Greenstone

Artist Information

Biography

I am Greenstone and my name is Jen

The ever-popular question..."What kinda music do you do or who do you sound like?"... Well I know most of us look for definitions or sign posts in life - so, with that in mind, in very fine print I'd have to acknowledge the humbling comparisons I get to Florence Welch, Adele, Grace Potter, Stevie Nicks and Sheryl Crow...all of whom I'm grateful to be compared to. But I think I just sound like me... sometimes whispering, sometimes laughing, sometimes crying, sometimes screaming. Always honest. I can play the guitar but you'll usually find me on piano and I sing and write from my soul, so I guess that means I'm soulful - lol.

From the age of four the piano was my little safety net I'd play and hide behind... until I was thrown center stage at college earning a music theatre degree. Out of college I was hired by Royal Caribbean (followed by Princess) cruiselines to be a headlining vocalist performing to houses of 1000-1500 people.

I guess you could say my first official effort at recording was with several friends and recorded live. It was called "Lost Along the Way" and in the summer of 2006, that indie album was spun on over 200 college radio stations in North America. I was stunned. So I kept at it.

In March of 2007 I relocated to LA and began working on my first produced EP called "Unpredictable" (released at the end of 2007). That EP garnered won several song-writing awards and features (VH1 song of the year award/ LA music award no, featured snowcap download, XM radio "radar report") and attracted a variety of label attention - none of which I decided to sign with at the time.

After taking a musical hiatus for a while to do some soul searching, repair a broken heart and find my laugh again (read: pull my shit together), I moved to Brooklyn in 2010 to begin fresh. In the last days of summer 2011, prompted by friends, I finally began work on a new project. The tracks 'Home' and 'Firestorm' were recorded at RAD studios in Bushwick with the intent to be released with a complete album under the moniker "Greenstone." Not long after they were recorded, I was asked to play a private NYC event for about 300 people. So I quickly recruited some very talented friends to play the gig and immediately momentum began to build. Since that first show as "Greenstone" back in November it's just been about writing new material, testing it out in front of packed houses in the city, laughing lots and following my heart... and of course, we will be recording an album as soon as we can.

If you get a chance, come to a show and have fun with us.

Instrumentation

Jen Jayden on vocals, piano, or acoustic guitar.

* band members can vary

Discography

"Unpredictable" (EP) - winter 2007

"Lost Along the Way" - First album recorded live and released in summer of 2006.
spins on 200 college/AAA radio stations and numerous on line stations

Links

• main website

Audio

• Home DeKline MSTR
  Listen   Download
• Firestorm DeKline MSTR
  Listen   Download

Lyrics

• Home
• Firestorm

Video

FIRESTORM_003-H.264 YouTube_Vimeo.mov

DEPTH_003-H.264 YouTube_Vimeo.mov

Photo Gallery

Press

• SNOCAP features ...
  

  SNOCAP featured the song "Supergirl" as their "free download of the week."

• Amazing Music Connection Review [+ Show ]
  

  Material: Jen Jayden delivers a very commercial style of soulful pop and possesses a lilting voice ...Material: Jen Jayden delivers a very commercial style of soulful pop and possesses a lilting voice similiar to Michelle Branch and Vanessa Carlton. "Back to the Love" is an apology for messed up relationships and would work well in any teen TV drama. "Rescue Me" uses a unique perspective, telling the tale of drug abuse and addiction. Most importantly, Jayden has several tunes that are catchy enough to get radio play.
  Musicianship: Jayden's voice is her primary instrument. At times, it softly floats on the wind and then it might suddenly pierce the ambience as the mood of a song transitions. Jeffrey David is a virtuoso, both on keyboards and guitar, carrying the melody throughout. The backline of Johnson and Sydnor is impressive and provides a firm foundation for the rest of the band. Ten-year-old Sierota steals the show with her soaring background vocals and her timely percussion.
  Performance: Cleebrating the release of her first CD, which was produced by Jeffrey David, Jayden was particularly on target with radio-ready tunes like "Rescue Me" as well as "Unpredictable." Her performance of "Rescue Me" was sensuous and stirring. Jayden used a good sense of humor and rapport with the audience to keep them focused on her music, while her narrative approach kept the crowd interested in what she had to say. She closed strongly, and left the club wanting more.
  Summary: Jen Jayden's vocals, lyrics and catchy melodies make her music much more powerful and enjoyable than your typical run-of -the-mill pop artist. Her tunes are approprate for radio as well as television and film.
  -Bob Leggett

• Critique from TAXI [+ Show ]
  

  Jennifer - Thanks for submitting, and thanks for sharing your talents as a writer and performer with...Jennifer - Thanks for submitting, and thanks for sharing your talents as a writer and performer with the rest of the world. I hear a lot of great stuff here at Taxi, but every once in awhile a performer comes along that seems on a completely different level from everybody else. In regard to your abilities as vocalist, I would say you have an outrageous amount of talent. Saying that you're the best vocalist I've heard here at Taxi in a long time might seem like hyperbole, but I mean it.

