Jane Andrä takes coffee shop folk rock to the next level by infusing it with a variety of influences from her varied musical background.

11 MP3 Songs in this album (35:39) !
Related styles: FOLK: Folk-Rock, SPIRITUAL: Contemporary Christian

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BIOGRAPHY . . .

Jane Andrä began her musical career playing her guitar at The Front Porch open mic night while attending Ohio University in 1998. A competitive swing dancer in her spare time, and daughter of Dixieland Jazz drummer Michael Burrill, she began studying the songbooks of the 1930's and 40's Swing Era.

After graduating from Ohio University in 2001, she relocated to Los Angeles determined to become a jazz singer. After finishing her day job as an aquatic physical therapist, Jane would drive to The World Stage, where she met bass player Russ Turner and was invited to sing in the open jam sessions. In 2002, she made her debut performance as a jazz vocalist with The Russ Turner Trio at Lunaria Jazz Restaurant in Beverly Hills.

A sudden turn of events, however, cause her to reloacte back to Cincinnati in 2003. Without a jazz trio to work with, Jane returned to her guitar and began writing her first original acoustic songs that would later appear on the 2008 Hot Like The Sun cd release.

Jazz was still a love, however, so in 2005 she auditioned for the twenty-piece Swingtime Big Band as their lead jazz vocalist. Less than a week later, they asked her to perform with them in front of the Rosemary Clooney House and Jane continued to sing with them until 2008.

When not booked with the Swingtime Big Band, Jane would often perform solo at various coffee shops and art openings with her guitar. Free evenings and weekends were spent in recording sessions with numerous local talent, trying to finish her first debut CD of original music.

Jane's long-awaited debut acoustic CD Hot Like The Sun was just released September 13th, 2008. With one CD finally complete, Jane has already begun recording her follow up acoustic CD as well as begun work on her first solo jazz albumn.


BEHIND THE MUSIC . . . a note from the artist


The song "Sunrise" was written and recorded after having suffered a major back injury that caused a blood clot in my left leg and two pulmonary embolisms in my heart and lung. I was flown home to Cincinnati from Los Angeles, far away from the place I thought my dream of becoming a singer would materialize, so my family could help take care of me. I had already been lying in bed six months when I was told it would take a year longer before I would be stable enough to fly to Germany to have my discs repaired. The chances of surviving the surgery were not all that great either, so this song was an attempt to summarize everything I wanted to do in case I didnât make it. Mostly, I felt it was important to make amends with the ghosts in my past and find those that I had lost somehow along the way.

After the difficult surgery, I wrote "Home". I was staying in Austria with the wonderful Staudinger family, who helped care for me until I could fly home again. Vienna is my favorite city in the world, so I was surprised at how homesick I still felt for my life back in the States. I guess part of me just wanted to pick up where I had been forced to stop two years earlier.

When I got back home, I wrote "Crash". Crash was an expression of the spiritual and emotional recovery I was going through, which ended up being much more challenging than the actual physical healing. Prior to my injury, I had spent 8 years getting a degree I could no longer use and had no idea what to do with myself. I longed to just get in the car and drive away, since it had been so long since I had the freedom to take myself places.

"Herkimer Diamond" and "Crossing the Bridge" were products of my new friendship with Beth Bowman and Emily Whittaker, two sisters who helped me through the worst of those times. Beth and Emily are from Herkimer County, New York, where Herkimer Diamonds (fake diamonds) grow and are mistaken by tourists for the real thing. Although I didnât write either of these two songs, I wanted to record them because I believe that everyone has a Herkimer Diamond in their past, and because there are so many bridges to cross before you get where you are meant to be.

After that, I got sidetracked by love for a long time, and didnât start writing again until a year after the break up, when along came Nicole Napier. The first song I shared with her was "Close Your Eyes", written for my sister, Jennifer. The song was significant in that it was the first time I was the healthy person in the story, rather than the victim. Through it I learned how much harder it is to be the helpless onlooker while someone you love suffers.

Nicole and I then collaborated on re-writing an older song called "More Than This" to make it more of a reflection of our shared faith.

Next, I wrote "The Lighthouse" after having a dream where I envisioned myself in the boat with the Apostles during the storm.

"My Fatherâs Daughter" came a month later after encounters with two different women suffering from the effects of both physical and emotional abuse; I wanted to write a song to help women in similar situations remember their strength; my friend Anis Pretot told me âI am My fatherâs Daughterâ one day, and that became the theme for the song.

I have lost two people to suicide and drug addiction, and no matter how hard I work to repress my memory of those tragedies, they still come back to haunt me. I was thinking about them one day when I wrote "You Are Precious", with the hope of preventing others from making their same mistake.

"My Beloved" was the last song written for the cd and it signifies the completion of my journey from being totally broken to whole again. Nicole and I worked so hard on this song, and by doing so, we allowed our hearts to soften again after the sadness we had both suffered. Finally, new love can grow.