Jenny McCormick

www.jennymccormick.com

www.myspace.com/jennymccormick

The Mancunian folk singer's album, "English Country Garden", was recorded at home with family and friends. A mixture of traditional song and her own compositions, the album draws on her love of story-telling, traditional English music and poetry. Together with an eclectic mix of influences, there is a definite country/ folk twang and Jenny is a performer who seems able to move between the traditional folk clubs and the new folk and acoustic scene with an ease that few of her peers have managed, getting the thumbs up from Steve Lamacq and receiving Radio 2 airplay.

The album title, English Country Garden, came about by chance, as Jenny was humming along to herself whilst doing the dishes. Realising it conveniently summed up where she was musically, it stuck. "I'm an English folk singer but my music is definitely a crossover of all sorts and, in terms of influences that you can actually hear coming through, country music is the strongest. I'm very into alt. country - Lucinda Williams, Wilco, that sort of thing. And a lot of bluegrass."

Almost half of English Country Garden consists of traditional folk songs, which Jenny has an uncanny ability of making her own.. The rest consists of Jenny's own songwriting. A singer who wanted to be a writer before she started to concentrate on songs, it was the storytelling aspect that first drew her to traditional material. Her love of reading and poetry is evident in her own songwriting and BBC Manchester said, "Her talent for songwriting is pretty formidable too and there’s no greater example of this than when she sits the slow country of her Hey Joe and the aching finesse of her Fisherboy between the folk classics House Carpenter and Blackwater Side, and there’s no drop in quality."