• VH1 Song of the Year Contest Winner [+ Show ]
  

  Jennifer Jayden has been a winner in this competition several times over... October '05, May '06 an...Jennifer Jayden has been a winner in this competition several times over... October '05, May '06 and Dec '07.
  

• Singer/Songwriter of the Year [+ Show ]
  

  Just recieved the LA Music Awards nomination of Female Singer/Songswriter in the Acoustic Category. ...Just recieved the LA Music Awards nomination of Female Singer/Songswriter in the Acoustic Category.
  
  

• Soulful Optimism [+ Show ]
  

  "Jayden projects a soulful optimism on her cleanly recorded CD. “Supergirl” shows off Jayden’s terri..."Jayden projects a soulful optimism on her cleanly recorded CD. “Supergirl” shows off Jayden’s terrific voice, reminding us of Dido on a song about being crazy in love. “Maybe” unleashes an even wider dynamic range for her voice."

• Look Out
  

  XMU debuted Jayden as "an up and coming artist to watch out for."

• Living a Dream [+ Show ]
  

  Living a dream BY JORDAN BARTEL, TIMES STAFF WRITER Sunday, October 15, 2006 In a small way, ...Living a dream
  
  BY JORDAN BARTEL, TIMES STAFF WRITER
  Sunday, October 15, 2006
  
  In a small way, Jennifer Jayden owes a bit of thanks to popular singer Gavin DeGraw for her own burgeoning music career.??Jennifer, a Westminster native, met DeGraw backstage at a concert before he made it big. She told him his music had inspired her to pursue her own career.??The conversation was short, but pleasant enough. Jennifer gave him a rough cut of what would become her first album, you know, just if he had a chance to listen.??Two weeks later, she got a call, on her birthday no less.??"Hello, this is Gavin."??"Gavin who?" was Jennifer's response.??DeGraw had listened to her album and he told her what tracks he liked and what he didn't. The singer also had some words of wisdom.??"No one knows what they're doing in the music business," he told Jennifer. "It's all trial and error. Do your own thing and keep doing it.
  So Jennifer did. After languishing in a holding pattern, not sure whether or not to pursue her music career dreams, to make that scary leap into the music business, she decided to go for it.??"That moment was the moment that prompted me to fully believe that I can really, really make a go of it," Jennifer said. "His words just clicked."??It turns out that so far it has been a leap worth taking. Jennifer moved to San Diego just a few months ago, as her first album "Lost Along the Way" was released.??Jennifer has been busy booking her own shows, sending her album to local radio stations and has been discovering exactly what it takes to promote oneself in the music business.??And it seems like it all has paid off. Jennifer was recently nominated for a pair of Los Angeles Music Awards, for female singer/songwriter of the year and album of the year. In the past 16 years, previous nominees of the awards, handed out in November and honoring mostly unsigned acts, include little bands now known as No Doubt and Everclear.??"Total surprise to be nominated," Jennifer said. "I never know what to expect anymore. It's nerve-wracking, because it is my career. But it's also very fun."??Always the performer??Jennifer was born Jennifer Minchik in Westminster. She started playing piano at the age of 4, then did ballet and chorus throughout her early school days. She hadn't really figured singing, or for that matter songwriting, would be her thing.??She had always been known primarily for her piano skills, until she sang during a talent show in the auditorium of Westminster High School.??"People started commenting about my voice and it kind of went on from there," Jennifer said.??It went from there to college, when Jennifer studied musical theater at Elon College, now Elon University in North Carolina??She knew she wanted to be a singer, and after freshman year she got her first job, performing at the amusement park Carowinds, near Charlotte, N.C., doing five shows a day.??"This is going to date me, but I remember them coming up to me and wanting me to try a song by this new singer named Celine Dion," Jennifer said with a laugh.??After graduation, her Celine Dion days thankfully behind her, Jennifer started doing regional theater work, the most notable of which was a stint at a dinner theater in Florida.??After that, she toyed with the idea of moving to New York City. She wasn't really excited about the move, but did so anyway. She was there for just a month. The pull to perform on Broadway had just not been strong enough.??"I was overwhelmed by the big city," she said. "I was just kind of lost. I didn't have any clue what to audition for, how to go about it."??Then a cruise line came a knocking. Jennifer was about to set sail.??Let's cruise??A cruiseline might not seem like the best or most glamorous way to launch a singing career, but when she was asked by Royal Carribbean to sign a contract, she did and left the next day for her new job.??For about five years - she also spent years with Princess Cruises as well - she was the lead singer on cruise shows, playing to crowds, which ranged from 500 to 2,000 nightly. That's a bigger audience than any role in Broadway could have provided her. For eight years, she had a steady - and importantly, paying - gig singing in three to six shows a week.??"The performance experience that that gave me was invaluable," she said. "But after five years or so, it was like, 'What am I going to do?' "??So she bought herself a guitar and taught herself to play. She also started writing her own songs. While biding her time on the ship, she also met the man who would become her husband, Clint Boire, a sound engineer who worked on her shows.??He encouraged her to pursue a career on land.??