Jen Charlton

‘It all started in rural Ontario with a piano and classical music. The only pop music I heard growing up was the odd Cat Stevens or Joni Mitchell record from my older sister’s room. My parents liked Simon and Garfunkel so I heard a bit of them but they weren’t hippies. Instead we were raised on classical composers, and Bach was one of my favourites.’Charlton always loved singing and was encouraged to develop this at school. But she was too busy passing her piano exams, being a fastidious student and riding her horse to think about singing seriously until she left her hometown and moved to Montreal to study at McGill University.There she studied religion and the Middle East and found herself opened up to a whole new world of people and ideas. She was also learning how to play the guitar and with the help of one of her boyfriends at the time – being introduced to music she had never listened to before.‘I became very close to the family of one of my boyfriends - Jonah. I was like a daughter to them. And his parents were real hippies. His mum used to make her own clothes and she had two long braids. They had the most incredible record collection. It was huge and they as a family, because they were all music buffs, helped introduce me to all the greats from the 60’s and 70’s, Dylan, Leonard Cohen, CSNY, Ry Cooder.....and slightly lesser known artists like Kate and Anna McGarrigle who are still a big inspiration for me. My boyfriend was friends with Martha Wainwright (who had grown up there) and other musicians and film-makers. I felt so small-town and innocent around that crowd. They’d lived in New York and gone on tour….’Borrowing her boyfriend’s classical guitar, sitting with a stack of songs and recordings beside her was how Charlton first learned to play. ‘I learned folk song after Dylan song after folk song. I loved the picking and the fact that there was a story to each one. I love it when music becomes almost like story-telling.’It was in Montreal she recorded her first album in one night, with a bottle of wine and a bass player at the Music Faculty recording studio. The songs were earnest and perhaps naïve, but the odd one has since been picked up by other folk singers, for example ‘Wandering Case of the Blues’ by Emma Tricca.She started playing at open mic evenings in Montreal but it wasn’t until she moved to New York that she really started taking her song-writing seriously. ‘I would queue up for these open stages in the East Village and Alphabet City, and for a while it was fun. It was my first taste of what performing can be like, what the whole industry is like. It was desperate but exciting all at the same time. Then my boyfriend and I broke up and I didn’t think New York really suited me. I felt so Canadian there, so I decided to go to Europe.After working on an organic farm in Portugal she settled in Seville for a few months, living with Spaniards, hanging out and watching a lot of Flamenco. ‘I even played the odd gig at this funny little place called La Carboneria. I would get paid 7000 pesetas a night. I’m sure they couldn’t understand a word I was saying but they enjoyed having visiting American musicians and they liked my voice.’And it was her voice, months later after she had landed in London that attracted peoples’ attention. ‘I’d penned all these terribly aching delicate songs, and I used to go to the Golden Lion in Camden on Sunday afternoons to ‘Come Down and Meet the Folks’ where they had a really excellent open mic - and sing a couple. It was through that scene that I met some later collaborators and was again introduced to a whole new musical universe: Grams Parsons, Neil Young, Townes Van Zandt and that laid-back West Coast layered sound. I loved it.’After playing as a duo with a dobro player for a while, she very quickly met and moved in with Russell Palmer. They formed a four-piece band aptly called ‘The Lovers’. They had a a wonderfully distinct sound, recorded an arresting live album and quickly landed some promising gigs but, the band was doomed to break up. Eventually every one of the relationships broke down, not just Charlton and Russell Palmer. The bass player and Palmer were old friends and they had a tremendous falling out. ‘Russell was great to be with but never easy. We had one of those relationships that challenges and shapes you, but he was jealous of the attention I got on stage. It was too suffocating...so I got out.’ But Charlton had been working with producer Sean Read (Beth Orton, Graham Coxon) for a while and despite their problems Palmer still added the odd bit of backing vocals and lead guitar to complete what was Jen’s second solo album ‘Wasted’ (distributed by Proper Music).‘Wasted was the name of one of the songs but I also liked the playfulness of a title like that. It could mean drunk or misspent… I think I also felt pretty numb after the break-up. When I finally picked myself up again I wanted to change – or rather I just changed. I fell out of love with the guitar and went back to my childhood instrument: the piano. I started listening to lots of different kinds of music. I wanted to try writing more in French and using a different line-up. For a while these Spanish squatters had lived next door and they were excellent musicians. One of them played a cajon (a simple wooden box-shaped percussion instrument originally from Peru) and I got kind of hooked.’Charlton eventually started playing with Brazilian percussionist and cajon player Uira Cairo. Around the same time she started working with an Italian classical violinist. Add to the mix upright bass and her new sound was born.For the new EP she worked at first with producer The FuZe at his Green Room Studio in North London, but when she felt the music was being made too mainstream she left to finish the project with producer and string composer/arranger Howard Gott who has worked with Beth Orton, Ed Harcourt and Ray Lamontagne to name a few. Gott composed the strings for ‘Let it all Out’ and then finished mixing the tracks at his Maple Sound studio in Whitstable.‘There are lots of influences in me: Country, Broadway, Chanson, classical music – but this recent offering is the most original thing I’ve ever done. It’s really me.’ With her rich husky voice, intelligent lyrics and honest piano playing, the songs take you somewhere at once earthy and elegant, upbeat and melancholy. They may take you to a place you never even knew existed.www.myspace.com/jencharlton www.sonicbids.com/jencharlton http://cdbaby.com/cd/jencharlton Also available on Amazon &