Music
Press
"Wives is a great song...nice writing here..."
- Ellen Guirleo, WUMB, Acoustic Images host
"Vibrant, conversational and fun...Her voice is explosive!" - Steve Ide, The Patriot Ledger, Quincy, MA
"Luby tells it like it is...All throughout, Luby's voice is engaging, emotive and candid...as close to perfection as can be. If the listener doesn't get goosebumps...they might want to double check themselves for a pulse."
- Michael Khouri, Northeast Performer
"Jan spins her tales of life and growing up using concret images while slipping with ease from genre to genre. She has a remarkable ability to make you believe and remember." - Songwriters Monthly
"This is a well crafted work from a talented artist with lots of great songs."
- Deb Anderson, KZUM FM Radio
"I've always liked Jan Luby's voice, and her style. This is a wonderful batch of songs, and I look forward to seeing her perform them." - Michael Doherty, Pop Culture Beast
"Luby’s an accomplished songwriter, who makes the whole process sound as natural as breathing. She tells a good story, too, and most of them appear to be personal with their fair share of heartbreak and a little humour to sugar the pill. “Nobody’s Girl” is a pleasure from start to end...Put plainly, “Nobody’s Girl” is a fine collection that deserves its own award. Rhode Islanders take note – and everyone else, too."
- Leicester Bangs (UK)
"Jan Luby is a jewel of a singer-songwriter. Her new CD Nobody’s Girl showcases many of Luby’s organic, heart-felt translations of life into words and music. Luby infuses each of these songs with emotional honesty. Listeners will be certain to relate to what she is saying as they feel what she was feeling when she wrote and recorded these shiny true to life gems...Luby has come up with something truly special here. She makes many aspects of womanhood very realistic in her gritty, unforgiving details and emotional honesty. The music that supports her hearty themes are full of many nuanced melodies..."
- Bill Copeland Music News
Discography
Nobody's Girl - 2011
"Jan Luby is a jewel of a singer-songwriter. Her new CD Nobody’s Girl showcases many of Luby’s organic, heart-felt translations of life into words and music. Luby infuses each of these songs with emotional honesty. Listeners will be certain to relate to what she is saying as they feel what she was feeling when she wrote and recorded these shiny true to life gems...Luby has come up with something truly special here. She makes many aspects of womanhood very realistic in her gritty, unforgiving details and emotional honesty. The music that supports her hearty themes are full of many nuanced melodies..."
Bill Copeland Music News
(full review at: http://www.billcopelandmusicnews.com/2011/12/jan-luby-pleases-ear-and-soul-with-new-cd-nobodys-girl/)
" Luby’s an accomplished songwriter, who makes the whole process sound as natural as breathing. She tells a good story, too, and most of them appear to be personal with their fair share of heartbreak and a little humour to sugar the pill. “Nobody’s Girl” is a pleasure from start to end...Put plainly, “Nobody’s Girl” is a fine collection that deserves its own award. Rhode Islanders take note – and everyone else, too."
(full review at: http://www.leicesterbangs.co.uk/nov11-25.html)
"I've always liked Jan Luby's voice, and her style. This is a wonderful batch of songs, and I look forward to seeing her perform them.
- Michael Doherty, Pop Culture Beast
(Full review at: http://www.kiowacountysignal.com/community/blogs/popculturebeast/x1866854878/Jan-Luby-Nobodys-Girl-2011-CD-Review)
"This is a well crafted work from a talented artist with lots of great songs."
- Deb Anderson, KZUM FM Radio
Tough Like a Weed - 2000
" Luby tells it like it is...All throughout, Luby's voice is engaging, emotive and candid...as close to perfection as can be. If the listener doesn't get goosebumps...they might want to double check themselves for a pulse."
- Michael Khouri, Northeast Performer
"Jan spins her tales of life and growing up using concret images while slipping with ease from genre to genre. She has a remarkable ability to make you believe and remember." - Songwriters Monthly
...and now, direct from Coney Island, the Absolutely Tatooless Woman, Jan Luby - 1990
"Vibrant, conversational and fun...Her voice is explosive!"
Steve Ide, The Patriot Ledger, Quincy, MA
Push and Pull - 1989
"Wives is a great song...nice writing here..."