(A bit of a sidenote: Boire is Jennifer's real last name. Jayden was "stolen" from the name of a child of a friend. She just thought "Jayden" sounded better with her first name as a performer.)??Soon she was cutting what would become her first album.??"The recording came about just with Clint and the other musicians on board trying out different things," she said. "We just got together and jammed one night on the empty stage on the ship."??Strangely, the ship environment gave her lots of material to write about. With lots of relationships being made and broken among the other employees, it was something like a real life "Love Boat," a bit soap opera-ish.??Jennifer found a lot of her friends' relationship stories making their way into her songwriting.??"A lot of the early stuff was about boys, relationships," she said. "Some are twisted, funny and others are sad."??But a lot of the songs also relate to her own relationship with Clint, whom she married just months ago, especially her song "Supergirl," which was cited in one of her nominations for the Los Angeles Music Awards.??A catchy tune, "Supergirl" tells the story of a relationship with communication issues. It includes the line: "I wonder what you're thinkin' when you think you're ok/ Are you plotting ways to make a quick getaway?"??"I wrote that a year ago, after my cruise days had ended and Clint and I were in New York, in a tiny studio apartment in Manhattan," she said. "I guess I was PMSing or something. So it's a bit of an apology to him. It's actually the quickest song I've ever written."??Luckily, the musical apology was accepted. Clint and Jennifer were soon on their way to San Diego, to the unknown.??Making it on her own??Though Jennifer said she moved to California for "financial and weather reasons," it happened to coincide with the release of her first album. Call it a bit of perfect timing.??Since its release, the album has gotten positive notices from labels, local media and other singer/songwriters on the coffee house circuit in San Diego, a circuit which famously produced a singer/songwriter named Jewel a decade ago.??Jennifer's style is often compared with that of Sheryl Crow, John Mayer and even her old career adviser DeGraw. Her songs are bubbly, but with substance, treading the line between the commercial and the personable. Her songs are heartfelt in a way that's never sappy and fun in a way that's not corny.??Jennifer's weeks are often packed with gigs, sometimes one each day, a coffeehouse there, a bookstore here. She also teaches voice lessons when she can. That's now her only steady income, a big change compared to a yearly-contract with a cruise ship.??"It's been a huge adjustment but it's been really good for me here," Jennifer said. The singer/songwriter scene is pretty wicked out here. It's been crazy."??A downside is that not many of the gigs pay, but the experience and exposure is part of what really matters.??And Jennifer needs the experience to master how to promote herself. She said the process is slow, even compared to the music world of just five years ago.??"It's now all about getting yourself off the ground yourself," she said. "You don't have a label helping you from the start as it had been. Labels now look at how many fans you already have, what kind of following you have, how many people go to your MySpace page."??And, Jennifer said, it's often difficult to set herself apart from the crowded pack of other singers. With advanced technologies, basically anybody can record a song demo at any time and try to sell it. Jennifer's first album was recorded live, on stage at the cruise ship with Pro Tools LE and a Mac G4.??Jennifer must be doing something right, though. She's gotten more comfortable in her new songwriting skin and with her new guitar playing talents. She said she's talking with consultants on how to make the right steps for her career and has spoken with some interested independent labels.??"It's hard because labels now don't have time to gamble on someone," she said. "They want to take a sure thing," she said??But looking at her now established following, her music award nominations, even her MySpace page view tally (close to 5,000 in just a few months), Jennifer may just be that sure thing.??Her parents continue to be some of her biggest supporters and she plans to do a tour of the East Coast, including stops in Baltimore and Westminster, some time in the next year.??It looks like her old friend DeGraw may have been right. Jennifer has just been doing her own thing and keeping on doing it.??"I had to start all over time and time again," Jennifer said. "But this new start is pretty cool."??Reach staff writer Jordan Bartel at 410-857-7862 or bartelj@lcniofmd.com?

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