The band name “The Wailin’ Jennys” is enough to get some people to buy a concert ticket ǃ
Acoustic Harmonies
The backporch resurgence can't solely be attributed to the success of O Brother, Where Art Thou? The backporch resurgence can't solely be attributed to the success of O Brother, Where Art Thou?, even if "Long Time Traveller" from The Wailin' Jennys new album, Firecracker, is a dead ringer for "Down in the River to Pray." Annabelle Chvostek, Nicky Mehta and Ruth Moody (the three individual Jennys) reach deep into the Southern heritage for inspiration, and come up with disquieting ditties such as "Apocalypse Lullaby" and "Starlight." A line from "Devil's Paintbrush Road" sums up the mood: "If I lied and said all was well I might as well be dead."
This is a surprising turnaround. The Jennys' first record, 40 Days, was feel-good, full of feminine charm and preoccupied with romance. The success of that record propelled the trio from Winnipeg, Canada, on a non-stop world tour. And there's nothing like life on the road to show the mixed horrors and delights of the modern world.
Firecracker find The Wailin' Jennys (tomorrow, The Main Stage, 8pm) in a strange state. If the songs describe a collapsing world, then their trademark close harmonies have never sounded more rapturous. On "Long Time Traveller" they sound like a chorus of Appalachian angels.
Could it be that traditional music, born out of hard times, has relevant things to say about the way we live today? The entire line-up of the 25th Warwick Folk Festival could be enlisted to give weight to the theory. Tim Ban Eyken (tonight, The Main Stage, 8pm), best known for his contribution to Waterson:Carthy, delivers a macabre "Babies in the Wood" on his fine album Stiffs, Lovers, Holymen, Thieves; the resonance to today's headlines is uncomfortable. With the exception of the old reggae or bass 'n' drum rhythm (acoustis hip-hoppers Nizlopi play in the Market Squareon Sunday at 2pm), nothing much has changed in the past 200 years or so.
The Wailin' Jennys on PBS
Award-winning folk trio The Wailin’ Jennys will make its American television debut this weekend performing in a special Independence Day edition of Garrison Keillor’s famed A Prairie Home Companion along with the regular cast and guest star, Oscar-winning actress Meryl Streep Award-winning folk trio The Wailin’ Jennys will make its American television debut this weekend performing in a special Independence Day edition of Garrison Keillor’s famed A Prairie Home Companion along with the regular cast and guest star, Oscar-winning actress Meryl Streep. The show, which has been broadcast on National Public Radio since 1974, will be telecast across the U.S. and Canada on PBS’s popular Great Performances on July 2 and again on July 9, and to NPR’s radio audiences on July 1.
The Wailin’ Jennys, who took home the 2005 JUNO Award for Roots/Traditional Album of the Year for its full-length debut 40 Days, is in the midst of a five-month North American tour that will also have the band return to the U.K. for the third time. The trio has spent the latter part of June as part of the A Prairie Home Companion tour with dates in the American northeast, having recently returned from a successful tour of Australia. Over the past year, The Wailin’ Jennys have made several appearances on A Prairie Home Companion, winning over legions of new fans south of the border.
”It's a very exciting opportunity and because we've had some experience already with Garrison and the cast and crew, we know we're in good hands so that takes away a little part of the nervousness,” says band member Nicky Mehta of the telecast. “It's always an honour to appear on the show and the idea of being on Great Performances is particularly humbling.”
"A televised event like this has the potential to bring the Jennys' music to a much broader audience, and this is not only great for the band, but also great for everyone who will discover this exceptionally talented trio," says Sam Baardman, Executive Director of the Manitoba Audio Recording Industry Assocation (MARIA). "Manitobans should be extremely proud that the Jennys have established such a strong and successful reputation in international markets."
Featuring three established singer/songwriters ǃ
Songs with a bang
With a baker's dozen of fresh, rootsy songs and their signature heart-stopping harmonies, the Wailin' Jennys' second recording should prove explosive for their careers With a baker's dozen of fresh, rootsy songs and their signature heart-stopping harmonies, the Wailin' Jennys' second recording should prove explosive for their careers.
The three Canadians, Annabelle Chvostek, Nicky Mehta and Ruth Moody already have won the admiration of Garrison Keillor, who featured them on his popular program “A Prairie Home Companion," heard on National Public Radio.
The first Wailin' Jennys disc, 40 Days, with vocalist Cara Luft, earned the trio a 2005 Juno -- the Canadian equivalent of the Grammy award, for Roots and Traditional Album of the Year.
Miss Luft left the group and was replaced by Miss Chvostek. The Jennys' sound remains as pure as a mountain stream, though, and just about as bubbly. With claw hammer banjo, mandolin and fiddle high in the mix, producer David Travers-Smith capitalized on the trio's penchant for the old-time sound, adding just the edge of rock guitars, percussion, organ and horns to make the disc palatable for modern tastes.
Each of the women wrote four songs for the recording, and the first four set the tone for the rest of the disc. Miss Chvostek wrote "The Devil's Paintbrush Road," with its hooky refrain, plus "Live and die and gone," followed by Miss Moody's composition, "Glory Bound," practically a hymn complete with "hallelujahs." Either of these songs would be welcomed by the most die-hard traditional music lover.