Ellen Guirleo, WUMB, Acoustic Images host
COMPILATIONS:
Hope: Mothers Helping Mothers - 2000
Song: Ordinary
To benefit Project Hope
with Barbara Kessler, Eliza Gilyson, Suzzy Roche, Lori McKenna, Diane Zeigler, Tish Hinojosa, Karen Taylor Good and other musical mothers
Acoustic Alliance Volume 2 - 1995
Finalist in Acoustic Alliance Competition.
Song: Destination Unknown
"...particularly impressive" - Boston Globe
Old Vienna Tapes Volume 1 - 1992
Song: The Breastfeeding Song (Product of the 50s)
"Highlights include Jan Luby's Product of the 50s" - Sing Out
Boston Women's Voice - 1992
Fast Folk Musical Magazine - Boston Revisted - BMI 1992
Song: This Rocking Chair
Winter's Harvest - 1992
Song: John McCucheon's "Christmas in the Trenches"
"The most touching moment on the album comes when Jan Luby sings her acapella version of John McCucheon's Christmas in the Trenches."
- Steve Hurlbutt, Jamaica Plains Arts News
Santa Cruz Family Album - 1976
Song: The Quail Song
"Jan Luby wins honors with a country pretty voice that suggests a lot of soul." -Mark Hunter, Santa Cruz Express
Photos
Bio
Jan Luby is known for her engaging, often riveting stage-presence as well as her voice full of passion, range and power. The readers of Rhode Island’s Motif Magazine thought so. They chose Jan as Female Vocalist of 2011.
Jan's songs are evocative, lyrical and infectious personal stories. Her approach to songwriting ranges from socially relevant to irreverent, heartbreaking to humorous. Her recent album, Nobody’s Girl, was released in October 2011. Listen to songs off the album on the home page.
Jan and her two siblings were born on the road to Vaudeville parents (a comedy juggler and an acrobat/dancer). Growing up back stage, living in a trailer, and traveling through 47 states before the age of seven primed her for her later entrance into the West Coast New Vaudeville scene. But first her family landed in Coney Island, New York, where as a teenager she acted and danced in the Everyman Company and Chalk Circle Players.
At the age of 20 Jan Luby escaped New York to head west, eventually making a name for herself in Santa Cruz, California as a solo singer/songwriter. She was one of the founders of the Santa Cruz Street Performers Guild and its open mic. It was in Santa Cruz that she hooked up with the likes of the Flying Karamazov Brothers, Tom Noddy (“The Bubble Guy”), Avner the Eccentric and many other New Vaudeville performers and formed the comedy-musical duo Girls Who Wear Glasses with her partner, Rebo Flordigan. As part of the New Vaudeville circuit, Jan played clubs, fairs and festivals including The Vancouver, Winnipeg, and Edmonton Folk Festivals, the Milwaukee Harvest Festival, Oregon Country Fair, The Bear Mountain Festival of Music and Dance, Seattle's Bumbershoot Festival and The San Francisco Vaudeville Festival.
As a solo performer Jan Luby is equally at home on a festival-stage in front of thousands as she is in more intimate settings, and has played coffeehouses, clubs, festivals and street-corners from Sweden to Greece and from New York to the Pacific Northwest. Upon moving to Boston/Cambridge in 1987, Jan helped to establish the open mic at the Nameless Coffeehouse. She has played all over New England, was a regular at the Old Vienna Kaffeehaus, performed at Passim, The Concord Inn, Tufts University, The Somerville Theatre, Johnny D's, and other coffeehouses and clubs in New England, sharing stages with Louden Wainwright III, Cheryl Wheeler, Bob Franke, Townes Van Sandt, Garnet Rogers, Lucie Blue Tremblay, Ani DiFranco, Dar Williams, Vance Gilbert and many other noteworthy performers.
In more recent years, after a break from performing to focus on motherhood, Jan moved to Rhode Island and has performed at venues like the Stone Soup Coffeehouse, The Newport Sunset Music Series, the South Shore Folk Music Club and The Vanilla Bean. Her CD Nobody's Girl was released in October 2011 and is getting airplay and rave reviews. She's presently VP on the board of the Rhode Island Songwriters Association and is one of the rotating hosts at the monthly RISA Songwriters in the Round show at AS220 in Providence, RI and one of the hosts at Somerville Songwriter Sessions at Arts at the Armory in Somerville, MA.
Links