Bio
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Miriam Jones has a way of singing the soul back home without putting it to sleep, a feat not easily accomplished in the world of the woman singer songwriter. Poppy and memorable? Yes. Soulful and reflective? Indeed. Folky and human? Absolutely. Jones has a particular gift for writing earth and angels side by side, and a voice suited to sounding them so.
Jones’ carefully crafted songwriting is unusually balanced by an ability to surprise the listener with schmaltz-free vulnerability, passion, authenticity, and originality in everything she writes. Her voice, at once full of character, substance, and beauty, has been compared to that of Sandy Denny, Patti Smith, Melanie, Norah Jones, Shawn Colvin, Jonatha Brooke and Alanis Morisette.
Jones’ debut album, Sign & Semblance, simply produced and intimate, was followed 2 years later by Being Here, a folk/pop record produced in Nashville under Grammy award-winning, multi-format songwriter and record producer Charlie Peacock. Her most recent release, a five-song EP entitled Inside Free, was recorded in England with a bass-drums-piano trio of jazz musicians. The result is piano-driven folk with a jazz sensibility.
In April, Jones began The Solitary Songs a project for which she writes, records and releases for free download one new song every month.
A Canadian, Jones has been featured on CBC Radio and has licensed several songs to North American indie film makers, as well as a song to Global Television’s ‘Falcon Beach’ series. Jones recently moved to Oxford, UK, is regularly gigging in London, and is already a favorite at the Greenbelt Festival in Cheltenham.
REVIEWS
“I defy anyone not to be charmed by the sheer naturalness of the melodies… ”
- Colin MacKinnon, Oxfordbands.com Review (Jul 04, 2008)
“Miriam’s got some fresh ideas, rhythmically and harmonically… beauty and surprise all in one package. Which is a lot like life, right? ”
- Charlie Peacock Sr. A&R Consultant-Sony/ATV
Move over KT Tunstall, there’s a new singer songwriter in town. Miriam Jones brings a breath of fresh Nashville air to the UK music scene in songs that are both touching and catchy in equal measure. ”
- Matt Baskerville, Channel 4Music
“‘Being Here’ is a fun, sometimes poignant, and entirely enjoyable effort from one of the West Coast’s rising young artists. ”
- North By Northwest, CBC Radio One
Backing Up.
Jones was born in Vancouver, Canada and at the age of 8 moved with her family of 6 to the highlands of Papua New Guinea where her father taught at a college and where Jones would write her first song in a large backyard tree. After 3 years they returned to BC but to a small town in the southeast corner of the province, in the Rockies. It was here that Jones did the remainder of her schooling and where she further developed her musical interests by drumming between the ages of 11 and 15, after which point she picked up the guitar and began to sing in her high school vocal jazz ensemble and perform solo at school events. At 16 she won a local songwriting contest and did her first recordings with a band she played drums and sang for called ‘Sequoia’.
Jones completed a BA degree in Nova Scotia and before leaving recorded her first album, Sign & Semblance.
Jones’ strongest childhood music-memories are of listening to library records of Oliver! and Annie, and of singing Gary Puckett and the Union Gap’s “Young Girl” among others from her parents’ Stars of the 60’s cassettes. The first CD she ever bought was Phil Collins “Hello I Must be Going”.
