The Jenni Lynn Band are celebrating their first year in existence under their current name and line up. And what a year it has been for Jenni Lynn and her band. Playing seven to eight gigs each month, success has emboldened them, prompting them to start unleashing more of Jenni Lynn’s original music.
“I’m just so happy that we were perceived so well, and that we could stay so busy,” she said. “Usually, new bands are struggling. I’ve been honored to get a bunch of nice gigs.”
“We are booked for the whole year, and we’re starting to book into next year,” she continued. “The north shore has been really good to me.
Aside from north shore gigs, and a few in her native Granite State, Jenni Lynn also plays the Lowell-Chelmsford area. She has brought her Jenni Lynn Band to the Back Page in Lowell, Garrison’s in Billerica, Princeton Station in Chelmsford, and the Upper Deck in Salisbury.
“For my kind of music, for what I play, it’s been really well received in the north shore area,” she said, “like the classic rock, Motown, and blues, and stuff like that. We have quite the following in the north shore area, which is very exciting, which stems from me going to the Capone’s jam with my band once. I got quite a following from the Capone’s jam.” She is referring to the Backs Against The Wall Blues Jam, held at Capone’s in Peabody, Massachusetts every Thursday night, hosted by Lee Hawkins.
Jenni Lynn Band also has a fan base in Lowell. With 300 “Likes” on her Facebook band page, she has a reservoir of fans who might go out to her show. “It just depends on who’s available that night,” she said. “We all have a bunch of musician friends. It just depends on who’s around, and who lives in the area. But yeah, we do have quite a following.”
Jenni Lynn was never a business or marketing major. But, after almost five years in the cover band circuit, she started to learn how things work. Her education told her a lot.
“I just had decided that I wanted to go on my own,” she said. “I thought that I knew enough club owners and I knew enough people at that point to do my own thing, run my own business. I could call my own shots, play the music that I wanted to be able to play. Sometimes, if you’re not a leader of a band, you don’t get to pick what songs you play, what goes.”
Jenni Lynn’s last band, Ten More Miles, was plagued by musical differences. She still has her husband Jay, on lead and rhythm guitar, from Ten More Miles. Her new lineup, though, came after playing out for five years, getting to know people, getting to know if she can work well with them, if they can play the kind of music she is interested in presenting.
“I knew the way we clicked together,” she said. “I wanted to pick the people that worked well with us, that worked well with me that could back me up.”
In addition to her and her guitarist, she has a crack lineup. . “I have Aaron Dallman on guitar. I have Carlos Avellen on the drums,” she said. “I also have Kerry Spangler on bass. He was with the Mama Love band for a while. I knew everybody through either previous bands I had worked with or from jams.”
“Aaron, by far, is such a great guitarist,” she went on. “His soloing is fantastic. It’s like he speaks with the guitar. I’m singing the words, but his notes are speaking to the people out in the audience with his solos. It’s crazy.”
“Kerry adds his own rhythmic flair,” she added. “He doesn’t just lay down the rhythm. Carlos always keeps us on track. I guess the biggest thing with the two guitar players, with Jay and Aaron, is they take turns soloing. I think it’s a big hit, when we play out, is they always go back and forth. Jay will do a solo. Aaron will do a solo. It’s like a call and answer thing. I think the audience really gets into that when they’re in that moment.”
Being a band leader requires more of Jenni Lynn’s time and efforts. She no longer just shows up and sings. Nowadays, she’s the manager-producer-front person. “I do everything myself,” she said. “My goal was to start writing original stuff with my band. We have some original stuff that we’re currently working on. We do play usually one or two originals a night. My original goal was to write my own stuff and still do cover music too, and always, to have fun.”
Working on originals, for the Jenni Lynn Band, has been a matter of finding time to write and compose them. They have 15 songs they’ve completed the lyrics to but are working on adding music to them. “We, right now, have three complete,” Jenni Lynn said. “We have two more that are almost complete.”
Aside from hard work and creativity, her band focuses on having fun doing what they’re doing. “If you’re not having fun with the band you’re in or with the people who play with, it shows. It shows on your face. It shows in the way you present yourself on stage. It’s just never a good thing, if you’re not having fun. I think that’s always the thing, to have fun. But, be professional too.”
The Jenni Lynn Band always writes up and brings a set list, but then 99 percent of the time, they ignore it. Jenni Lynn said a band cannot plan ahead for what the audience will want to hear. She and her band mates don‘t want to be playing a bunch of classic rock songs to an audience of 20 somethings. In that case, they‘d alter their sets to feature more bands from the 1990s/2000‘s.
“Jay is very good with that,” she said. “Jay will call the songs. He’s busy looking at the audience, trying to pick up what music they like, who’s responding to what, what age group is in the audience. We need to cater to every age group, to be successful. A lot of people don’t get that you are there to entertain the crowd that’s there. Sometimes you have to switch things up. If you can learn to be good at switching things up like that, I think you’ll be a successful cover band.”
Moving forward, The Jenni Lynn Band would like to play out even more, if that’s possible, as well as work in more original material. “I would love to play some of the New Hampshire area clubs,” she said. “That would be a good goal for me. I like the way everything is going right now, just keep going with a hundred plus gigs a year.”
