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About Mother Jane
On
a well-documented July night in 1965, Bob Dylan unintentionally ushered
in a new era of electric-folk music before an unamused crowd of purists
at The Newport Folk Festival. No one noted it at the time, but when
Dylan lit into those first few electrified notes of “Maggie’s
Farm” that night, he was setting a precedent for a similar transformation
in the heretofore acoustic-folk music of Lexington, Kentucky, duo
Mother Jane.
Over the course of their four albums, Mother Jane has gradually completed
their progression into a full-fledged electric folk-rock duo. Where
once there was the six-string acoustic guitar of Beth Burden layered
with Lisa Raymond’s 12-string acoustic, lightly supported with
percussion, there is now a wash of electric guitars and basses, a
full drum kit and even a Hammond B-3 organ. Where once the comparisons
began and ended with the Indigo Girls and Shawn Colvin, there are
now strains of Melissa Etheridge, Counting Crows, a little Ben Harper
and maybe even some Loggins & Messina wafting through Mother Jane’s
fourth and latest offering, This Time Tomorrow.
“We wanted a fuller sound on This Time Tomorrow,” says
Burden, whose lively voice instills Mother Jane with a soulfulness
not evident in most folk-based music. “We wanted to explore
more instrumentation and not feel limited. With the last CD, Can’t
Complain, we were just introducing drums and bass, so it was pretty
much straightforward, let our fans get used to the fact that we have
a backbone behind us now, and see how they feel about that. This time,
we just wanted to stretch the limits of what we could do.”
Mother Jane began as a trio back in 1998, Beth Burden’s vision
initially. A self-taught singer/songwriter/guitarist, Burden was raised
in a musical family in small-town Paris, Kentucky, a 15-minute drive
from Lexington through many of the countless horse farms that dominate
the area. She was already a veteran of the coffeehouse scene in nearby
Morehead, where she’d studied at Morehead State, and in Bozeman,
Montana, where she landed for a year when her money ran out on what
supposed to be a cross-country escapade, but this was the first time
she’d formed a band. Beth came up with the name Mother Jane
by combining Mother Jones, one of the leading labor organizers of
late-19th and early-20th century America, with Calamity Jane, a western
legend in the late 1800s. “I actually wanted to name the band
Mother Jones,” Burden recalls now, “but I didn’t
feel right; it would be like naming a band Oprah Winfrey, or whatever,
and I didn’t feel right about that. Our songs are not political;
we just make personal statements, so it’s kind of ironic that
we’re named after Mother Jones and Calamity Jane.”
By late 1999, Burden had let the other two members of Mother Jane
go, which opened the door for guitarist/singer Lisa Raymond, a relatively
new Lexington resident at the time. Raised in the small Boston suburb
of Dover, Raymond went to college in Springfield, Massachusetts, followed
by a three-year stint in Sarasota, Florida. Just after arriving in
Lexington, Raymond was introduced to Burden by mutual friends and
was bowled over by Beth’s voice the first time they casually
jammed together. “I was just floored. I was like, ‘Well,
now I could ride some coattails on that voice,’” Lisa
chuckles. “Even now there are shows where she’ll do something
vocally, and I literally find myself turning my head, still in shock
at the neat things that she can do, especially when she improvises.
“She’s just full of soul. You really have to hear it live,
when she’s doing her natural thing. In the studio you have that
very sterile atmosphere, but when you hear her doing her thing live,
that’s when she really shines.”
The pair quickly discovered several things they have in common, chiefly
an affinity for sheer silliness (“One reason that people connect
with us,” Lisa figures, “is that we are like two kids;
our live shows include a lot of laughing.”) and a shared love
for artists like Shawn Colvin and Patty Griffin, among others. There
was also no mistaking how effortlessly their voices wrapped around
each other, giving Mother Jane a striking two-part harmony, a central
element on all three of their previous albums—their self-titled
2000 debut, 2002’s A Safe Distance and Can’t Complain
in 2003. “On This Time Tomorrow I actually pulled back a little
bit because sometimes harmonies can be limiting,” acknowledges
Lisa. “I wanted Beth to be able to do a little bit more vocally
than she’s been able to because there was so much harmony on
the first three albums.”
This Time Tomorrow is the fourth self-released CD by Mother
Jane, nine songs in keeping with their typical upbeat imagery. “We
always try to have a positive theme,” notes Beth, who writes
the melodies and catchy phrases that begin most of Mother Jane’s
songs before turning it over to Lisa to help turn her ideas into songs.
The CD kicks off with “And Counting,” a spirited piece
that waxes positive about turning 30, and from there it’s keeps
a steady pace with the funky mandolin number “Just A Dream,”
the wistful rocker “It’s A Wonder,” “Look
In The Mirror,” which has been reinvigorated from an all-acoustic
piece on Mother Jane’s first CD into a big, ballsy blues tune
here, and a sultry declaration called “Can And I Will.”
“I know that we both wanted this album to be mostly upbeat,”
Lisa mentions, “the kind of record where you put it in your
car with the top down on a sunny day and go driving, and have your
head bouncing the whole way.”
If the idea with Can’t Complain was to see how Mother Jane fans
felt about Beth and Lisa adding drums and bass to their sound, by
the time they began recording This Time Tomorrow in late 2004, it
was clear that the expanded instrumentation was a success on many
levels. Can’t Complain had given Mother Jane their first taste
of the national Adult Album Alternative radio charts, ultimately receiving
airplay on over 80 Non-Commercial stations, and they were named “One
To Watch” by the nationally syndicated radio program Acoustic
Café. In early 2005, Mother Jane was named 2004 International
Acoustic Music Awards (IAMA) Best Female Artist Top Ten Finalist.
With the support of their loyal fans at an all-time high, Beth and
Lisa recorded This Time Tomorrow in producer/engineer Jason Poff’s
basement studio in Lexington. “I’ve always known Jason,”
says Beth. “He’s played in a couple of bands here in town
and ran sound at a venue where I used to play before Lisa joined Mother
Jane.”
Mother Jane was born in Lexington, long considered the Horse Capitol
of the World and currently one of the five safest cities in the United
States. And while the city is short on a local scene for folk-influenced
singer/songwriters, these small-town girls—one a Southerner
from just up the road and the other a Northerner from the flashpoint
of the American Revolution—continue to make music together in
Lexington, using local musicians and producers. And they appreciate
the region for one of its finer qualities: a loyal and supportive
fan base.
“So much of This Time Tomorrow was made from funds raised by
our fans. It was just overwhelming,” says Lisa. “Really,
if we hadn’t have had help from fans it wouldn’t be done
right now.”
