JANE VOSS: BIOGRAPHY

PREVIOUS APPEARANCES

QUOTES & COMMENTS

JANE VOSS: SONGWRITER

REVIEWS

MERCHANDISE & AUDIO

BOOKING INQUIRIES

BRASS RING ENTERTAINMENT

Farther Down the Road made its debut at number 37 on the National Folk Music Top 50 chart for the month of April, and has been on the charts for two months so far. In July, Voss was a guest on the nationally syndicated radio program, "World Cafe". A song from the new disc, "Do You See That Moon?", appears in the Summer 1999 issue of Sing Out! magazine. The June issue of Folk Roots gives Farther Down the Road a "thumbs-up", and describes Voss as "A skilled singer and a really fine songwriter drawing from the roots in old-time country, blues, and vaudeville, not dissimilar to a McGarrigle."

Farther Down the Road showcases Voss's formidable strengths as singer and songwriter. She works from a broad palette of American Roots Music, moving from one genre or style to another with utter naturalness and ease. Her use of Roots idioms is no gimmick, but rather her native and natural expression, born of influences and loves dating back to her Midwestern childhood.

Her singing, says Dave Van Ronk, "is a model of passion and control." She's been described as "a force of nature" (Steve Gillette & Cindy Mangsen); "a tiny powerhouse of energy" (Old Colony Memorial Kingston, Mass.); and as "an American Piaf" (Laurie Lewis, Ana Gilda Leon).

In performance, she is ably aided and abetted by her longtime partner, the extraordinary pianist Hoyle Osborne, who is known for his solo work in the field of ragtime. Osborne is also the producer of Farther Down the Road.

Farther Down the Road is her first all-original album, but Voss's songs have long had an international following, and have been recorded and performed by a variety of other artists over the past twenty years, including Dave Van Ronk, Kate Brislin & Jody Stecher, Chuck Pyle, and Rosalie Sorrels. Among her most-covered songs to date are "To All My Friends in Far-Flung Places" and "Keep in Mind (That I Love You)".

At once personal and universal, her songs stand out for their honesty and emotive power, not less than for their inventive, memorable melodies, and lyrics lush with alliteration and internal rhyme. Her subject matter is wide-ranging, but she is perhaps at her best writing about hard luck and hard times, and the soul's journey back from the cliff's-edge of despair, with determination and sheer force of will, to hard-won hope. Laurie Lewis says, "Jane Voss is searingly honest...She describes some difficult milestones on her journey down this road and turns 'a long slow season' into art and a tribute to the resilience of the spirit."

Over the course of her career, Voss has time and again found herself out ahead of the trends.

Born and raised in Ohio, she began her performing career in San Francisco in 1970, and took to the road in 1972, appearing at folk festivals in the U.S. and Canada and becoming a familiar presence in the folk music scene on both coasts. Inspired by the music of the Original Carter Family, she quickly earned a reputation as one of the foremost interpreters of old-time country music, before that style had a wide following. This part of her career culminated in her 1976 release, An Album of Songs (Bay), which has been called "hands down, among the finest albums ever made by an interpreter of old-time country songs" (musicHound folk: The Essential Album Guide).

By this time, she was already broadening her stylistic reach as a performer to reflect the diversity of her influences, adding old-time popular, jazz, and classic blues to her repertoire. In 1976, she formed her enduring partnership with Hoyle Osborne. Her work with Osborne also took her into the territory of swing, a style now enjoying a new surge in popularity. As as duo, Voss & Osborne recorded four albums, to repeated critical acclaim, including Get to the Heart (Green Linnet), which won a Stereo Review Record of the Year Award in 1982, and the 1990 CD Sparkle and Shine (Front Hall). The duo's recordings might be the very definition of "Americana" - only no one had a name for it then.

Jane Voss has been featured, with Osborne, on "Mountain Stage", "Fresh Air", and "All Things Considered". She's appeared at numerous festivals, including the Great Hudson River Revival, Old Songs, and the Winnipeg, Toronto, Mariposa, and Philadelphia Folk festivals, and in concerts coast to coast at venues ranging from The Great American Music Hall (San Francisco) to Caffe Lena (Saratoga Springs).