Getting to Know a Very Jazzy Blues Duo

You've probably heard their music locally at the Middletown Township Public Library, the Middletown Arts Center or any number of other venues across the state. They are blues duo Jennifer Jordan, of Red Bank's west side, and Mike Barris, of Elberon.

The music that the singer and guitar player thunder and soothe with is from the file of everything old is new again. Catch them playing out anywhere and seemingly everywhere in the area and you'll be tuning your ear to the sound that influenced much of our modern American music.  They play early jazz, spirituals and the blues ... both happy and sad. 

Barris is something of a music teacher, both on stage for the audience and in the classroom at Brookdale Community College, in Middletown's Lincroft section. He acts as somewhat of a teacher to his muscial partner, Jordan, using his wealth of knowledge in the field to provide her with a litany of song suggestions and the background behind them. Jordan's interpretation is both a time machine and a reinvention that gives new life to songs that are, in some cases, a century old.

In a secret grove down by the riverside, I spent some time with the duo that's been taking local audiences back in time. 

Steve Rogers: What's your story?

Jennifer Jordan: People always tell me I should write a book. (Laugh) Whenever I tell a story, people say, 'you should write a book.'  For me it's very interesting to be almost 40...

Mike Barris: I didn't know you were almost 40.

J.J.: Yeah ... and I remember starting here in the music scene in my early 20s and I see musicians and singers today in their 20s, just getting started and I think, wow that feels like only yesterday.  So, I'm a veteran now ... I'm no longer the baby and I always felt like I was the baby.  I majored in music in college.  I grew up doing musicals and singing in choirs...traveling in different groups up and down the East Coast and then when I graduated college I came back here and I was hanging out at The Dublin House in Red Bank and Gary Wright, who became my husband was playing Delta Blues and I didn't really know what that was, and I had been singing a lot of Broadway and opera stuff and classical, but none of it was speaking to my heart, but when I heard that music ... that was it.  So I was introduced to the music of KoKo Taylor, Etta James, Memphis Minnie, Billie Holiday and Bessie Smith and I started singing that music and I've never gone back to the other stuff.

M.B.: Well, I've been interested in older music since I was about 13 years old. I started with The Beatles and just worked my way backwards. When I was in the 8th grade I found an album in the  library of Benny Goodman's Live from Carnegie Hall and the sound that actually caught my ear was the sound of the drums ... the way the drummer was accenting the beat with the sound of the bass drum. Something about that really spoke to me. When I started pursuing music in college I got into blues music more ... of course this was an era of a blues movement, ya know, with like Eric Clapton. So at the time I started, that was kind of what people were playing. But I was always more interested in the acoustic than the electric. But just something about my ear ... it's just more tickled by the sound of a nice steel six string guitar.  Anyway, I'm a member of the Jersey Shore Jazz and Blues Association, as is Jennifer and I heard her singing a jam and I just thought, this woman can do Bessie Smith type stuff, but I was a little shy to approach her.

J.J.: (Laugh) That's hysterical.

M.B.: And then finally as they were asking me to put together gigs and things I eventually approached her and we had actually met at a party that I was playing a little with her husband Gary at and I think she could tell I had a little ability. And that's how we got together and since I had this appreciation for really old music I had been unearthing tunes for her and it's not as easy as it seems though, because although she's a great singer, not everything clicks for her and that's what sometimes happens with really good singers.

S.R.: Is it an issue of range or just personal connection to the song?

J.J.: Yeah, it's not that I can't sing it, it's just that I can't connect to it. Ya know, like it's the same with when you're appreciating music as a listener.  It either speaks to you or it doesn't.

S.R.: Do fans suggest music to you?

J.J.: I was asked to sing Janis Joplin for years and I wouldn't sing it.  People thought I grew up listening to her and yet I didn't and I wasn't particularly comfortable singing Janis Joplin, but because I was singing blues and I'm white, that was their assumption.  I did listen to the people that influenced her, so that's what they were hearing and eventually I just started singing a couple of her songs because I got tired of having people ask me.

S.R.: It seems like history is important to you both and maybe that's what brought you together in a way.  How important is the past to your performing present?

M.B.: I think more so for me than for Jennifer.  I'm really a student of music and she's just really eager to gobble up whatever I give her.

J.J.: I do love learning it though.  He teaches me so much in terms of the music.

M.B.: I've taught before at Brookdale Community College...a course in the music of Frank Sinatra...with my premise being that he was the greatest interpreter of modern song.  I also write on music a lot in various publications.

S.R.: Are the hard times that old blues music was created from comparable in anyway to the hard times the country and world is feeling today?

J.J.: I think with blues music in particular...like, with the filed hollers it came from inside, personal experience...meaning there needn't be hard times in general to feel it...everybody can feel it because everybody has the blues.

S.R.: What's the latest, most interesting thing you learned about a song or a singer or some piece of music?

J.J.: Hmmm...what's the most interesting...

S.R.: Well...I just learned something from you...you mentioned 'field hollers,' I'm assuming that goes back to the days of slavery in America?

J.J.: Yeah, field hollers...it was kind of a way for them to speak to each other without the slave owners knowing what they were saying to each other.

S.R.: So much of what you're about is from the past...what were you in the past...if you had a past life what or who would you be?

J.J.: I don't know...for some reason I see myself as being elderly.  I enjoy spending time with people who are much older than me.  But I think I would be singing or storytelling.

S.R.: Maybe a field holler.

J.J.: Hmmm, maybe...maybe.

M.B.: I see myself with a big hat...because I feel like I missed the era of the big hats and if I can take this fantasy a little further...I'd have a big car and my guitar case would sort of stick up out of the backseat.

J.J.: That's funny, cause I was seeing myself on a bus with no air conditioning, sweating ... so I guess I'd be looking at you and wishing I was there.

To find out more or to follow Jordan and Barris, look for a man with a big hat in a big car or check them out at their respective websites: www.jenniferjordanband.com and www.mikebarris.com.

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