Jo D'Anna
Forest Knolls, California, United States | Established. Jan 01, 1995 | INDIE
Music
Press
West Marin singer-songwriter Jo D'Anna came of age in Palo Alto during the folk boom of the 1960s, and that influence permeates "As She Is," a sprightly collection of a dozen of her original songs.
A resident of Forest Knolls in the San Geronimo Valley, D'Anna writes in a literary, sometimes wordy style that draws imagery from the natural world. The song "My Heart Will Live," for example, references redwoods, pelicans, coyotes and "fog in Mill Valley in the morning."
An accomplished fingerstyle acoustic guitarist who once took lessons from Jerry Garcia, D'Anna has an assured vocal style obviously influenced by folks icons like the South Bay's Joan Baez and the late Kate Wolf, who also lived in the San Geronimo Valley.
Many of the folk-pop songs on "As She Is," her second album, were inspired by D'Anna's participation in the San Francisco Song Group, an informal gathering of local songwriters.
The album was produced and engineered by San Anselmo's Ben Leinbach, a multi-instrumentalist who fills out D'Anna's traditional folk sound with keyboards, guitars, backup vocals and percussion instruments, including jaw harp and pots and pans. Although too many of the tracks tend to be in the same uptempo rhythm, this is the exceptional folk record with grooves that you can actually dance to. - Marin Independent Journal (Jan. 22, 2015 by Paul Liberatore)
“For a first album, this one is striking in its sincere application of poetic wordings, sympathetic outlooks on dysfunction, and gently catchy folk-pop melodies. A self-defined eco-feminist – one who views all oppressions as eventually linked with natural resources and solvable through a humanitarian feminist philosophy – her philosophy shows in the songs. Most subtly, this approach is captured in tunes like `Turning My Life Over’ (with its nature imagery) and `Puddles In The Rain’ (with its metaphysical message); most blatantly, D’Anna offers herself as an eco-feminist link (a nude woman appears on the front cover, curled in a sand hole).”
– Laura Post
- Sing Out! Vo. 40 #4 (Feb/Mar/Apr 1996)
“For a first album, this one is striking in its sincere application of poetic wordings, sympathetic outlooks on dysfunction, and gently catchy folk-pop melodies. A self-defined eco-feminist – one who views all oppressions as eventually linked with natural resources and solvable through a humanitarian feminist philosophy – her philosophy shows in the songs. Most subtly, this approach is captured in tunes like `Turning My Life Over’ (with its nature imagery) and `Puddles In The Rain’ (with its metaphysical message); most blatantly, D’Anna offers herself as an eco-feminist link (a nude woman appears on the front cover, curled in a sand hole).”
– Laura Post
- Sing Out! Vo. 40 #4 (Feb/Mar/Apr 1996)
"Californian Jo D’Anna focuses on eco-feminist themes on her first album. In the accompanying material, she identifies herself as a poetess. Her lyrics do seem to work as poems backed by music rather than songs with an integration of music and words." -- Kerry Dexter
- Dirty Linen - Vol. #65 (August/September 1996)
“Jo D’Anna’s first recording, Alouwenja, offers glimpses of a number of aspects of a healing survivor’s life. Looking back and looking forward from the perspective of a strong, aware, healing woman, many of these songs are inspired by people in Jo D’Anna’s life who have lived through incest and healing. All speak to women today.”
- The Healing Woman - September 1996
"Californian Jo D’Anna focuses on eco-feminist themes on her first album. In the accompanying material, she identifies herself as a poetess. Her lyrics do seem to work as poems backed by music rather than songs with an integration of music and words." -- Kerry Dexter
- Dirty Linen - Vol. #65 (August/September 1996)
Discography
"Alouwenja" - CD album released in April 1995
"As She Is" - CD album released in March 2007*
"Two Roads - EP album released October 2018*
5 streaming tracks are available from each of the two albums on my website (in short 30-second soundbytes). All full tracks on "As She Is" are available on Apple iTunes and CD Baby (these links also available on my website -- currently under reconstruction).
