JANET BRATTER: Copper Curls

Janet Bratter

Copper Curls

© 2002 Janet Bratter (634479303821) (format: CD-R)

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Propelled by the motto “Have Guitar - Will Travel,” singer-songwriter Janet Bratter has written over 200 blues, ballad and rock & roll tunes dealing with the up and down adventures of her gypsy life style, humor and unrequited love, plus political com

tracks

1 Dow Jones Beat
2 The Love That Comes Back 'Round
3 Passing Ships
4 Cookin' In The Kitchen
5 Orleans Parrish Prison Blues
6 Carpé Diem
7 Hellhound Blues
8 Paper or Plastic
9 Come To Kerrville
10 Poison Toys
11 Maya's Song
12 Best Years

notes

Listen. Her stunning vocals soars with power and authority. Her poetic lyrics stir the soul and engage the mind. Her gifted guitar work accompanies her soprano voice like a second singer. The compelling creations of singer/songwriter Janet Bratter combine liberal amounts of personal anguish with healthy doses of social irony and occasional helpings of spontaneous humor. To most, her talents are treasures waiting to be discovered.

Janets musical talents are well suited to convey the romance and adventure of her Gypsy-like travels with sincere compassion for the romantically challenged and politically oppressed people worldwide. JB constantly gathers new material from the chaos and confusion of world events, mixed with the ups and downs of her own atypical lifestyle.

Most of Janet's songs are based on her personal experiences, travels and daily duels with her journal. Her tunes embody universal themes and appeal to all ages. Her eclectic repertoire also covers Broadway, pop and rock 'n' roll standards, country ballads, and songs by such writers as Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, Jackson Browne, and Ferron. She says hearing Dylan's Mr. Tambourine Man on Judy Collins' fifth album that was an epiphany. Those early influences were so inspiring that Janet decided then and there on a career in music. Her writing is influenced by her study of English, American and world literature, as well as the folk music legends of the 60s and 70s.

Her voice has been compared to the young Joan Baez, Judy Collins, Linda Rondstadt and Mary Chapin Carpenter. But Janet's sound and writing is unique. She performs on Ovation and Martin acoustic guitars, and occasionally adds harmonica and tambourine to the mix. JB sometimes adds a cutting edge to her sound with a banana yellow solid body electric.

Janet was born in New Jersey and grew up in Florida and northern Virginia. She attended James Madison and George Mason universities, and graduated from George Washington University with a major in English literature. Before making her first freighter journey to North Africa and Europe, Janet was singing in the coffeehouses around George Washington University. While attending school Janet remembers personal dilemmas like "should I go to class or march on the Pentagon?"

After graduating she headed to the youth hostels of North Africa and Europe aboard a Yugoslavian freighter. Later she headlined at the Ritz Continental Hotel in Guatemala City where she also made her television debut. Janet's affinity for ancient Maya culture and pyramids world wide, inspired her to write in earnest about social conditions in what remains of these cultures in Mexico and Central America.

Janet spent much of the 70s and early 80s as a traveling troubadour, living and performing in Nashville, New Orleans, New York, Washington, DC, San Francisco, and Mexico City. While in New Orleans, she appeared on a regular basis in French Quarter clubs, often singing six nights a week in venues like Papa Joe's, the Ivanhoe, and the 544 Club. She also performed during Mardi Gras and the Jazz and Heritage Festival in New Orleans.

In 1981, she spent six weeks performing in Hamilton, Bermuda, then joined the group Emporium. Many of her original songs were showcased as the band toured with three lead singer/guitarists, bass, drums and a string quartet. Emporium took Janet to the Virgin Islands, an East Coast tour, and an appearance at Carnegie Hall, before disbanding in Cape Cod, Massachusetts. With that group experience under her belt, Janet was back on the road, performing in Washington, DC's Cellar Door, Desperado's and Mr. Henry's.

Then Janet spent another year in northern Louisiana, where she gave concerts in Monroe and Shreveport and got her FCC license to volunteer as a DJ at Louisiana Tech's radio station, KLPI. During this period, she often journeyed back to her old haunts in New Orleans and made trips to her future home of south Florida.

In 1983 Janet anchored herself in the Miami area for seven years, appearing regularly at clubs in Coconut Grove, Miami Beach and Hollywood. There she became very active in the National Organization for Women, editing the local N.O.W. newsletter for two years and serving as the Dade County Chapter's Network Information Director. In Miami, Janet was a frequent guest on Florida public stations WLRN (FM) and WLRN-TV. She also produced several cable TV programs, including the series Women NOW. She also successfully headlined a N.O.W. convention at Miami's Fontainebleau-Hilton hotel. Her letters to the editor were often published in The Miami Herald and The Miami News. Janet also wrote music related feature articles for the local papers and appeared as a regular guest on several AM talk radio programs, often discussing her travels to Central America as a member of Witness For Peace. Janet's Miami performances earned her a mention in Rolling Stone magazine, which described her voice as "ethereal."

JB made another trip to Europe in 1989. Janet also performed at the Ninth West Coast Women's Music and Comedy Festival and at the First (1984, in Georgia) and Ninth (1992, in North Carolina) Southern Women Music and Comedy Festivals.

