For five solid years, Jen Kearney has been funking up the greater-Boston music scene with her keyboard driven sexy soul music. Kearney recently moved into the city of Boston from Lowell after playing out from Lowell as her base. The Merrimac Valley are was very supportive of her.
Early in her career in Lowell, there was a recording project going on among local players, with musicians working on one CD focused on local talent, Players played on each other’s songs. “It was an excellent way to start a real recording career,” she said. “I learned how it worked and I learned to definitely be prepared for studio time.”
From that point on Kearney was a known talent in the area. Since then, she’s been recording with Bob Nash of Wonka Sound on Steadman Street in Lowell, cranking out four Cds, including on CD with a band called Kearney Square before making the three that have opened doors for her all over greater-Boston. Her solo works Bravery, Eat, and Year Of The Ox still sell. She plays out under the curious band name Jen Kearney And The Lost Onion.
Kearney started out writing fairly simple songs with a rock sensibility before she became a funk soul sistah. Deeper plunges into R&B, jazz, and Latin came to her a bit later. “I always keep an open mind about it, what comes out,” Kearney said.
Kearney’s interest in R&B began in childhood. Her mother had Motown, Chess, and Stax label record albums. Wilson Pickett, Otis Redding, and the Jackson Five were early influences, even before her later interest in Michael Jackson solo and Prince. She became interested in rock bands like The Beatles, Pink Floyd, The Who, and The Doors later.
“But there was a lot of R&B involved. I really just always gravitated toward it. The Latin stuff didn’t come until later, till I really heard some stuff on the radio and started pursuing places I could find a lot of records that were Latin.”
Kearney’s friend, Yahuba Garcia-Torrez, the Boston-born Purta Rican conga sensation who plays on her albums, turned her onto a lot of Latin music with a list of must haves. She found an AM radio station that played Latin music when working third shift at a bakery. Being awake at unusual hours, Kearney danced to salsa and rumba in the middle of the night when nobody was at the bakery to see her. “It really kept me awake while I was baking,” she said.
It was the rhythms that drew her into the Latin music. “Latin music is just so complicated, but really accessible at the same time. Everywhere you listen, there’s like five hits with the horns. There’s always such amazing arrangements. Of course, the rhythm is hypnotic.”
Kearney’s own sound, she said, comes from writing a song without making an effort to write in a certain style. She has been compared to Stevie Wonder, which she finds flattering, but she does not try to sound like anybody else. “In the end I hope I also sound like me,” she said. “But yeah, he’s an enormous hero of mind. He’s an amazing presence in the world.”
Similarities in Kearney’s music and Stevie Wonder are in the beats and rhythms that make people want to move. “I think people are driven by rhythm first. That’s what gets them. It’s a primal thing.” She also thinks there are many ways in which she is not like Stevie Wonder. She is considered by some to have a sound heavier, funkier, than Mr. Wonder’s, and her voice has a different richness.
“Of course, we all want to be known as our self,” Kearney said. “I haven’t lived the same life Stevie Wonder lived at all. I’m not trying to imitate anybody.”
Kearney is in the writing phase for her next CD. She has slowed down her schedule of live shows so she’ll have some time to work out the new material. She has one completed song, “Waiting For It,” which she has been performing for a while. Kearney does not foresee a concept album like 2009’s “Year Of The Ox.”
Kearney is one brainy woman. Last year’s Year Of The Ox was a concept album that started percolating 15 years before she recorded it. She always thought it would be a cool song title and a cool album title. She wrote the song years later. The ox is a beast of burden so the song became about burden. Further research lead to Kearney’s discovery of the Chinese zodiac. She also found the Buddhist concept that the Ox is the human mind that we’re trying to tame and a boy that tames it is the human ego. Those descriptions come from ten illustrations that show how you reach nirvana through meditation.
“I just thought that was a really cool concept,” she said. “I just started writing some autobiographical stuff about life and trying to fit it into those concepts. It’s not ten straight songs about each etching. The concept of the album is that you go through all these things in your life and you figure them out and hopefully you reach a point where you get it, at least for a minute.”
Kearney would not share any light on why she calls her backing band The Lost Onion. “I can’t tell you,” she said. “It’s a total mystery. I can’t even go there. It’s a whole secret. It’s like in Raiders Of The Lost Arc, when they want to open the Arc, you have to close your eyes or your face will melt off, claymation.”
Kearney uses a Nord Stage Piano that contains all of the keyboard sounds already built into it with patches from other keyboards. A patch, for the layman, is a device that allows a keyboard to simulate the sound and tone from another make and model of keyboard.
Kearney’s Nord Stage Piano became a favorite because it is lighter than a Rhodes keyboard, which she had found was becoming too heavy to lug around. “This has a really nice Rhodes patch, and Wurlitzer, and it has a pretty good acoustic piano sound. It has the B3 organ. I usually use Fender amps to put it through.” She also plays a Fender Telecaster guitar.
During her live shows Kearney wants to reach people and make a connection, whether they want to dance to her funky beats or just listen to her swath of complex rhythms. She recently ended a Monday night residency at Toad in Cambridge.
“It was amazing. It’s a great place to play. It just has a vibe to it,” Kearney said. “I love performing and the connection with people. I don’t think I’d be a musician if I was in it for the money or anything else. You’ve got to love doing it, and that’s what I love to do.”
www.jenkearney.com
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