Heartbreak Motel is the work of Jen and Eben Henner. We've been together a little longer than we've been playing music together and married a little less than that. All in all about 4 years. We perform just about anywhere that will have us as an acoustic duo - two voices, one guitar and a whole lot of love. Our recordings have diverted a ways from this stripped down format, but the 2 voices and acoustic guitar is still at the core.
Other names we go by are: Jeben, Jenner, Bosler, Jenebner, ....
Influences
The sound of a train whistle in the distance, The sound of a hawk echoing off the side of a canyon, The sound of a police siren over a hard beat, The sound that disapears the instant you exit a tunnel in a car.
Sounds Like
Simon and Garfunkel meets Mates of State, or Skip James meets Gram Parsons, or PJ Harvey meets Hank Williams. Basically we don't stay in one place very long. We have the "me too" affliction with music. Basically trying to emulate whatever music sounds great at the time and making it into our own songs.
Why Heartbreak Motel? No, were not an Elvis tribute act. Nor are we imitating Elvis or anyone for that matter. The name came from a live bootleg Elvis recording, circa 1955 that I heard, where the announcer introduced Elviss next song as Heartbreak Motel. Obviously this was a mistake. Besides this being kind of funny sounding on the tape it got me thinking about the immediacy of those times. Ive always seen the 20th century as divided into two parts: Pre-Rock n Roll and Post Rock n Roll. Sort of like the Dark Ages turning into the Age of Enlightenment, but overnight. Although Elvis wasnt the only one back then, he was the undeniably the King, and he introduced the world to Rock n Roll. Every move Elvis made changed the face of music forever, whether we like it or not. Nothing has been the same since. In a sense he opened the door and shut it at the same time. But, what if this one man didnt do the things he did? What if he made some small mistakes and he wasnt at the right place playing the right song at the right time? What if Heartbreak Hotel was the less catchy Heartbreak Motel? Would the Elvis/Rock n Roll phenomenon have caught on the way it did? Would our music even be here today? Heartbreak Motel embodies this idea that things could have gone a different direction entirely. Its become a passion of ours to fish into the songs that came before Rock n Roll in order to find music at its source. Somewhere in the 50s everyone jumped on bandwagon and rode this Rock n Roll thing up to its present state. Were trying to get on the board even before that. Rather than draw our influences from everything that Rock n Roll created, were trying to draw our influences from everything that created Rock n Roll. In that sense the spectrum is broadened even wider. With that foundation well take our music any direction it leads us.
no wait, he's captain planet, i'm songwriter's symposium!
come on down the symposium tonight and show us what you got
@ blake's on telegraph in berkeley
signup at 8:30pm (on the dot!), show starts around 9pm
$2 for uc berkeley students & musicians / $3 for general public
![•[Monzecilla]•[HM]](http://x.myspacecdn.com/images/no_pic.gif)
