Jennifer O'Connor @jenniferoconnor - Tumblr Blog

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I have a brand new website up at jenniferoconnormusic.com!!! Please visit me there. This site will stay active for now for history purposes and because I’m trying to gain access to this domain, but all new info will be on the new site. Lots of new stuff coming!!!!

Over The Mountain, Across the Valley and Back to the Stars Acoustic Demos for Bandcamp Friday

Over The Mountain, Across The Valley and Back to the Stars - Acoustic Demos by Jennifer O'Connor

Hello. I offer you this tiny window into the time I was writing the songs that would become my 2006 Matador debut, ‘Over The Mountain, Across the Valley and Back to the Stars.

These are all live one take recordings - so there is no studio sheen - just one guitar mic and one vocal mic in order to get the song down so we could figure out how we wanted to record them. Seven of these songs ended up on the record, three ended up on b-sides and one has never been on anything before. Goofiness abounds, as does mistakes, lyrics that got changed, early versions of how I played and sang songs, and a couple of talk back mic glimpses of recording engineer and friend Jim Bentley, who is no longer with us. I kept them in because it's just nice to hear his voice.

A few songs aren’t here - “Exeter, RI”, “Century Estates”, “Today”, “Complicated Rhyme” - I’m assuming that’s because I must have written them after this was recorded. I tend to write songs all the way up to when the "proper" recording starts. There is no 'Sister' demo because that song was old and already on my self-titled album - so no demo was needed. I hope you enjoy this little time machine back to 2005/2006. I’m not exactly sure when these were recorded by I know it was all one afternoon, in Bushwick at The Fort. The album came out on August 22, 2006 - 15 years ago this month. credits

from the album Talk - Action = Zero Vol. 2: A Compilation Benefitting Spread The Vote

I am very happy to announce that I am a part of a new Bank Robber Music / Rough Trade Publishing compilation out TODAY and available at Bandcamp. This compilation features tracks from over 50 artists and all proceeds are going directly to Spread The Vote - an organization devoted to “increasing voter participation in America, because our democracy depends on it.” Please consider buying the compilation - it's a min of only $2 for all the songs and $20.20 is the recommend list price!

My track on the compilation is a cover of the Rod Stewart song, “Young Turks” which I worked on with Travis C. Stever of the AMAZING Coheed and Cambria. Travis and I have been doing a little bit of virtual collaborating during quarantine and he asked me work on this cover - which is one of his favorite songs from when he was a kid. I love the song too, so we were passing it back and forth over the internets (him tracking the guitars and bass at this home studio, and me doing vocals and keys in mine.) We weren’t sure what we were going to do with it and then when I learned of this project RTP was putting together it clicked how perfect this song is for this particular time/cause. It’s an anti-establishment, battle cry of a song at heart - told through the classic, personal, story-song lense.

Now more than ever, we can’t give up. We have to keep fighting for our lives, our country, our sanity, our freedom. I’m sure that’s probably not exactly what Rod meant when he wrote it, but I think in some ways, it kind of is..

“Young hearts be free tonight. Time is on your side. Don’t let them put you down, don’t let ’em push you around, Don’t let ’em ever change your point of view.”

Jennifer O’Connor Spring 2020 Tour⁣ April 24 Hamden, CT Space Ballroom (front room) w/ Chris Brokaw ticket link April 25 Philadelphia, PA Ortlieb’s ticket link April 29 Chicago IL Subterranean Downstairs tickets April 30 Kalamazoo, MI Bell’s Eccentric Cafe May 2 Pittsburgh, PA Cattivo tickets May 3 Brooklyn, NY The Sultan Room w/ Dump ticket link

More dates coming soon. Classic pic 📷 by Debora Francis

#jenniferoconnor

A new song. A new Christmas song. Also available on all streaming platforms. Maybe next year we’ll put it on wax.

