February 2004

     By Shari L. Finnell

     Photos by John Freeland

     It's an early fall night at the outdoor Rathskeller Biergarten, and the place already is packed. Not a sliver of picnic bench to be found.

     The laid-back crowd of about 500 people is made up of singles and couples in their 20s, 30s, and 40s as well as some gray heads and a smattering of kids who entertain themselves by managing to run around in a few tight spaces.

     Must be a Jennie DeVoe concert - with "grown-up" music that appeals to all ages, as one of her fans puts it.

     But the singer/guitarist/songwriter hasn't taken to the stage yet. Having just touched up her makeup in one of the restaurant's public bathrooms, DeVoe is among the crowd - just hanging out with friends and Rob DeVoe, her husband of 11 years.

     DeVoe, with her massive mane of curly blonde hair, offers up her plate of chicken fingers to a reporter looking for some quotes: "You want some?"

     This is DeVoe's typical unpretentious, down-to-earth style. When she's on stage, hoisting her guitar, and seemingly baring her soul in her lyrics through that soulful voice, you feel connected to a friend. That's partly why fans can't get enough of her, say business colleagues and friends.

     "She writes from her heart. In this day and age, it's pretty refreshing that someone would write truthfully from their heart - not just to sell songs," says Chris Lieber, co-owner of the Broad Ripple recording studio Ripple FX:.

      "She's genuine and funny, and she's real," says Kim Oliphant, DeVoe's best friend.

     And fans looking for an autograph, a photo, won't be denied, Oliphant adds. "If I'm with her at a concert, I'll just have to pray that I don't have to be anywhere afterwards," she says with a laugh. "She always takes time after her concerts to sign her autograph. She will stand there and talk until everyone who wants to meet her gets that chance."

     Connecting with fans

     DeVoe has built a following mainly through the old-fashioned word-of-mouth method. "It's like you're going out and finding your tribe, the people who will like your music," says DeVoe the day after doing some studio work on her fourth CD, which is due out by March. "You keep playing long enough and often enough, and you start meeting up at the show together. That's what it is - they keep showing up. I keep showing up."

     When asked why she has such a connection with fans, she explains it this way: "They like coming 'cause they know I'm having a good time up there. I like telling stories. I like having a microphone. It's really enjoyable."

     Of course, there's more to it than that. DeVoe has unbelievable talent. She is so good that her song How I Feel took first place in Billboard's 11th Annual Songwriting Contest for the pop genre. Walk on Water got 45 seconds of airtime on the TV show Dawson's Creek. DeVoe also has opened concerts for such heavy-hitters as Joe Cocker and Paula Cole, and has played on the Lilith Fair tour with Liz Phair, the Dixie Chicks and Sheryl Crow.

     Word-of-mouth (a fan's girlfriend told her uncle, who works at a TV station, about Jennie) helped get her in front of more than 13 million viewers of CBS' local morning show in New York.

     She's one of the best known singers in the Midwest. NUVO newsweekly readers have named the Jennie DeVoe Band as Indy's best local folk band, and for the past two years, readers of Indianapolis Woman named DeVoe their favorite local female musician/vocalist.

     All this makes her fans wonder why she's not "famous" yet (she gets asked that question a lot).

     But DeVoe, who has her own record label, Rubin the Cat Music, is not about to sell out by doing what it takes to make it big. She doesn't want to write songs with the intention of picking a formula that's going to appeal to the masses.

     Then there's money, she says matter-of-factly.

     "If I had a million dollars, I could buy myself a radio hit," she says of today's marketing of pop singers. "Radio has become this really weird and strange and glamour thing. People pay promoters to get their songs played on the radio - and that's the way you get an audience. But I don't have Sony money or Atlantic money."

     Yet she believes that she still has a shot for the cover of a national magazine by steadily building up her audience through word-of-mouth and by staying true to her music style.

     "I feel like my whole thing is based on my fans; they tell other people about me," DeVoe says. "There is a huge audience willing to spend money on music they love, and they are not just 19-year-olds. They're in their 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s. I really like that I have a diverse crowd. It's really cool to see a packed venue with something that isn't the trendy flavor of the month.

