Jonatha Brooke & The Story

One of the most phenomenal yet under appreciated singer/songwriters in the last few decades, Jonatha Brooke has got to be the hardest working musician of the same era. She started in the '80s with fellow singer/songwriter Jennifer Kimball, but moved on after two albums to a solo career, releasing an album in 1995 that offered a glimpse of her true potential. Plumb was soon followed by Ten Cent Wings which expanded her folk roots into a style that is really hard to pigeonhole. Perhaps for this reason she does not enjoy as wide an audience as she deserves. Tired of the constraints that major record labels often force on their artists, Jonatha formed her own independent label. Fully able to express her muse, she has released several albums (and done her best to tour them) that each improve on the previous works. Her latest effort, The Works surprisingly not penned on her own, but sort of a collaborative effort with Woody Guthrie, finds her returning to her folk roots, but imbuing Guthrie's words with her own musical style, resulting in a whole that is infinitely greater than the sum of its parts.