Mansard

While MANSARD's music falls under the umbrella of electronica, composer Jennifer Gregor is not loyal to any specific genre, which is why one MANSARD song has a jazzy feel with an international flair, the next is dark trance/industrial, while the next is sludgy guitar-heavy rock meets experimental meets country, and so on. A look into her background might explain her willingness to use all sorts of sounds and conventions to create her sound canvases.

Jennifer Gregor grew up in the suburbs of Washington, D.C. At age seven, Gregor told her mom she wanted to be a musician when she grew up. Her mom replied, “Then you have to start now,” and took Jennifer to piano lessons starting that same day, which lead to over 500 hours of classical piano instruction. She was not allowed to listen to anything besides classical, oldies, country, and Michael Jackson until 7th grade. Upon hearing hard rock and metal in 7th grade, Jennifer taught herself the guitar and began experimenting with recording. She played guitar every single day of high school.

Gregor left D.C. to attend college in a small southern Virginia town in '92, the year the music of Nirvana turned the music industry upside-down. In ’93, inspired by melodic punk/alternative bassists in bands like L7, The Jesus Lizard, and The Lunachicks, she picked up the electric bass. She was in three D.C. area indie rock/post-punk bands over the span of six years. Gregor lived for performing onstage (her bands gigged in the mid-Atlantic regularly and she was once banned from a club from jumping too high off the drum kit), but she also enjoyed the challenges of team songwriting and promotion. She composed for and played on several CDs and numerous demo tapes, and is proud her bands worked hard enough and were persuasive enough to receive thorough listens and critiques from representatives of Elektra Records, Matador, and so on. Once when her band opened for one of her favorite bands from L.A. (on Capitol Records), they were so impressed with her performance they asked her to audition. (After some conversations they lost touch....)

Gregor volunteered tirelessly for her college’s student union activities council for four years, and is proud to have been on the team that booked, planned, promoted, and pulled off successful concerts and events by the Ramones, Ani DiFranco, 311, Dane Cook, and others in the early- to mid-90s. She taught herself web design in ’96 and designed, coded, and regularly maintained a large and comprehensive site for devoted fans of her favorite band, L7, from 1996 to 2001. During college Gregor became fascinated with her mother's old 50s/60s lounge and exotica records, from artists such as Les Baxter and Martin Denny, and swore lifelong allegiance to the Tiki gods. In whatever remaining time she had, she studied, wrote papers, and student-taught, graduating with a B.A. in English and entering the work world with a high school English teaching license.

Deeply disappointed and frustrated at the break-up of her last band in 2002 (two other members of the band sparred with each other one too many times over which one of them should design the band's web site), Gregor took a four-year hiatus from focusing on music to pursue other interests she’d kept on the back burner. In January '04 she convinced an old bandmate to show her how to mountain bike, and by May ’04 she had become a sponsored downhill mountain bike racer. Very aware it was a dangerous sport, she enjoyed riding the fine line between elation and disaster. Gregor was named “Mid-Atlantic Cup Champion,” in ’04 and ’05, won 1st Place in a National race (despite having broken her thumb at the joint in a grueling practice the day before the race), and in 2006 she had eight sponsors, including Monster Energy and Iron Horse Bikes. To her dismay, her work schedule grew increasingly incompatible with bike racing and all the physical training involved, and her lifelong fear of heights never abated, making driving to and from her races (not to mention riding a bike down mountains) very nerve-wracking. She decided to make lemonade out of lemons....

In 2006, Gregor returned to music with a goal—to compose, perform, record, mix, and produce her own music, in her own space, on her own terms. She invested in equipment and software and now composes, experiments, records, and mixes in her high-rise place in the city. As of March '07, Gregor is currently focusing on learning how to use more recording and production software, as she hopes to make major progress on a demo in '07. Her allegiance to fresh sounds and solid songs will take her far.