4 streaming tracks from "As She Is" is also available at www.MySpace.com/jodanna69.
I also have a song from my first album on a compilation CD entitled "The Goddess Within" (www.ArtistsForChange.bz) and songs from each album on two compilation CD's put out by Oasis CD Manufacturing Co.; and a song from "As She Is" on the upcoming "CD Sampler 9" released by SongsAlive!, an international songwriter organization.
*CD album available on CDBaby.com
Photos
Bio
Everyone's lifetime contains moments of crisis, pain, love and happiness. It also features critical events that are turning points in where you go on the road of life. Often the most critical of these events seem to feature some kind of spiritual interaction. It is at these very moments that our most crucial decisions are made.
One such spiritual visitation became the inspiring force behind the artistry of Jo D'Anna's first CD, "Alouwenja". Through this critical visitation, Jo embraced the direction of change in her life to become a calming influence in ours. Jo is one whose purpose is to awaken us once again to see the world around us differently. This is the very message of her CD's title song, "Alouwenja", embodying the artist's role of helping others see what they normally would not. Helping others feel what they have almost become immune to.
Throughout the songs on this CD, she stresses the importance of rebirth, self-understanding and transformation. Not only from the healing perspective, but from one of self-confidence. A reminder that our true spirit can handle all the challenges we face in our lives.
Music can be one of the most powerful mediums of communication. But only if it is true and heartfelt. A true flow from the heart and soul. For Jo D'Anna, its not about shouting out for change, but in helping everyone understand that our lives and experiences are all similar. In her music, Jo is communicating as one spirit to another.
In the second album, "As She Is" (released in March 2007), this collection of 12 of Jo D'Anna's tunes was hand-picked by Ben Leinbach (the producer of "As She Is") as being those on which Ben believed he could best create something with his amazing brand of seamless, rhythmic soundscaping and flawless production techniques. What resulted was a blending of two very fine opposing styles: Jo's more folk-based, finger-style guitar and 60's-influenced roots songs, which became the inspiration and the starting point for Ben Leinbach's more urbane and worldly jazz fusion percussive and multi-instrumental talents to create a third style which is a beautiful and seamless collaboration of urban/world rhythms mixed with organically blended soundscapes that invoke the precise mood and intention of Jo's songs. The beautiful, flowing and organic rhythms one cannot help but dance to, while Jo D'Anna's passionately expressive and improvisational vocals--her trademark--brings any listener into a space that is at times internal, heartfelt and ecstatic.
Jo D'Anna's third album, "Two Roads" (released October 11, 2018), is a solo, acoustic EP project consisting of 6 of her latest and best songs featuring her warm vocals and fingerstyle guitar recorded live on a single track. The title track, "Two Roads", is inspired by Robert Frost's well-known poem, "The Road Not Taken" (1916). Also included are two originals awarded "Best Song" in two West Coast Songwriters Competitions in 2017-18. Another song on the EP, "San Geronimo Valley", is co-written (posthumously) with the late beloved songwriter from Marin and Sonoma, Kate Wolf, who once lived in San Geronimo Valley. Jo was inspired to write music to Kate's beautifully poetic lyrics describing the idyllic beauty of this West Marin coastal valley, where Jo also lives now.
Jo D'Anna's Influences: Any and all of the folk/rock icons of the 60's/70's, including: Joni Mitchell; Judy Collins; Joan Baez (vocal styles); Crosby, Stills & Nash; Jefferson Airplane; Donovan; Bob Dylan; Leonard Cohen. Also, Kate Wolf; James Taylor; Simon & Garfunkel; The Beatles; The Rolling Stones; Fleetwood Mac; Pentangle; Emmylou Harris; Roseanne Cash; Suzanne Vega; Patty Larkin; Gillian Welch, and many more, too numerous to mention. . .
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