Jennifer Faust
Light as a Feather, Stiff as a Board
© 2007 BMI (634479637841)
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Roger Waters starts a band with his daughter and recruits some of Portland's finest ambient noise makers to mingle with Nashville paid-by-the-hour studio rats.
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Welcome to the birth of Jennifer Faust: Light as a Feather, Stiff as a Board. This recording was made possible due to two factors: Love and Death. Love of music, love of life on earth, and love between two people, myself, and Christian Hurd, who took my simple songs and turned them into emotional compositions. Death of my grandfather, John Stellatino, or Nono, as I lovingly knew him: a farmer, a vitner, and a full-blooded Italian with four daughters, one of whom was my mother. His passing left me a chunk of money, which allowed for this recording. What can I say? Timing is everything, and these two events crossed paths, and so here is this record. I imagine when I die, this recording will be one of the strongest momentos of my life on earth. I hope I can give someone a gift like this after my passing...
Current Biography by Pearl Driver
Jennifer Faust
Light as a Feather, Stiff as a Board
__________
Portland, Oregon
It's true, every few months there's a fresh crop of faces popping up like little indie rock daisies in the ever-growing Northwest music scene. Some never make it past the open mic cattle calls on Monday nights. Some become actual low income household names. Jennifer Faust may be a fresh face to the Portland pop scene, but she's already made a mark as front woman for jazz group Cotton Jenny. And she's been successful at nearly every other creative endeavor she's started. At a young age she became an accomplished ballet dancer. As a young adult, she modeled extensively both in major U.S. and Asian markets. Faust later started notable fashion label Narcissia Dial. Her cutting-edge clothing designs have won respect and admiration from contemporaries and clients alike. Right. But can she sing?
In late 2005, producer and multi-instrumentalist Christian Hurd (Templeton, Howlin' Maggie) fell in love with her voice. And while Faust's songwriting had already proven to be exceptional, Hurd saw layers in her work that had yet to be unfolded. Together they began working on new arrangements that would be part of an album she now calls Light as a Feather, Stiff as a Board (unreleased). Months later, Hurd hired Portland legend Mike Coykendall (M. Ward, Beth Orton) to engineer the album on 16 track 1 inch analog tape (not your default selection in a digital-dominated recording world). Occasional Portland ringers were brought in- Ryan Lynn, Nathan Jr., Jesse Johnson, Geordie Thompson, and even Mike Coykendall-for incidentals. The result was a masterpiece (yeah,no kidding) of intimate pop layered in a modern-meets-retro swirl and haze. LAAF,SAAB gently rises into space and falls into the listener's heart while virtually every form of American music is tampered with, as only a doll can be tampered with by a younger sibling. Love and lost parts replace signs of place and time while on a cross-country trip of discovery and reflection. Politics creep in like a summit meeting on Mount Hood. And hope soothes throughout the recording amidst the despair of knowing that when we return home, we may "still be alone".
In the summer of 2007, with a successful album under their belts, it wasn't hard for Faust and Hurd to assemble some of Portland's finest axe-slingers, creating one of the most beautifully orchestrated live shows since Pink Floyd first got their big floating pig. The sextet, which has a core of vain-yet-versatile veterans, can spin a groove sprinkled in psychedelic shimmer that will touch every nerve and every organ in the body and leave audiences with open-mouth smiles and imagery never to forget.
Pearl Driver