Whiteley up for Juno #3 with The Original Jenny Whiteley

Jeff Green | Mar 29, 2017

Every couple of years, Elphin’s Jenny Whiteley seemed to put out a record. They were all different, all expressions of the things she was thinking about, the music she was making at the time. Then, after her fifth solo record, she stopped releasing records. She did not stop making music or even recording some music, but did not release a record for several years.

“I never planned to stop putting out records just as I never really planned any part of my musical carreer,” she said this week over the phone as she was preparing to enter a clothing store in an outlet mall in Kanata in search of suitable clothes to wear to the Juno Gala this weekend. After shopping she was headed to the CBC studios to be interviewed by Alan Neil of the CBC Ottawa afternoon show.

The Original Jenny Whiteley is both a departure and a re-visiting of the songs Jenny learned when she was a kid, performing with her brother Dan in the Junior Jug Band,  and with her father Chris and Uncle Ken of the Original Sloth Band.
It features Old timey classics; In the Pines, Oxford Town, Groundhog, modern classics such as Chris Coole’s $100 and Banjo Girl, which she wrote with her husband Joey Wright, and a French tune of her own called ‘Malade’.

It is also the first album that she has recorded “off the floor” after working on the songs with her friends Sam Allison and Teillhard Frost of the band ‘Sheesham and Lotus’. Sam Allison, who has an old timey bent to his own music, produced the record.

It was recorded within a strict time constraint in 2015, because she was off to live in France with her family for nine months and wanted to get the record done before leaving.

“I contacted Chris Brown to see if he could find time for us in his studio, and he did, which turned out well because he became key to the sound of the record because he was mixing it live as we were playing the songs. For me it was more like the way I always make music, playing with friends and family, than how I have recorded in the past,” she said.

Teillard Frost lives on Wolfe Island, which is where Chris Brown has his home and studio, so the record is a Lanark-Frontenac hybrid, with a Kawartha influence via Sam Allison, who lives in Peterborough.

The record sat and waited until Jenny came back from France, and ended up being released in September of last year.

“I was really pleased with the response. Critics liked it and people bought it and are enjoying it, and when they called to ask me to come to Toronto for the announcement of Juno nominees I was pretty happy about it.

If the record wins this weekend, it will tie Jenny with David Francey as the Juno award winningest resident of Elphin.

Francey has won 3 Junos, and Jenny has 2 so far, and all five of them have been in the same category, Traditional roots (aka the Elphin category).

The category has been split this time around, into traditional folk and contemporary folk, and the Original Jenny Whitely is nominated in the traditional folk category.

The awards will be given out at the Juno Gala on Saturday Night in Ottawa.