#jenniferoconnor #christmassong

Click on the photo to RSVP. Space is very limited and RSVP is required.

click on pic to get tix

Playing in Providence next month! FB invite: http://bit.ly/2GZB4Cv

“Already Gone” from the JO’C album, I Want What You Want, soundtracking this scene from The Good Fight. Purchase the track on iTunes here: http://apple.co/2opc16p

#jenniferoconnor thegoodfight

Jennifer O'Connor cover of Bruce Springsteen's "Dancing In the Dark" Vocals & Guitar: Jennifer O'Connor Bass Guitar: Tom Beaujour Drums: Jon Langmead Cover art: "Decades of Blades" by Andrea Sloan

I have always approached my life and seen the world through the lens of music - and more specifically through songs. It began for me as a little kid listening to the radio on my walkman and saving up my allowance to buy a single each week at the department store when I’d go shopping with my mom. I’d bring it home and I’d play it over and over alone in my room and think about the lyrics or absorb the bassline and dance to the drums - or whatever it was about the particular song that got me. I would dream about the world - the one that existed in the picture that the artist created in the song and the one that my mind created from the information that the artist gave me. And always - it would calm me or make me feel protected or make me feel good or it would be a friend to me in my sadness if that was what I needed at that moment.

This song, one of the biggest songs of the 1980s, is a perfect pop song and it’s always been one of my favorites - I have the 45 hanging over my desk. I know that Bruce wrote it at the very end of the recording process for Born In the USA because the label wanted a hit - but I've always felt it to be a pretty heavy song despite it’s pop bounce. Full of desire and expectation but also resigned and desperate feeling. At it’s heart though, I hear it as a call to arms. It is defiant and brave. It says, “I feel all of these things and yet I’m going to keep going anyway, keep trying." Which is kind of how I have felt most of my life - things work, then they break, then I try to fix them and whether or not I can, I keep going anyway. And I think that feels like a good message for right now. What else is there to do really?

For me, music was and is multi-purpose - it offers so much. I’ve surrounded myself with it for as long as I can remember and it’s culminated with me being a musician, running a record label and now a record store too. This is not a coincidence. These are the things that make me feel productive, good, purposeful, and yes, even safe. My wish is that you can do the same - whether it is with music or books or cooking or writing or sports or whatever helps you to understand this world, be productive, and feel more safe in this moment that we are in.

And I hope you enjoy the song!

Much love and happy holidays to you and yours, Jennifer

jenniferoconnor

brucespringsteen

paisley park is in your heart... #prince

My song "I Do" is on Recovery Road tonight at 9pm EST on Freeform!

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I have a new record out today and there is a lot on my mind so I thought I’d write it down and share it with you. I’m in the backseat of a giant, rented black Chevy Suburban somewhere in New Hampshire, headed south back to New York - we play the Tarrytown Music Hall tonight.

My drummer and one of my best friends, Jon Langmead is driving. We’ve been playing music together since 2004 and we’ve been through so many things together that he feels like a brother to me. Tom Beaujour is in the passenger seat and though we haven’t been playing music together quite as long, he is also one of my best friends and is also the reason why my last couple of records have sounded as good as they have. He has really helped me figure out how to make the records I’ve always wanted to make.

We are on our way to play our 6th of 7 shows on a tour with Neko Case, which is pretty amazing really, and that is not lost on me. I am beyond grateful for this experience and all I am learning from Neko - who is a truly great and one-of-a-kind artist and person.

But there is something bittersweet about the release of this record, I have to say. It was only last summer that we were touring with Neko, when in the middle of the tour, my mom went into the hospital. She died about a month later. There is a familiarity about moving through these landscapes with this band on this tour, sitting in this backseat. It’s painful - but it’s also beautiful. This record that’s out today is very much about my mom and her illness, my own struggles with it, and with my own path in and out of the depressions and anxieties that waxed and waned through the making of the record, related and unrelated to her. I love her and I miss her and I’m happy and I’m sad and I’m growing and I’m stuck and it’s all ok and it’s all there. This one really is a record, in the truest sense of the word.

I’ll wrap this up. I started writing this - whatever this is - because I was looking for a picture of the record cover in my phone to post online to promote the fact that the record is out today as one does when it’s record release day - and I came across a photo of me and my mom a couple of days before she died. It really got me. This is my first record I’m putting out without her around to hear it and ask me questions that make me laugh and smile and bug me and all those things that moms do. And it’s sad, but then really, it ultimately made me realize how incredibly grateful I am. That I am here. Living this life. That I am still doing this. That I am with some of my best friends in the world. That I get to play these shows with Neko Case and see how shit can really be when you just stay the course, do the work and are nice to people - yourself and others. How we are all so lucky to be here on this planet for however long we get to be. Thanks for reading this and I hope you like the record. Oh yeah, if you want to buy it or hear it, pretty much all the info you need can be found here:

kiamrecords.com/jennifer_oconnor

#xl

tour starts FRIDAY!!!!

#xs

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