Photograph by Thomas Crone
For Jenny Roques, country music was something that came organically, in many respects, having grown up in small-town, rural Missouri. There, she developed a sense of style, a love of history, and a slowly rooting love of old-time music. Those sounds, to her, are wed into another’s time’s daily rhythms and customs, ready to be appreciated by a new generation.
“It’s so funny,” she says. “I’ve always felt like I was born in the wrong era. I should’ve been born in the 1880s. I really try to learn where things have come from. For instance, for me, my mom was a single parent and I grew up on the farm with my grandparents. They raised me as if on a Depression-era farm.”
Her St. Louis musical experiences were first grounded in a very different form of roots music: Jamaican dub and rocksteady, via the group Dub Kitchen. She performed with that band from 2003 to 2010, on vocals, percussion, and later organ. She believes it was useful for her overall growth as a musician and songwriter. “I love all sorts of music,” she says, “every single kind. And the group would cover old country songs, or old soul songs. It really expanded my repertoire.”
She also took time to enjoy another city’s musical offerings, moving to Austin, Texas, for time, where she played in a group called Arson for Candy; that acoustic band still performs in Austin and very occasionally in St. Louis.
It was a trip back home, to tiny Rosebud, Mo., that really turned her in a new—but old—direction.
“I grew up on a farm 100 miles from here,” she says. “The Rolla Superstation was on in the kitchen every day. Some of the early ’90s country is good, but mostly I hated it. When I went down to Texas and took some time off from St. Louis, I was talking to my grandpa. And he started putting these names in my ear, and I started looking them up and thought, ‘Oh crap! This is the country I like.’ I was just exposed to the cheesy, mass-produced stuff. But all this opened up the door to Ernest Tubb and Tex Ritter. I started learning about the real, old country songs, even learning the old cowboy songs, the trail songs. Those I really love. They’re a lost art. And here I’d grown up around raising cattle.”
An amazing, singular moment confirmed that her newfound love of old country was taking the right course.
“One day, I was out sitting on a cistern, near the barn,” she says, “just playing the guitar. And eight or nine cattle starting coming up to the fence. They were really interested in this, really enthralled with this. What the heck? This had never happened before. Some lost interest and walked away, but others stayed and watched the whole time I played.”
These days, Roques is applying her voice, guitar, songwriting, and adaptation skills to two projects. One is a low-key, lo-fi home-recording duo with Joey Glynn, the bass player for Pokey LaFarge. To date, they’ve fit in sessions around Glynn’s busy touring schedule.
“All of the recording experience I’ve had recently has been live,” she says. “I guess I haven’t had the normal studio experience. Overdubbing parts seems tedious. I feel really fortunate that I’ve done live recordings and they’ve turned out really well. I look forward to doing a whole bunch more of these at home.”
The other project is Jenny and the Late Nite, a group that’s brought together a variety of young and seasoned players. Roques semi-jokes that with her name attached to the group, the pressure’s on her to craft the sound, run the show, and occasionally crack the whip.
“It’s funny,” she says of her de facto bandleading. “It’s another learning experience. Confidence is something I’ve struggled with for years. And stage fright ties into the confidence thing. To be honest with you, I still get terribly nervous all the time. It’s getting a little better, but I’ve played onstage for over 13 years! When I started forming this band, all the guys were giving me grief. ‘You gotta yell at us. You gotta tell us what to do.’ I was always more shy and reserved. The goal for me is learning, telling myself, ‘It’s all right, take center stage, here we go.’”
Eventually, she hopes, stage will feel just like the backyard sessions that she still enjoys with friends, “when we’re all at home, sitting around the bonfire. That’s as roots as you get, with old-time or folk music. That’s the ultimate connection, playing with friends—or even sitting in a living room, doing a home recording. That’s a bonding experience. When we play shows, we want to make it like the living room, make it comfortable.”
Jenny and the Late Nite play the Venice Café (1903 Pestalozzi) on Wednesday, January 22. For more info, go to facebook.com/jennyandthelatenite.
Now Hear This
From Bad to Worstward, The Union Electric: On its most recent foray into short-form vinyl releases, local quartet The Union Electric went into the studio with producer Kevin Buckley, creating a four-song EP that incorporates lyrics from Irish poet Samuel Beckett. Initially, the band had considered a longer Irish-themed album, but instead the members worked out four songs with Beckett’s lyrical touches, accompanied by their own original music.
Vocalist and songwriter Tim Rakel “has been sort of kicking around the idea for a while, the idea of ‘The Union Electric meets traditional Irish music,’” says guitarist Glenn Burleigh. “There’d been talk of doing sessions with Kevin and the McGurk’s [Irish pub] crew. And while that never really fully materialized, the idea of doings songs based on Beckett’s writings goes back a while. And we wanted to incorporate Kevin, at least. Tim finally got enough songs together to wrap it up into a nice little EP. When you’re doing a bunch of songs as a tribute to an author, it’s real easy to go overboard. A four-song EP was a pretty decent, consumable size for our folk rock–meeting–Beckett’s experimental drama ambition.”
In addition to Burleigh and vocalist/multi-instrumentalist Rakel, The Union Electric includes bassist Melinda Cooper and drummer Mic Boshans. Together, they’ll be recording again in the late winter or early spring, shooting for a full-length release in 2014.
The EP is available as both a piece of vinyl and as a digital download via theunionelectric.bandcamp.com.
