Jill Christine King (born April 2, 1975 in Arab, Alabama[1]) is an American singer-songwriter. A graduate of Vanderbilt University,[1][2] she spent several years in Nashville, Tennessee, before being discovered at Tootsie's Orchid Lounge, a popular venue for singer-songwriters in Nashville.[3]
At the age of three, King was singing in church, a church her grandfather helped build. “My grandfather liked Gospel music and sang ‘I’ll Fly away.’ My dad was a chicken farmer and now is a preacher that owns and runs a plastic bag company. My mom was a third grade schoolteacher. Today, she has an antique business. I had cousins in Gospel quartets and my grandmother was a yodeler and sang at fiddling conventions, but there wasn’t a musical environment in our home. I sang in church and listened to Top 40 radio.”
When she was 10, King took first place in an Our Little Miss pageant. “I liked doing the pageants cause I got to sing. When I won, the NY Daily News called me up for an interview. I was thinking, ‘I’m 10 and I’ve made it.’” She’d also discovered guitar and started writing songs. “I had an Ovation bow back that I could hardly keep on my lap. I started writing as soon as I knew a few chords. My dad knew a bit about music and encouraged me. When I was 10, he helped me record my first songs at a local studio.”
In high school, King played guitar and sang in a FFA bluegrass band that won a regional title. She moved to Nashville in 1992 and majored in English at Vanderbilt University. “After school I worked part time jobs and started writing on the Row. When I didn’t have a co-write, I’d go to IHOP to work on songs. One day a customer asked me what I was doing. It was Mark Gray who wrote ‘The Closer You Get’ for Alabama_(band). He told me he was starting a publishing company and asked to see what I was writing.” Gray liked what he saw and, on graduation, King signed on as a staff writer for Gate to Gate Publishing. She wrote 200 songs for Gray, and played open mics at night. “My favorite was Jack’s Guitar bar, a great dive. Jack was a quirky music lover. His mom was a concert pianist and his dad a bioengineer. He had classical music on the jukebox and the regulars included Jim Lauderdale and Kim Richey and Keith Urban. Patty Griffin played Jack’s before she broke through. My manager, John Leal, used to hang out there.”
King was also doing demo sessions for her co-writers and dealing with her brother’s illness. Her brother eventually died of cancer. During that time, she became a regular at Tootsie’s Orchid Lounge, the club that gave songwriters like Kris Kristofferson, Tom T. Hall, Roger Miller, and Terri Clark their first exposure. “I played an afternoon audition and they asked me to come back that night. The regular headliner didn’t show up and they asked me to play a set. When I asked how long the set was, they said four hours. I talked to the guys in the band and made a list of every song I’d ever sung in the shower or heard on the radio and got through it. I got a regular slot for three years on Thursdays from 6 to 10.” King also filled in on the 2 PM to 6 PM and the 10 PM to 2 AM shifts.
In 2003, she released her debut country music album, Jillbilly, on the independent Blue Diamond label. The album's first and third singles both entered Billboard Hot Country Singles & Tracks (now Hot Country Songs) charts. Several of her singles have also charted on the independent Music Row music charts as well.[4] At the same time, she found herself touring Japan, Sweden and France. Her 2008 single "Somebody New" is a cover of a song previously recorded by Billy Ray Cyrus and from her album of the same title.
King assembled a new creative team and launched Found Her Records. She began writing, and in a creative frenzy, the songs that became Rain On Fire came pouring out. Rain On Fire, which will be released on Foundher Records in 2010 along with a photo-essay book authored by King.[5] Rain On Fire covers a lot of ground, drawing from the deep Southern well of blues, rock, pop, country, jazz, R&B, and folk. King deftly puts them together to create her own easily identifiable, but hard to define, style. “When I started working on this album, songs came flowing out of me,” King explains. “I wrote constantly for six months, almost as if I were channeling [the songs]. I listened to what was coming from my heart and let the music take me where it wanted me to go.”
To realize her musical vision, King worked with Australian producer and guitarist Michael Flanders (Garrison Starr, Kane Harrison, Bobkatz). “The second I saw Michael play, I knew he would get the sounds I was hearing in my head onto the album. When we met, we hit it off and it’s been fantastic. Mike has a thick Aussie accent and I have a thick Southern accent, but we understand each other musically. We have a lot of the same ideas and called on each other to make the music as good as it could be.
Contents [hide] 1 Discography 1.1 Albums 1.2 Singles 1.3 Music videos 2 References 3 External links
[edit] Discography [edit] AlbumsYear Album details 2003 Jillbilly Released: March 18, 2003 Label: Blue Diamond 2008 Somebody New Released: June 3, 2008 Label: Blue Diamond 2010 Rain On Fire Released: April 6, 2010 Label: Foundher
[edit] SinglesYear Single US Country Album 2003 "One Mississippi" 60 Jillbilly "Hand Me Down Heartache" — 2004 "98.6 Degrees and Falling" 56 "Three Months, Two Weeks, One Day" — 2005 "Makes Perfect Sense to Me" — 2008 "Somebody New" — Somebody New
[edit] Music videosYear Video Director 2003 "One Mississippi" Tom Bevins