With Miss Mehta's "Begin," the Jennys steer into more of a pop sound with layered, sustained harmony vocals, tinged with accordion and fiddle. The disc hits its stride on Miss Moody's "Things That You Know," with goosebump-inducing three-part harmonies backed by a rhythm-and-bluesy combo that includes mandolin.
The Jennys' a capella arrangement of the traditional "Long Time Traveller" would have been at home on the "O Brother" soundtrack.
These songs have a hint of folk politics. What traditional recording would be complete without a call for peace?
But this is not peace in the sense of protest; rather, it calls for universal justice. In "Avila," with its refrain "O sweet peace," Miss Mehta writes, "I will not rest until this place is full of sunlight/Or at least until the darkness is quiet for a while."
The lyrics also display a playful quality at times. Miss Chvostek writes in "Swallow," "You got me, arrow shot me/Now come connect-the-dot me."
This isn't your grandfather's folk music. There are no ballads with 20 verses -- no heart-rending tales of woe, murder, freight trains or rivers.
Yet in the Wailin' Jennys' pleasant, well-produced songs there is an undercurrent of a century and more of homespun songwriting, set to musical sounds that conjure traditional themes and images. It was the formula for success in the 1950s and early '60s for groups like the Kingston Trio, Limeliters and Brothers Four.
Could Firecracker ignite another folk boom?
A Prairie Home explosion
U.S. radio appearances drive album sales for The Wailin’ Jennys
It helps to have friends in high places U.S. radio appearances drive album sales for The Wailin’ Jennys
It helps to have friends in high places.
The Wailin’ Jennys will tell you exactly that if you catch them during the handful of days they’re not on tour.
They can even point to their own career as an example: since catching the discriminating eye of larger-than-life American radio host Garrison Keillor last year, the Jennys have been learning just how friendly those Prairie Home Companions can be.
“When it started, I don’t think we had a sense of the magnitude of it,” founding Jenny Nicky Mehta says of the band’s regular appearances on the National Public Radio show. “I’m glad we didn’t, because we would have been absolute wrecks. That has put us in front of audiences the numbers of which we haven’t dealt with before.”
The numbers Mehta refers to are indeed staggering: the radio show reaches over four million people.
“When we do Prairie Home Companion our album goes up to the Top 20 on Amazon, then it goes back down again,” she laughs. “But the exposure that the show has given us in the States? We couldn’t ask for anything better.” What’s more, just this past week the Jennys appeared on U.S. TV in a special television edition of A Prairie Home Companion ǃ
The Sound of Voices Three
The meteoric rise of The Wailin’ Jennys came to a screaching holt with the departure of Cara Luft a year go. But now they are retooled and set to release Firecracker ǃ
Serendipity Sings
The afternoon before the Wailin’ Jennys were scheduled for their Chicago debut, opening for Loudon Wainwright III at the Old Town School of Folk Music, their old friend serendipity dealt them another card The Wailin’ Jennys Serendipity Sings by Michael Parrish The afternoon before the Wailin’ Jennys were scheduled for their Chicago debut, opening for Loudon Wainwright III at the Old Town School of Folk Music, their old friend serendipity dealt them another card. The trio arrived in Chicago to the news that Wainwright was trapped by a cancelled flight in Winnipeg, which ironically is home base for two of the three members of the Jennys ǃ
The Wailin' Jennys - Southport Arts Centre
Considering the sheer beauty of the sound that can be achieved by harmony singing it’s surprising that there isn’t more of it about. Considering the sheer beauty of the sound that can be achieved by harmony singing it’s surprising that there isn’t more of it about. Hirsute men in waistcoats and boaters have probably given the genre a bad name, but if tonight’s performance is anything to go by its reputation will soon be restored to its rightful place. Three attractive women, dressed in black, all singer songwriters in their own right, combining to make sounds which give the word heavenly a new meaning. Singing songs from their 2004 album 40 days, and their latest, not yet released album, their accomplished vocal styling could make any songs sound good, so with astutely chosen covers of songs like Neil Young’s “Old Man” and The Waterboys’ Mike Scott’s “Bring ’Em All In,” they really have a winning formula. Their own songs are also very good and instantly accessible, with newcomer Annabelle Chvostek holding her own with those of founding members Ruth Moody and Nicky Mehta, and with all three displaying disarming good humour, comic timing and musical accomplishment on guitar, mandolin, fiddle, bodhran, accordion and harmonica, they seem destined for wider success. A sold out venue is fitting testament to the regard that this languorous out of season seaside town has for the talent of the Canadian trio and the merchandise table does great business at the end of the gig. And what a way to end a gig. Politely waiting for the rapturous applause to die down, the three step beyond the microphones to the front of the stage for as near perfect a rendition of the Irish standard “The Parting Glass” as you are ever likely to hear. No gimmicks, just effortless three part harmony, a cappella, with palpable silence as they pause to draw breath between verses. They are away to Australia for a few months, but come back to the UK for some festival appearances, including Brampton Live, in July.