KJ Denhert

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With a genre-transcending sound that she calls “Urban Folk & Jazz”, award-winning singer-songwriter KJ Denhert has been making audiences laugh, dance and cry for over three decades. She’s self-produced eight records, appeared at scores of festivals and, since 1998, held ongoing residencies at The 55 Bar in NYC and The Baz Bar in St. Barth’s. Since 2006, KJ has also been a six time artist-in-residence at the Umbria Jazz Festival in Italy.

This fall marked the release of her new CD, a live recording entitled, KJ Denhert: Dal Vivo a Umbria Jazz. “The title translates to ‘Live at Umbria Jazz’, but it sounds so much sexier spoken in Italian. I call it “Dal Vivo” for short,” KJ remarks in her notably precise Italian accent.

Performing Songwriter magazine was among the first to herald KJ’s talents, stating, “KJ Denhert is so full of a love for life that you hear it in her voice, her lyrics and the exuberant beats of her songs.”

KJ started her own label, Mother Cyclone Records, in 1996 and in 2007 signed to Motema Music, an indie label based in Harlem, New York. In May 2008, KJ released her first Motema CD and her seventh release to date at the time, the aptly titled Lucky 7, and supported it with an extensive summer tour that took her throughout the US and to Europe.

Her rock solid rhythm section, The NY Unit, has been touring together for nearly twelve years and is a source of pride for Denhert who admits that their longevity is ”somewhat unusual in the music business today”. KJ has made a point to tour with her own band all the time, adding Aaron Heick (Chaka Khan, Richard Bona) on sax in 2007 (Dal Vivo also marks his first recording with KJ).

KJ’s loyal following has continued to expand over the course of the more than 100 shows she and the NY Unit have performed since the start of 2008. Her Lucky 7 Summer Tour included opening slots for artists as diverse as Alicia Keys, Robert Randolph, and guitar legend Robben Ford. Her fan base has also come to include many other singer/songwriters, such as Keb Mo and Jackson Browne, who both turned out for KJ’s show at the Temple Bar in Santa Monica this year.

Later this year she is set to share a bill with Shameika Copeland and she will of course return to Umbria Jazz in January of 2009 to celebrate both the New Year and the release of Dal Vivo. Whenever KJ is at home in New York, she resumes her Greenwich Village 55 Bar residency, performing every other Saturday to standing room only crowds from around the globe.

A LITTLE BIT OF HISTORY
It all started many years ago in the very same city. KJ, born Karen Jeanne to parents from the island of Grenada, was the first US citizen born to a small family. Her only brother, born in Aruba, had taken an interest in music and it was on one of his discarded guitars that KJ wrote her first song, composed for the passing of a fifth grade teacher. Her self study carried her through many years and styles of music, with influences of note including singer/songwriters James Taylor and Joni Mitchell. On the jazz side, KJ admits to a fascination with Hubert Laws, Steely Dan, The Yellowjackets and an early childhood infatuation with Sergio Mendes and Brazil 66.

In high school, KJ started a band whose performing debut was at the world-famous Folk City on West 3rd Street, where artists such as Joan Baez, Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell first appeared, and where KJ received a standing ovation at age 17 for her performance of one of her early original songs. KJ acknowledges that that was a pivotal point in her development as a performer. “It took a long time before I crossed West 3rd,” she joked from the stage of the Blue Note’s late night groove session on in the summer of 2008 at the conclusion of her Lucky 7 tour, referring to the fact that The Blue Note now sits directly across the street from where Folk City once stood.

KJ played the guitar through her years at Bronx Science before heading to Cornell University where, after two overwhelming years, she took a leave of absence to play music full time. In the 80s, she toured the US, Canada and Europe as lead guitarist and for the all-female pop-rock band, Fire, a tenure that she quips was her “seven years in spandex.” After the group disbanded, KJ became a financial analyst for Dannon Yogurt, a “day job” that she held while continuing to pursue her music with the dream of having the freedom to write and record her own material. She recorded her first Mother Cyclone Record in 1995, left her day job in 2003, and has produced a new project each year since.

An expert wordsmith whose lyrics tell deeply personal stories that communicate universal truths, KJ began to seriously hit her stride as an independent songwriter, recording artist and producer in 2005, garnering awards including first place at The Mountain Stage New Song Contest (2005, for “Little Mary”) and the Kerrville New Folk Song Contest (2006, for “Private Angel”). She also took home the 2006 Independent Music Award for Best Live Performance CD, which honored the album Another Year Gone By.

A completely self-taught instrumentalist, KJ plays Martin OOCXAE acoustic guitars through a Bose personal amplification system and a collection of stomp pedals that provide her with a plethora of unique sounds to choose from. Asked about her guitar influences she explains, “I picked up a guitar and started writing songs when I was 10. I taught myself to play by listening to records over and over. During my teenage years, I learned about guitar tablature from a great James Taylor book and I discovered modal tunings from Joni Mitchell’s For The Roses. My touring days with Fire provided a real foundation in pop & rock and exposed me to rock guitarists, like Andy Summers with the Police, Angus Young from AC/DC, and Steve Stevens from Billy Idol’s band. Though I never lost my love of Larry Carlton or Earl Klugh, I was also learning hammer-ons from Eddie Van Halen. It was my job and I took it seriously- it’s amazing how many times I’ll be in a restaurant and still hear the music that I played night after night in the big-hair eighties!”

WFUV-FM/New York public radio DJ John Platt has rightfully described KJ as “a triple threat force of nature,” reflecting her skills as a singer, a songwriter, and a gifted guitarist. KJ’s songwriting has earned her a track on The Nearness of You, the latest release from jazz singer Nicole Henry (with whom KJ had shared a spot on the HMV jazz vocal chart in Japan in 2006), which had reached number seven with a bullet on The Billboard Jazz chart in September 2008. Henry first heard KJ’s ballad “I Found You” on a disc she was given by a friend who had caught KJ’s show at the Baz Bar on St. Barth’s. Texas singer/songwriter Ruthie Foster was inspired to cover and credit KJ’s arrangement of “Oh Susannah” on her live recording, Stages. While in Germany in 2007, KJ met EMI recording artist San Glaser, who followed KJ back to New York to complete several fruitful co-writing sessions which resulted in songs that are featured on Dal Vivo (“All These Things” & “August Clown”), and on Lucky 7 (see KJ’s You Tube clip for “Let It Go”).

In one of KJ’s songs, she sings, “No one wears a smile everyday- well I thought that I was the conductor but it turns out I was riding on a train.” For KJ, smiling through it all, that train has made stops from her home in New York’s Hudson Valley to California to Europe and St Barth’s and back without signs of stopping for very long.