Since 1992, Janet has been living in or near the Chapel Hill/Carrboro, North Carolina area. She says some of her best writing has taken place in the last five years. In March 1995, she won an award from the Florida Folklife Society for her song One Fine Day. Also in 1995, Janet performed at the Florida Folklife Festival in White Springs and the International Singer/Songwriter Festival in Florabama, Alabama. 1997 marked another milestone as Janet was nominated for inclusion into Who's Who in American Women.

Janet toured throughout the Southeast in 1997 and that summer even worked some paid gigs riding the rails on Amtrak's Crescent passenger train between New Orleans and Washington, DC. For three years, Janet has been touring in a hand painted neon yellow and green motor home, aptly named The Bratmobile. Its hard to miss her approach. When she anchors in a place for awhile, JB can be seen running errands around town on her hand-painted mini-bike, sometimes with a guitar case slung over her shoulder. Two of her bikes were stolen in New Orleans, and her camper was been broken into twice there in 1997. Janet usually laughs off such perilous incidents, claiming they are just more song material.

In late June 1998, Janet left Chapel Hill for the festival/club circuit again, this time with a traveling companion: a tiny black kitten named Shadaux that she rescued from the local Animal Shelter. While she's on the road, JB has learned just where its best to park for the night, with Wal-Mart parking lots being her favorite free, secret campgrounds.

In 1998, Janet mastered the use of her Mac Powerbook computer for communicating with the world via email from the road. Her Road Rash Reports keeps her growing mailing list informed of the latest Bratterisms and tales from the road, as well as her future plans, bookings and aspirations. Janet uses her considerable charm and persuasive powers to convince Radio Shack clerks, coffee shop hosts or new friends to let her plug-in to their phone line to quickly download and send her email, that she writes off-line in her camper.

After years of writing songs and performing all over the nation and world, most recently in the Triangle area of North Carolina, Janet is more than ready for wider national exposure. Her plans for 2000 include securing a recording contract, releasing her first CD, more touring and music festivals. She says I think some of the hope-filled positive spirit that got lost in the fray since the sixties needs to be re-ignited. She has also embraced Americana as the new name for folk music.

Janet's inspiring lyrics can pull at your heart strings in many ways. Some of her songs speak to the interconnectedness of the generations, like the moving Grandmother's Eyes, or the retrospective Best Days of Their Lives, about her parents' struggles during the depression and World War II. A strong sense of history and place inspired Janet to write songs like Revolution Road, Pyramids and Florida Calling. Humor and parody are also common JB themes, as in Little Boys With Poison Toys and Orleans Parish Prison Blues, about the night she spent in the Crescent City lockup for a minor fender bender. Other original songs, like You Are Still A Mystery to Me and We Would Be Fools, speak simply of paradox in human relationships.

A 1995 song, Gone With The Wind III, laments the passing of Mickey Mantle and Jerry Garcia that summer. Love songs like The Love That Comes Back Round, Higher Ground, Training Wheels, Misery Bound and My Lucky Day are representative of her 1996-98 compositions. Not many weeks go by that dont see JB writing new material. Her scores of original compositions and dozens of cover songs fills several songbooks.

Janet feels her real home is the road, but she gets back a couple of times each year for R&R at her studio in the Primrose community north of Chapel Hill, N.C. Her hobbies include reading, writing, gourmet cooking, and watching rented film classics on video. As an avid Star Trek fan, Janet enjoys collecting and playing with high-tech toys and has been dubbed Captain Bratter of the Space Marines by well-known fellow Florida musician, Boomslang. As she says, "I'm on loan from the 25th Century to make sure we have one."

In September 1999, Janet had major surgery for endrometrial cancer. On November 21, 1999, she and her friends had a party called Falling Leaves-Falling Locks, as Janet deciding to delock her own hair before Mother Nature did it for her. As Pedro says, "Hair Today, Gone Tomrooow." Janet is currently undergoing chemotherapy and recovering at her home studio at Planet Primrose near Chapel Hill. She is also working on recording her first complete CD at Jerry Brown's Chapel Hill studio . As of August, 2000, Janet has completed her chemotherapy treatment and her hair is growing back out. She calls this short hairs her "sprouts." In April, between chemo treatments, Janet dyed those sprouts purple. On her birthday, September 24, 2000, Janet colored her rapidly growing, salt and pepper curls red again, nixing an earlier whim to do the 'do blond.

As Janet recovers from cancer treatment, her hair has recovered nicely, her copper colored curls more radiant than ever. She has moved on from her stint as a grocery bagger at Wellspring Grocery, but her song Paper or Plastic is becoming a local cult anthem for "worker bees in a grocery store," but as the song also says "you don't have to have copper curls to be cool." During a three-week trip to Ireland in May 2001, Janet picked up the Irish tin-whistle, performed o the streets and in pubs and wrote a new song titled A Rose for Ireland .

Janet continues to play clubs and festivals in the summer of 2001 and will release her first CD, tentatively titled "Copper Curls," in July. The all live CD features selections from various Winter 2001 performances.

Janet keeps on moving, writing, and of course, making beautiful, compelling music as her journey continuous. That's obvious, just listen.

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