http://jeneehalstead.com/news.html Jenee Halstead: News Jannis' PHPRss class - http://www.jannis.to/ Mon, 06 Sep 2010 01:06:46 -0700 http://jeneehalstead.com/news.html#24 http://www.myspace.com/theloommusic
http://www.paslounge.com/]]> http://jeneehalstead.com/news.html#24 Sat, 21 Aug 2010 00:00:00 -0700 - Jenee Halstead - News http://jeneehalstead.com/news.html#20 Hope you can join us!
Love,
Jenee

http://networkedblogs.com/6J2Jn]]> http://jeneehalstead.com/news.html#20 Tue, 10 Aug 2010 00:00:00 -0700 - Jenee Halstead - News http://jeneehalstead.com/news.html#19 http://jeneehalstead.com/news.html#19 Wed, 04 Aug 2010 00:00:00 -0700 - Jenee Halstead - News http://jeneehalstead.com/news.html#18 I am back in Boston and ready to rock this town to full affect (Somerville actually)! I am so excited to have the honor of being joined by some of my favorite musicians and friends. Special guests include amazing singer-songwriter Olinde Mandell www.myspace.com/olindemandell. My touring buddy and knock-out performer, Teresa Storch, www.teresastorch.com will be gracing us on August 25th for the final show. Tony Savarino's band Satanic Lounge Syndicate will be joining us for the entire month. Tony will also be playing lead guitar with me, which is such a treat. Please join us in making this month fun and well, fun! What else is there?!

When: Every Wednesday in August
Where: Precinct in Union Square
70 Union Square
Somerville, MA 02143
(617) 623-9211
Time: 9-12pm
Cost: $5 Cover

Much Love,
Jenee]]> http://jeneehalstead.com/news.html#18 Sun, 01 Aug 2010 00:00:00 -0700 - Jenee Halstead - News http://jeneehalstead.com/news.html#17 Tickets are $10 at the door, or $5 if you purchase them through me. Drop me a note at: jenee@jeneehalstead.com if you could like a ticket. Doors open at 6pm and the music starts at 6:45pm.
http://www.newenglandamericanafestival.com/Summer_Series.html]]> http://jeneehalstead.com/news.html#17 Thu, 22 Jul 2010 00:00:00 -0700 - Jenee Halstead - News http://jeneehalstead.com/news.html#23
With THE RIVER GRACE Jenee Halsteed (34) gave us one of the most beautiful Americana records of the past year. Recently the not-so-famous American traveled through Holland. From Delfzijl to Bergen op Zoom and from Heerlen to Spijkerboor she performed in all kinds of bars and venues. “It’s hard to perform for people who don’t especially come to see you.”

by Eric van Domburg Scipio

Small and delicate, with a fun and fresh look - cute but not sugary. That is Jenee Halstead. She grew up in Spokane, Washington, in the Northwest of the United States, where her love for music was a big part of her upbringing. “My father was a huge fan. At home music was always on. From James Brown, Bob Dylan, Moby Grape to obscure acid rock and garage rock from the sixties.” The soundtrack of O Brother, Where Art Thou? with Gillian Welch, Alison Krauss and Emmylou Harris awakened her interest for country and especially bluegrass. Patty Griffin, however, was the one who inspired her to make music herself. “The story goes that everyone who heard the first album of the Velvet Underground started their own band.” Something similar happened to her after hearing Living With Ghosts by Patty Griffin. “That album led to a new wave of female singer-songwriters. One of them was me.”

“It’s better to just rely on myself”

Discovery

In the late nineties Jenee Halstead settled in Seattle where she did not succeed in building a career as a singer-songwriter. “There where several places to perform and the audience was not unfriendly towards me. But I mainly performed country classics and a few Alison Krauss songs because I was simply too shy to sing my own songs.” Heavily influenced by Joni Mitchell and Nick Drake, Jenee saw herself primarily as a folk artist. This was one of the reasons her decision to move to the East Coast seemed like a good one, because for decades Boston has been considered the American epicenter of folk. In Cambridge, manager Matt Smith from the legendary Club Passim (previously known as Club 47) was impressed by Halstead. He quickly informed Evan Brubaker, a producer from Seattle, who instantly offered his services to Halstead. “He didn’t know who I was, but I knew him. An accomplished and creative person, so I had no second thoughts about working with him.”

