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AMERICANA SINGER-SONGWRITER FINDS HER ESSENTIAL ARTISTIC VOICE IN VISCERAL NEW ALBUM

Janie Barnett returns to her roots in a full-circle expression of her musical past, present and future.

“This is the river I’m working for. Out in the open exposed here. For everyone to point at me from the shore. Swimming best as I can. I get so tired I crave my legs so I can stand. Like the old days on dry land.” [I’m slugging it out, doing my best here to survive and find a new way to my destination, and how about everyone just standing on

the side lines]- Excerpt from “You See This River”

New York, NY (September 6, 2017) – In Janie Barnett’s newest album,

You See This River, she evokes her hybrid style that favors roots-music

instruments, the whimsical storytelling of her favorite author John

Steinbeck, and the social passions of one who grew up in the backyard

of Washington D.C., melding various chapters of her life into the

Americana album she always intended to make. Featuring Blue Room, a

collaborative group of musicians at the top of the Brooklyn music scene,

who flesh out the body of the songs with a luscious, cinematic sound, the album is a musically

complex and emotionally wrought platform for Barnett’s genuine artistic voice to break out

through.

You See This River is the deeply personal 13-song result of Barnett’s life-long search for her

artistic authenticity. Inspired by some of the most intensely emotional moments of her life -

struggling to just stay afloat while balancing raising her daughter and her growing music career,

becoming fueled by the nation’s ever-politicized environment to establish her voice as a feminist

and activist, and finding the people who will stand by you for life, romantically or otherwise –

the album revolves around a lyrical theme of the human impulse for longing. In her own words:

“The stories here are of the primal instinct for nostalgia, the beautiful and terrible journey up

and down the river, the persistence, romanticism, and pig-headedness of humans.”

This gentle storytelling is present throughout the album; “Better Times Are Coming” reflects the

weariness as well as the continuing willingness of our citizenry to resist in hard times, “Wrap Me

Up” articulates the human need for longing in a romantic tale of love found late in life, and

“How You Are” is a compassionate letter from a mother to a daughter. Of the title track, Barnett

says:

“The title track captures this journey on the river – sometimes deliberate, sometimes

meandering, indeed sometimes treacherous, with no apparent way to jump the current, all the

while watched by those who choose to stand on the sidelines. All we might know for sure is that

we’ll float another day.”

Sonically, the record echoes its title, with beautifully flowing melodies fluidly layered with

Barnett’s gently evocative vocals, suggesting the soundtrack of one’s favorite indie film. The

masterfully crafted songs have an approachability and addictive staying power, with Lydia

Hutchinson of Songwriter Magazine saying “I have been playing [You See This River] in my

kitchen now all day today…It’s so consistently good, one of those rare recordings you can listen

to all the way through, every track.”

Janie Barnett online:

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You See This River available on iTunes, Amazon, Spotify, Apple Music, Pandora, YouTube, & Google Music!

ABOUT JANIE BARNETT

Virginia native Janie Barnett cut her teeth on bluegrass festivals,

church coffeehouses, and the American Folklife Festival. When

she met iconic Americana barnstormer and Newgrass pioneer

John Hartford at Folklife, so began her love affair with the

alternate roots movement. One can see the roots of this renegade

impulse throughout Barnett’s growing up. She defected from the

local high school for boarding school, where, ironically, she found

her tribe of outside-the-box musicians. She then defected from the Ivy League to play in a roots

and reggae band in New Hampshire and Cambridge, and ultimately defected from the New

England music scene to New York City. Barnett rose in the freelance world, making a name for

herself as a smart, precise, and professional chameleon musician, singing on countless film, tv

and commercial projects, as well as singing backup for iconic stars like Linda Ronstadt, Celine

Dion, and Rickie Lee Jones. Appearances on SNL, The Today Show, membership in an elite

session musician supergroup – these were the bookings of that time.

Barnett rose to become one of the top 20 session singer calls, while continuing her search for her

own essential expression - the essential songs, the essential timbre, the core family of musicians.

Several collections of music were released through those years, but none Barnett felt had fully

captured her authentic voice as a writer or musician. “You See This River” is the culmination of

Barnett’s years of searching and exploring, and living a life that many of us find ourselves living:

“By trial and error we find ourselves, we retrieve ourselves from our own fires and folly. We

poke and prod and with luck we find our authentic selves and stop looking over our shoulders.

The renegade is part of my DNA in a good way, but it also played a role in running from myself.

This record, these songs, reflect a period where I stopped running. So the stories reflect the

process, and the sound reflects the result.”

Janie currently splits her time between Brooklyn and Boston, where she has been an associate

professor at Berklee College of Music for close to 15 years.