     "It's awesome. It's so fulfilling and fun," she adds. "A lot of people really relate to the songs. I see their mouths moving - people know the words to my songs. There's nothing like that."

     When she first started, DeVoe and her band often performed for just a few people. She recalls a grueling seven-hour work schedule - three hours setting up and breaking down equipment, and another four hours performing in front of about five people who really came to eat dinner. About a year later, at the end of her gig there (at what is now Glacier's Inn in Castleton), the place was packed with as many as 200 people, and they were there to see the Jennie DeVoe Band.

     "They all started telling their friends," she says. "I'm building up a steady audience. There's only been a handful of people on the cover of Rolling Stone, but I'm not going to give up. I've got an optimistic streak."

     Young and restless

     When it comes to talking about her younger years, DeVoe, again, is unhesitatingly honest.

     While her interest in writing came at an early age - she kept diaries as a young girl with the hopes of becoming a novelist - she took a "career" turn in high school by playing for a garage band. She would skip school with her friends to practice.

     "They were a bunch of losers," she says. "And if you ask them, they'll tell you I was a loser too."

     Then came life after high school: "Those were some wild days," she says simply. She explains that she had a lengthy relationship with a guy who had a criminal record. Then she clarifies: "He was still a criminal when I was going out with him."

     As a young teenager, there was something exciting and unknown about that lifestyle, DeVoe says. "I started heading down the wrong path, experimenting with alcohol and drugs," she says. "When you're on the wrong path in your hometown, it can be hard to break free from people who are feeding into each other's bad habits."

     Eventually, she met her future husband, Rob, a videographer. "I'm really thankful that I met my husband; not that he didn't have his own bad parts, but we lifted each other out of that type of life," DeVoe says.

     Both she and Oliphant are pragmatic about DeVoe's wild days-they were part of the experiences that eventually became part of DeVoe's songwriting.

     "It was great for her songs," Oliphant says. "She could use some of that for inspiration."

     DeVoe and Oliphant, who also played in a band back in her younger years, also got inspiration by nabbing front row seats for general-seating concerts. Oliphant recalls sneaking around Market Square Arena to see if they could find a door that had been inadvertently left unlocked. Sometimes, they would hide out in bathrooms, standing on top of the stalls, until they heard other fans being let in. Then they'd make their move, running out to grab a front row seat.

     Though the two remained best friends - standing up as maid- and matron-of-honors at each others' weddings - their paths eventually took different directions.

     "Music always was Jennie's passion," says Oliphant, who helps out at her friend's concerts by selling CDs. "She chose this awesome career path, and I can live that vicariously through her. And she 'has children' through me."

     "We laugh a lot," says Oliphant. "And we're honest with each other. We don't mince words. We always tell each other exactly what we think.

     "When we have an argument, we usually hang up on each other," she says. "She'll call me back, and say, 'You know, I've been thinking ... you're still wrong.' She has an outrageous sense of humor."

     While friends urged on DeVoe to play her music, her parents were a bit more dubious about their middle child aspiring to be a musician.

     "There was this feeling from my parents of 'Oh, what a dangerous career that would be to get into.' My mom, who was the church choir director, thought of it as such an unsteady thing," she recalls. Nevertheless, her mother had DeVoe's career interests tested by a high school counselor. Sure enough, DeVoe came out strong in acting, writing, singing and performing.

     She went on to get her degree in telecommunications from Ball State University, with a minor in counseling and psychology. She worked her way through college working retail at a clothing store and waitressing.

     Not wanting to disappoint her parents, she tried her hand at a few "sensible jobs." For a while, she was a newscaster for Muncie radio station WLBC. "I was a very poor newscaster," she says matter-of-factly. "I was a little underqualified. I had a problem pronouncing words like Bogota."

