Me in Music

(me being Jennie Nell)

The above photo was taken at a camp TIV banquet, summer 1998.

(thank you for letting me steal it Nate)

So you wanna know about my illustrious musical carreer, huh? Well here's what I'm willing to tell ya:

I've been doing music type stuff since I was born. Well, actually the day after I was born - legend has it that I sang "oh oh oh" in descending notes less than 24 hours after my emergence from the womb. I've been singing and making lots of noise ever since.

I've been playing guitar for about seven years now and writing songs for just as long.

I started taking piano lessons when I was six years old and didn't do so well. When I was about 14 or 15 I sat down at the piano and taught myself chords. Now I can kinda sorta almost maybe play a little piano, and I'm getting better.

Somehow I've managed to convice people that I'm actually pretty good. I even won a $5,000 scholarship for a song that I wrote called "Friend Girl" from Bertelsmann (the company that BMG is part of).

During my senior year of high school, I put together an album type thing also entitled Friend Girl. Since then I've written a bunch of new songs and a second tape should be coming along by fall of 1999.

Sometimes people ask me who my influences are. It's tough for me to pinpoint that. I listen to lots of different types of music and a lot of bands. I also grew up listening to a lot of musical theater and jazz/pop standards by the likes of Cole Porter, the Gershwins, Rogers and Hart, Harold Arlen, and that whole generation of wonderful songwriters. I try to be really openminded about music, and I try to pay close attention to things that I like.

I've done a whole bunch of performing, and I want to do a lot more. I like being on stage.

My tape has been played on a of couple college radio stations.

Right now I'm going to school in Saratoga Springs, NY, and I officially live in NYC.

People used to define my music as folk. I used to kinda not like that. Now that sometimes I make noise using intruments other than an acoustic guitar people don't pigeonhole me quite as much. I'm also trying to be less of a silly snobhead and let people call some of my stuff folk if the want to.

I wrote the theme song for a public access TV show called Pathetic. They only played it once and then they lost the tape. The guys on that show were not the most stable people in the world.

I wrote a song called "I Am Not Allowed," for a movie called Two Boys and A Girl that a friend of mine was making as an independent study during our senior year of high school. That was two years ago. As far as I know the film still isn't finished.

That's me.

"She started dance to that fine fine music, you know her life was saved by rock and roll."

-Lou Reed