Accompanied by an acoustic guitar, dobro, mandolin, bass, keyboards, and an electronic percussion Halstead took eleven days to record The River Grace. “Over the years I had written many songs. Half in the vein of Nick Drake, the other half more country and bluegrass. Together with Evans’ wife, singer-songwriter Megan Peters, I critically studied the whole bunch. That resulted in a nice selection of which I am very proud.”

The River Grace tends towards folk and bluegrass. The recently released mini-album Hollow Bones has a noticeable roots sound with clear country influences. The small but powerfully-voiced Halstead keeps her music, in the words of the Club Passim Manager, “fresh and new, yet familiar and timeless”.

Agony

For the debut of a relatively young singer-songwriter The River Grace surprisingly contains many songs in which death plays a role. Even more remarkable is that the death on the album doesn’t have a morbid purpose, but is presented in the light of salvation. Jenee Halstead crawls into the shoes of fictional characters that face the hurt and anger of troubled outcasts. Consequently, they are more likely to die young, which gives Halstead the opportunity to deal with her own fear of death. “It’s not that I want all my main characters to die, but sometimes you have no choice of how some things end.”


Achievement

Not many people have come to the double bill of Jenee Halstead and Joe Iadanza in Cafe de Rode Pimpernel in Den Bosch. Moreover, both singer-songwriters have to deal with the regular customers in the bar, where smoking is not yet banned. However, partially due to her charming presentation Halstead wins the audience over, though is seems to go wrong towards the end when someone requests a song, and she is then overwhelmed with requests she doesn’t know - ”˜play something by Ben Harper’. But, after she improvises Jolene, a Dolly Parton classic, the night cannot go wrong.

How good her performance is doesn’t become clear until the set of Iadanza (who brings Cat Stevens to mind). With a few catchy songs the New Yorker almost gets the whole bar to sing at the start of his performance, but along the way the ordinary songs can’t hold the audiences attention, causing his performance to diminish. A week later in Culturhuis Patronaat in Heerlen, Iadanza gets the sad news that his grandfather has passed and he suddenly has to go back home. “It was very sad even though, in a way, it turned out to be good for me,” Halstead says. “Until then, he took care of almost everything — from the transportation to the contact with the bars. Now I have to take care of everything on my own”.

Conviction

Joe Iadanza is not yet on the plane to New York when the European air space is closed because of Icelandic ash clouds, making it impossible for other artists to reach the Netherlands. For Halstead only Café Briljant in Haarlem and Vestzaktheater the Zwijnshoofd in Bergen op Zoom are left on her tour schedule, but now singer-songwriters can’t make it to the Netherlands, and she is asked to perform in The Stables in Boskoop and at Taverne De Waag in Haarlem. The latter situation is quite delicate because, when planning her tour, De Waag wasn’t interested in Halstead at all. However, after her convincing performance the manager personally admitted his mistake and emphasized that the doors will always be wide open for Halstead.

A few days later at a mini-festival in Bergen op Zoom, hosted by Crossroads Radio, English folkie Emma Black and American Steve Noonan — an old friend of Jackson Browne — cannot stand in her shadow. The highlight of the set is Nick Drake, her beautifully and intensely sung tribute to the British melancholic who died almost forty years ago. Without naming him or even giving a musical hint, she captures his essence in heart-rending lines such as How do you dance all night? When your heart won’t feel the rhythm, your feet won’t take to flight. How do you put meaning into something that is not there? I am so lonely now, so lonely now, I just don’t care.]]> http://jeneehalstead.com/news.html#23 Thu, 01 Jul 2010 00:00:00 -0700 - Jenee Halstead - News http://jeneehalstead.com/news.html#16 http://twangville.com/3909/shippin-up-to-boston-a-special-playlist/]]> http://jeneehalstead.com/news.html#16 Wed, 16 Jun 2010 00:00:00 -0700 - Jenee Halstead - News http://jeneehalstead.com/news.html#15 Jenee Halstead/Cd Baby
After her excellent 2008 debut album The River Grace, rising roots singer-songwriter Jenee Halstead treats us to a fine new EP called Hollow Bones. Where The River Grace cut a fine line between folk and Americana, Hollow Bones opts for a more countrified approach, with five charming songs in a diversity of country styles, ranging from pure country (Damascus) via country-swing (Good Lookin’ Boy) and country-noir (La Luna Roja) to country-blues (Banks Of The Mississippi). Best of all though is the melancholy title song, whose style harks back most to the kind of material found on The River Grace. With her wonderful singing voice, displaying grace and emotion in equal measure, any song Halstead tackles seems immediately blessed and although the EP, because of the variety, is more a showcase for her talents (and those of the excellent musicians accompanying her) than the coherent statement The River Grace cd was, her beguiling lyrics and melodies still underline that precious few singer-songwriters are able to conjure up the sort of magic Jenee Halstead displays here with almost every song.
***1/2 Pieter Wijnstekers]]> http://jeneehalstead.com/news.html#15 Thu, 03 Jun 2010 00:00:00 -0700 - Jenee Halstead - News http://jeneehalstead.com/news.html#13
Here is one from Freddy Celis at www.rootstime.be

