I got a chance to catch up with Jen in Birmingham Saturday night. She's
performing with Josh Kelley on a swing through the southeast and midwest
United States.

In Birmingham, Jen was the opener with a 30 minute acoustic set,
focusing on the Red Album:

Stranded (Positively Somewhere's only representative)
Sober
Broken Things (a Juliet Turner cover)
Always You
I Do (a new song)
Crush

The reading of "Stranded" is a lot like the live recording that's
circulating around the P2P nets, without the percussion. Jen was
accompanied by Nashville based guitarist Ben Taber throughout the set,
and joined by Josh Kelley's band for "Crush." She still works in her
homage to Blondie, the "Man from Mars" rap.

She later joined Keaton Simons (Kelley's guitarist, who performed a set
of his own) on stage for one of his songs.

"I Do" is a new song on an untitled seven track CD Jen is selling at the
shows. The CD doesn't include any of the Indie 911 tracks nor any
MySpace tracks save for "Here In The Sunshine." The disc's short
running time and minimal liner notes (only a track listing, which
follows, and composer credits) suggest it may be a promo piece or an
advance, with more to come. For lack of a title, I'll call it "the Blue
Album" since the cover has a blue duotone portrait of Jen.

The Blue Album includes:

More
Here In The Sunshine (featured at
http://www.myspace.com/jenniferpaigemusic
<http://www.myspace.com/jenniferpaigemusic> )
Bloom
I Do
Downpour
Best Kept Secret (Nothing like what you would expect from Jen [;)] )
Sugarcoated

Please note that due to copyright restrictions, I will be unable to
provide anyone on the list with copies of the tracks. Jen has already
made a lot of music freely available online, so I'm more than happy to
let her monetize some of her efforts with these.

I spoke to Jen after the show. She still keeps up with the group
despite having not posted in a while, and she's as tired of the spam as
we are. Her management's looking into some alternatives.

She's getting along well with Kelley and his band. At the end of her
set, there was the expected "I think the guys have a 'crush'" joke, and
when we were talking later, the mention of "eight guys and one girl on a
tour bus" came up and I made like I was trying to decide... "eight
guys.... one girl.... eight guys... one girl..." There are some more
ribald jokes you can make based on that scenario (but keep them to
yourselves. [:p] ).

I wasn't trying to get a lot of information this time-- I just wanted to
hear her perform and meet her. I'm looking at the calendar and seeing if
I can manage a roadtrip to one of the other shows. No guarantees, but
I'll pass along anything else I learn.

As for Steve's comments about MySpace... I don't like MySpace myself,
but it does give Jen a way to pass along information online without
having to get a web developer involved. So give her a break... I'd
rather see her writing songs than trying to improve her web design
skills. I do think she needs a website redesign though. The site at
jenniferpaige.com looks more like it was designed for a major label
artist who has web people available all the time to make changes and
post updates. An indie would do better with a site that incorporates a
lot of the enablers MySpace has so they or their managers can update
things themselves without having to worry about design or dealing with
Flash, but with a good design that makes it easy to read and navigate.

Thanks in part to changing musical tastes and mostly to Hollywood
Records' lack of A&R support, Jen's audience has been a long-suffering
lot. However, she never stopped making music and now it looks like we're
on the brink of a major push. Keep your eyes open, kids... it could get
interesting.

One more thing: 42.



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