Jay Sherman-Godfrey

Jay Sherman-Godfrey has been playing in the clubs and recording studios of New York City for nearly 20 years. As a guitarist, songwriter, and producer he has had the pleasure of working with They Might Be Giants, Laura Cantrell, Michael Moore, Eric Ambel, Amy Rigby, Michael Shelley, and Mojo Nixon, among others.

Born and raised in Kalamazoo, Michigan, Sherman-Godfrey moved to New York City in 1982 to attend New York University. While at NYU, he began performing with fellow student Jeremy Tepper in an act that would soon be known as the World Famous Blue Jays. By the early '90s, the Blue Jays had expanded into a quartet and had become a fixture on the downtown live music scene, headlining clubs and appearing in support of national touring acts.

Working on Blue Jays recordings with producer Eric “Roscoe” Ambel and engineer Albert Caiati inspired Sherman-Godfrey to begin recording on his own, and he has since produced, co-produced, and/or recorded tracks for release by Laura Cantrell, World Famous Blue Jays, Angel Dean & The Zephyrs, Michael Shelley, Tandy, and the Ghostrockets.

In 1999, he produced and played guitar on Ms. Cantrell's debut CD, Not The Tremblin' Kind, which received widespread critical acclaim and regular airplay from legendary BBC DJ John Peel, who called it “perhaps my favourite record of the last ten years and possibly my life.” In his four-star Rolling Stone review, David Fricke called the album, “…an austere beauty, a record of such graceful hill-country minimalism…that you can hear every ounce of sorrow and steel in Cantrell's strong, direct voice.” In 2002, Sherman-Godfrey produced Cantrell's follow-up, When The Roses Bloom Again, which was released to another chorus of critical praise, including a second four-star review in Rolling Stone. Upon hearing it, Elvis Costello remarked, “If Kitty Wells made 'Rubber Soul' it would sound like Laura Cantrell.”

Ms. Cantrell has recorded two of Sherman-Godfrey's compositions, Little Bit of You on Not The Trembling Kind, and Wait on When The Roses Bloom Again. A song that they co-wrote, Bees, appears on her recent Matador CD, Humming By The Flowered Vine.

With Tepper, he co-wrote the original music for Michael Moore's documentary feature film The Big One. He also composed the original music for the Peabody Award-winning documentary Riding The Rails, which appeared as part of the PBS series American Experience and in theatrical release. The Tepper/Sherman-Godfrey song “Good Morning Mr. Trucker” currently serves as the theme for Universal Television's reality/talent show Nashville Star on the USA Network.

Sherman-Godfrey recently finished mixing John de Roo's CD Gorgeous Lost, and is finishing up tracks for an EP, Twoscore, he plans to release in Fall 2005. He lives in New York City with his wife Gretchen and their young children, Malcolm and Lillian.