Haar public relations omschrijft zangeres Jenee Halstead uit het Amerikaanse Boston als ”˜Folk Americana Songbird’ en daar is echt niets teveel mee gezegd. Deze zanglijster met altstem uit Somerville, Massachusetts had vorig jaar in november al onze volle aandacht getrokken toen we haar laatste full-cd en debuutplaat “The River Grace” voor Rootstime bespraken. Haar indrukwekkende ode in ”˜Nick Drake’ aan de gelijknamige singer-songwriter ligt ons nog kersvers in het geheugen.

In afwachting van een nieuwe volwaardige studioplaat stuurde zij ons nu een vijf songs tellende ep-tje toe dat de titel “Hollow Bones” meekreeg en daarmee vernoemd werd naar één van de 5 songs op dit kleine schijfje dat nauwelijks 16 minuten duurt vooraleer de laatste noot geblazen en het laatste woord gezongen wordt.
Wij zouden dit werkje spontaan in de categorieën country en folk onderbrengen. Er wordt knap afgewisseld in zowel stijl als snelheid van de 5 songs maar telkens blijft toch vooral de mooie stem van Jenee Halstead weer boven drijven. Voor we het bluesy afsluitstuk “Banks Of The Mississippi” mogen beluisteren hebben we al kennis gemaakt met het vlotte popnummertje “Damascus”, het swingende uptempo honkytonk-rockertje “Good Lookin’ Boy”, een typische country tearjerker met titeltrack “Hollow Bones”, de mooiste song op deze ep en de aan Calexico herinnerende en van een twangende gitaargeluid voorziene song “La Luna Roja”.
Deze zangeres heeft tonnen vol potentieel en leunt aan bij andere grote stemmen in dit genre zoals Tift Merritt, Shawn Colvin, Gillian Welch en Patti Griffin. In april komt Jenee Halstead samen met Joe Iadanza voor drie weken toeren doorheen Nederland en wij zouden u graag aanbevelen om ergens in uw buurt een kijkje te gaan nemen en te genieten van de vocale capaciteiten van deze ook nog bijzonder goed uitziende jongedame.
(valsam)

Another review from "Control Alt Country" or www.ctrlaltcountry.be"

JENEE HALSTEAD “Hollow Bones” (Jenee Halstead)

(3,5****)

Je moet het ijzer smeden als het heet is, moet Jenee Halstead gedacht hebben. Met het jammer genoeg amper vijf songs tellende “Hollow Bones” zoekt ze immers nadrukkelijk aansluiting bij het door haar medio vorig jaar onder de lovende kritieken bedolven debuut “The River Grace” gecreëerde momentum. Halstead doet op die nieuwe EP andermaal een poging om genres als country, Americana, folk, roots rock en blues met elkaar te verzoenen. Openingsnummer “Damascus” hinkt zo speels op een aanstekelijk C&W-ritme voorbij, “Good Lookin’ Boy” flirt van onder een veel té grote Stetson nogal nadrukkelijk met rock & roll, “Hollow Bones” is knappe Americana tout court, “La Luna Roja” doet ondanks een Zuiders motiefje volop denken aan het werk van alternatieve countrysirene Neko Case en “Banks Of The Mississippi” heeft iets met blues. Opnieuw vijf ijzersterke liedjes! En Jenee Halstead lijkt dus ondertussen écht wel een naam om met stip te onthouden voor de toekomst.]]> http://jeneehalstead.com/news.html#13 Wed, 12 May 2010 00:00:00 -0700 - Jenee Halstead - News http://jeneehalstead.com/news.html#7
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