     Her parents have since come around to seeing their daughter as a singer. "They're my biggest fans. They're enjoying me on a whole different level, and they definitely have had a change of opinion about what goes on," she says. "They know it's not just a big high school dream anymore. I'm doing something that's viable and making money at it. And if it gets me on a television show ... it's probably pretty good."

     Indianapolis success

     DeVoe eventually moved to Indianapolis, where she knew she would get more opportunities to play her music. Within the first month, she was singing backup for a blues band at the Slippery Noodle Inn. Next, she sang backup for Larry Crane, a former guitarist for John Mellencamp.

     But singing backup started to wear on her, she says, because she wasn't able to do her own music.

     She later landed a day job at the Broad Ripple recording studio Ripple FX:, where she served up coffee, fetched doughnuts, answered telephones and got one of the biggest breaks in her career - doing voiceover work, which now enables her to fund her own label.

     "As part of my upbringing, we were taught that you're never too good for a job," says DeVoe, who has an older sister and a younger brother. "It was absolutely not a demeaning job. While I was pouring coffee, I brought in my songwriting stuff every day. I made the most of it."

     She also promoted herself. "I told the owners I want to sing while I'm here. I really had to bug them," she says. "I probably was annoying."

     Then one day, DeVoe's voice struck a chord with client Meijer Superstores, which had been looking for singers such as Aretha Franklin or Bonnie Raitt to sing for their latest commercial project. DeVoe started making calls to booking agencies in an effort to sign up a singer. She also did demos for the jingle: "There's a million reasons, a single store." As it turned out, the clients liked what they heard in the demo tapes, and DeVoe was signed up for a three-year exclusive contract.

     "When they said they wanted me to be the girl, I said, 'Are you kidding me?" recalls DeVoe, who now works independently as voice talent for various agencies. "It was wonderful. I started getting to do voiceovers and singing jingles."

     Ripple FX: co-owner Lieber, who says they love DeVoe, says the move from assistant to singer was inevitable for her: "She was a really great singer but a lousy secretary."

     Drawing from life

     While DeVoe has had her share of heartbreaks and hard knocks, not all her songs are biographical in nature. She tries to imagine what life is like for people with different experiences, and she takes it from there. For example, one of her new releases Who Will I Be? tells a story from the perspective of a widow. DeVoe got her inspiration to write the piece after watching the History Channel. The program was about the man, who lost everything he had before dying, leaving his wife destitute. DeVoe started thinking about the widow, empathizing with what it must have been like for her, and the song started taking shape.

     That's an example of how many of her lyrics come about, says DeVoe. Thoughts come to her throughout the day - usually not when she's sitting down, actually trying to work at it. "Inspiration typically doesn't hit me until about 2 or 3 in the morning," she says wryly.

     They also come from different sources, experiences and periods of her life.

     "I collect all this stuff, these thoughts, even if it's from years ago," DeVoe says. "I know those experiences are there, whether it's 10 years ago, when I was little or yesterday."

     That feeling of small pieces of life coming together is the inspiration for the tentative title for her next CD - The Rain Jar. "I write a lot of stuff people can relate to: emotional experiences, experiences with people who let you down. I like anger because it inspires stuff, and it keeps you healthy. I have a vast array of emotions I've been through, a lot of people have been through. People send me e-mails, saying stuff like, 'I totally get this.' 'I'm this kind of person.' 'This really is me.' "

     DeVoe expects fans to hear a rawer, more soulful side of her with her next CD, some of which was recorded in England with John Parrish, who produced Tracy Chapman's Let it Rain.

     "I don't want one CD to sound like the other," says DeVoe. "This one is more emotional. It's also a lot more laid back. I'm not rocking in people's faces. It's not like I'm going for the pop jugular, and that's important for me. My fans need to hear a little something different. Now that I'm in my middle 30s, and it just seems like time goes faster and faster. Life is just too short to keep trying out for cheerleader."

     To find out where DeVoe is playing next or to order a CD, logon www.jdevoe.com.

     Finnell covered everything from the arts to politics during her 20-year career as a newspaper and magazine reporter/editor.

Article appears as published in the IW February 2004 issue.