Born into a musical family out of Ft Worth, TX, home to native sons Townes van Zandt and T Bone Burnett (a band mate of one of her uncles back in the '60s) and surrounded by music daily, helped develop a flexible approach to interpretation, a signature of Jennifer's musical stylings. Not allowed to listen to recorded music until her late teens, she spent long hours practicing classical violin and teaching herself piano modeled on her grandmother's ragtime and eventually guitar after school, listening in secret to Thelonious Monk and Keith Jarrett on the radio in her room late at night. Living room jams -harmonizing on Appalachian melodies or keeping time with jugband tunes and old-time spirituals- gave her a broad musical vocabulary, and became the groundwork she needed for keeping in line with her own vision: "Music brings people home to themselves."
Since opening a show at the Lingerie Club in Los Angeles in 2004, Jennifer has been touring her own songs with a mix of soul, country and blues. Sharing stages and festival bills with Kevin Gordon, Doug Burr and Los Lonely Boys and included on compilations with folks like John Hiatt, Bobby Bare and Johnny Cash, her music is catalogued in the hard-to-categorize terrain somewhere between early jazz and anything with a 70s punk ethic.
Recording five albums in as many years, she released her first full length studio album, Gods & Nations in 2007. Compelled by stories of survivors of Katrina and her own recent visit there with friends playing a roots music festival, she wrote it in a month and enlisted noted blues guitarist and producer Marc Copely (James Montgomery, Tracy Bonham, Jess Klein) who helped her lay down the first three tracks, including "Homeland", a "Top 20 Americana Songs of 2008" by KRVM (Eugene, OR). Copely's signature blues guitar helped to define the sound for the rest of the record, completed by guitarist/producer Matt Brown (Lucinda Williams, Bill Frissell, Trespassers William) the following summer who added Otis Redding-stylings and lush pop layers.
In 2008 she completed Minstrel's Daughter which was rereleased the following summer on Chicago-based label Waterbug Records and dedicated the album to her parent's influence. Recorded at the kitchen table in her east side Austin home with band members and musician friends and co-produced with guitarist/producer Jeff Rady with whom she co-wrote one of the tracks, the majority of the record got put down on an old Shure 57 mic. They went for a stripped-down, homemade concoction of sounds in a gentle but gritty referendum on love and survival by an artist clearly thinking for herself.
In June 2010 she released a new limited release album, Sovereign, ten acoustic songs recorded live in Brooklyn, available through her website.
Press
Minstrel's Daughter
"With voice strong yet fragile, Leonhardt weaves through cello, violin and guitar so effortlessly that you can sometimes not separate the sounds. It wavers, that voice, more for effect than lack of control, for her songs are moodswings and sadness and wistful hope and, yes, a happiness of sorts, though always constrained. On Minstrel's Daughter, Leonhardt plays and sings loose music supported by looser musicians and if you don't hear it right away, give it time. It grows on you. It is mountain music without the mountain—a collection of tone poems from the backwoods and the high plains. Because it was so obviously personal to her, it is personal to me. Songs like Neruda and More Rope put me on a higher plane, not unlike watching the more surreal scenes from a Clint Eastwoood spaghetti western, Minstrel's Daughter is a demented cave dance with rock-a-blues rhythm and Line Of Fire, a magnificently disjointed statement of relationship unreality set free. She even throws in a bike ride through psych pop (Me & Abigail) which should not fit but surprisingly does. A loose acoustic dance through the fields not unlike that in the closing scene of the movie Uptown Girls, it is melodic paisley in the rough and, to my ears, a triumph. Minstrel's Daughter is in such a unique place that I cannot imagine Leonhardt doing another like it, but possibly she already has." Frank Gutch Jr, Folk and Acoustic Music Exchange
"Reminiscent of Emmylou Harris going industrial with Daniel Lanois but more stripped-down and atmospheric. Leonhardt delivers the kind of set the cognoscenti will refer to in hushed tones." Chris Spector, Midwest Record
"A down-home cabin feel similar to the likes of Bon Iver and co. Leonhardt's strength with words and slowly beguiling melodies work their magic: spare, minimalist atmospherics, mournful, fiddle-stoked backwoods hymnal folk, dissonant rumbling gospel. If she cooks like she makes music, then dinners round her place must be an interesting feast." Mike Davies, NetRhythms(UK)
"A master class in mournful songwriting."["More Rope"] John Hawes, AmericanaUK
"[A] ghost room romp with dashes of dirge and echoes of the Breeders." ["Let the Wretched Come Home"] Jordan Block, Sepiachord
"Poetic, forthright, redemptive songs." Andrew Calhoun, Waterbug Records
"Jennifer's a spirit-singer. A raw, authentic voice." Laney Goodman, Women in Music
Gods & Nations
"A great album." Martin Vowles, RootsCD.com (UK)
A Paste Recommends Indie Album. Paste Magazine
"A stirring songwriter." Austin American-Statesman
"A music phenomenon whose star is rising." KPAS-TV, Los Angeles
Top 20 Americana Songs of 2008 [Homeland]. KRVM's Scott Majors
"My favorite singer-songwriter out of Austin." KYRS' Crossroads Bob
"The arrival of a major new talent, Leonhardt is a gale force to be reckoned with." Pop Culture Press
"As raw and genuine as you're going to find." 1340 Mag
"Leonhardt's voice is a striking and soulful instrument.[Gods & Nations is] contemporary, relevant and, most importantly, compelling." Blogcritics
Live
"Jennifer Leonhardt knocked our socks off." Sandbox Inn House Concerts
"Why this girl is not one of the top acts in the country is beyond me--her singing is like throwing a lit cigarette out a car window, she's an absolute runaway wildfire. Her band's live show is some of the hardest, rootsiest rhythm-n-bluesgrass ever." Don Wolff, Talent buyer
"Leonhardt leads the Whalers with a delivery touching on everyone from Chrissie Hynde to Edie Brickell." Austin.com
