2013 will mark the release of Jill Cohn's newest collection of songs, and her first studio effort in nearly 5 years. With a 5 song EP pre-release, entitled "Beautiful" being immediately heralded as a top 10 indi pick by the Los Angeles area Los Feliz Journal, it would serve as the bridge for the Seattle songstress to finish the full-length CD.
With this latest release, Beautiful I Love You, she not only embraces her relocation from Seattle to Northern California and her partnership with Austin-based guitarist Dave Sampson, but she’s tapped into a vein of musical and emotional inspiration that has surprised not only her fans, but the performer herself. “Maybe for the first time,” Cohn says, “I’ve pulled from the elements of my entire life as a recording artist.”
Upon hearing Jill's 2005 AAA radio favorite, "Rescue Dog," on KRSH radio in Northern California, Sampson contacted Cohn in regards to the possibility of working together. The two began performing as a duet in late 2009, and after touring extensively with Sampson, Cohn refocused her sound and started to write songs that would fit her new performing arrangement. “Dave's guitar work and musical sensibilities are a rare find, and from the first moment he stepped on stage with me, I knew that we heard music the same way,” says Cohn. With this new musical connection, it became clear that the direction of Cohn’s songwriting would draw from both Sampson’s lush acoustic accompaniment and her life experience as a touring musician.
“Being with someone who understood me as a musician added a whole new dimension,” says Cohn of her relationship with Sampson, “and I think Beautiful I Love You reflects the fact that I am definitely in a more buoyant place in my life, especially my personal life.” That said, there are many elements in common with Cohn’s earlier work. It features contributions from Seattle-based producer Martin Feveyear, bassist Brady Millard-Kish, keyboardist Greg Fulton, and Stephen Sherrard, who mixed the project and was a driving force in the album’s completion. It also includes a host of Los Angeles-based musicians, including Michael Barsimanto on percussion, bassist Marcus Blake, and Jim Watts, who engineered the band sessions at the celebrated Red Star Studios in Silver Lake.
One big change in the prep for the latest album is the fact that Cohn and Sampson workshopped most of the tunes on stage before ever setting foot in the studio. “It was really easy to do the recording, because we knew what we were after sonically,” says Cohn. “The songs really evolved on stage, from tempo to key to lyrics. In all of my previous releases, I wound up changing them live from the way they were done on the record. This really reversed the process for me, and in a good way, I think.”
In “Live Life,” the song she calls “the emotional heart of the album,” written about her transition from her former adopted home of Mexico City and her new life in the Bay Area, she sums up the past few years in a melodious blend of wistfulness and hope.
Finally I’ve come half way home
Between the warm city and the grey cold
But I’m not too happy being stuck in between
When all I am looking for is God
Now all I’ve wanted is gone
Finally I have all a lonely girl could want
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Funded in part through a Kickstarter campaign that engaged Jill’s fans in the creative process, Beautiful I Love You is available at Cohn’s live shows and worldwide on iTunes, Amazon.com, and CDBaby.com. Cohn endorses both Taylor Guitars and Elixir Strings.
The CD, “Beautiful I Love You" was named a top 10 indie-artist pick in the Los Feliz Examiner (Los Angeles, CA.)
Jill Cohn’s songs pay homage to artists like Joni Mitchell, Sarah McLachlan and the Counting Crows, with tunes ranging from personal reflections to musical contemplations of a live well lived.
During Cohn’s tours, she has gained many new fans and concert opportunities, including a performance at a Biodiversity Forest Rally where she opened for Dave Mathews. Her most recent performances encompass a wide spectrum of venues and charitable events, ranging from local coffee houses in small rural towns, college campus concerts, to her most moving appearance to date, where she performed her song “Instead of the Innocent” in front of 8,000 people at a peace rally in Seattle’s Volunteer Park. Cohn was also picked as an opener for the Girls Room tour and was a top-five finalist in the Lilith Fair Talent search in Seattle, Portland, and Phoenix. She has shared the stage with many pop/folk luminaries, including: Loudon Wainwright III, Vonda Shepard, Sacey Earle, Jimmy LaFave, teh legendary David Mallett, Colin Hay, Danielle Ate the Sandwich, Apryl Verch, Sam Phillips and many more.