unhappy, uninspired, and in a bad relationship. Literally, my doctor’s prescription was: break-up with your boyfriend and play more piano. So I did. And I am. It was as if my muses were on strike for two years, and the second I made those changes, they got right back in my corner.
The sources of inspiration still come from my roots, my environment, and observations about the world. Although my spiritual orientation might be called “agnostic,” I've experienced that the universe responds to carefully constructed and delivered intentions as long as I do my part, and I also believe that the most important job I have in my limited time on this earth is to follow my true will, my true path (just like the palm readers said it was). So that’s what I’m going to do here…
