Spotlight: Jenny Owen Youngs Dedicates a Song to Slide!

Our friends over at Nettwerk kindly offered Slide some tickets to see Jenny Owen Youngs, one of the popular indie artists in the Slide music library, while she was in SF last week. We naturally jumped at the chance and were not disappointed. She was awesome in front of the packed crowd at the Great American Music Hall. And she even dedicated her killer cover of Nelly’s “Hot in Herre” to the Slide crew!!

I had the chance to sit down with Jenny backstage before the show (Tyler, Morgan, Mayumi and Marcelo joined me as well) and we talked about everything from high-fiving to her connection to Regina Spektor to what we can expect from her next album. As you can see from the pictures in the Slideshow, she has some serious high-fiving skills. When she was on tour with some guys in England, they told her she must have “sonorous palms” because her high-fives were so mighty.

On the subject of MySpace, she admitted that she didn’t check her profile with “the frequency that [she’d] like to.” Apparently, she has over 2000 unanswered messages in her inbox! Apart from the creepy strangers who say “marry me” and “you’re hot,” she thinks it’s a “really useful and totally awesome tool,” going on to say, “It’s fantastic that people feel like they have an actual connection with you beyond music.”

In general, like most indie artists, Jenny is forward-thinking about what the Internet means for musicians. She feels that “music is moving toward the digital realm” and that “it’s just all useful to the artist,” particularly if that means that more people will get interested in seeing her perform live.

While Nelly hasn’t responded to her cover of his song yet, Jenny does talk to Regina Spektor, an old friend of hers. It turns out there’s a group of artists, including Moby, who came out of Purchase College.

Looking forward, she says she has “a lot of really big ideas for [her] next record.” After touring in Europe this winter and then recording in the New Year, she’s aiming for a late summer/early fall 2008 release. What can we expect? “More rock and less bulls%#t.” When asked, “More sex?” Jenny gamely responded, “I hope so!”

Take care,
Tony P.

Comments

[jenny]

hi wollt froen wi een di slide zipsn do speichrn kann um pc