A FREE In-Store Concert with Singer/Songwriter JEN SYGIT

Thursday , February 22, 2007
05:30 pm
Location: Elderly Instruments
in-store performance (free)

To Earthwork Music's description [see the teaser, above] listing "mournful blues, haunting ballads and rousing bluegrass," add torch songs, country music, light-hearted ditties, sophisticated lyrics, a sultry voice, a golden ear, and a deft touch on multiple instruments, and you've got Michigan's own Jen Sygit, singer/songwriter extraordinaire, who has made a name for herself as far away as Boston, where she has played the famed Club Passim
and other highly-reputed folk haunts.

Jen's songwriting is personal and heartfelt but always expressed with a universal appeal, whether she's writing about the country roads of her childhood (she's a "countrified girl with a generous heart") or about watching families send their children off to war. To supplement her solid acoustic guitar playing, Jen often turns to her open-back banjo or soprano ukulele while performing mountain melodies and timeless jazz tunes that further emphasize her vocal dexterity.

Jen is offering this free in-store concert at Elderly to celebrate the release of her second album, Leaving Marshall St., which is a classic depiction of rural America featuring many of Michigan's top songwriters and instrumentalists. Jen gigs solo and with her band Spare Change.

As the well-known host of Dagwood Tavern's popular Tuesday-night Open Mike in Lansing--handy to US127 and the MSU campus--Jen has helped foster the rapidly-growing community of musicians and songwriters located in and around mid-Michigan.

[Leaving Marshall St.] is "full of energy, musical variety, and vocal fireworks, thoroughly listenable from beginning to end. When you can break the second-album curse this decisively, you know you've got something," wrote Chris Rietz in a recent Lansing State Journal review of the album.

"I was lucky enough to hear songs from Leaving Marshall St. months before its release as they were performed live right in front of me at the radio station. It quickly became one of my most highly anticipated CD releases of the year. Now that it's here I guarantee it will be on my 'Top 10 CD releases of 2006' list." - John Bommarito, host of Acoustic Alternatives, WHFR Dearborn, and host of Acoustic Brunch, WQKL Ann Arbor

"Bluesy, jazzy, folky at its best, this is rich reflective, upbeat music. Jen's songs are as comfortable and compelling as her voice is sultry and warm. Here to There is a very impressive first effort." - Wanda Degen, East Lansing Art Festival performance coordinator

You can also see Jen in concert with her band Spare Change at The Creole Gallery on Thursday, January 25, at 7:30 pm, or at The Ten Pound Fiddle on Friday, February 23, at 8:00 pm.

Jen's new CD Leaving Marshall St. charted at #31 on The Roots Music Report's "Folk" Chart, and it charted at #24 on 3rd Coast Music Magazine's KSFR Freeform American Roots chart. Way to go, Jen!

Check out recordings we carry featuring Jen Sygit