Party: Acoustic Session with guest Banjo Jen

Party: Acoustic Session with guest Banjo Jen

All styles, all welcome acoustic session, featuring guest performer Banjo Jen - A Sheffield 'bird on a banjo', playing new songs inspired by old-time country stuff! Grab yer cowboy hat and come along for the ride :)

The name Banjo Jen was coined by new friends when Jen moved to Sheffield in 2015, bringing along her banjo to jam at Café #9 with Texan songwriter Ash Gray. After joining Ash as part of the alternative bluegrass / country trio ‘Something the Dog Dragged In', Jen began to perform her own original solo material in 2016.

Highlights so far have included performing in Austin Texas during SXSW 2017 at Pete Fest and at the world-famous Threadgill's bar. She also opened the Honey Bee Blues Club stage at Sheffield's Peace in the Park festival.

Jen can often be found performing in the string band for the Feet First Appalachian dance team, having previously been a dancer with them for many years. If you’re lucky, you can still catch her doing the occasional bit of Appalachian stepping to complement the banjo when she performs.

As Banjo Jen, she plays the traditional frailing style of banjo for her songs and is influenced by the ‘old-time’ genre of American music. This traditional mountain music speaks to us of a bygone era; when life was hard and times were tough, but when music and dance kept people’s spirits alive. The distinctive flavour of this music can be heard in Jen’s original songs; songs of sinning and straying, of characters and conflicts, of running from the law and of running from yourself. As her idol Dolly Parton says, ‘We're all just a bunch of sinners, but we do the best we can’.