"Torn upon arrival, between the old and new...was it shadows growing darker, or just the gray before dawn?"

My name is Jennifer Jane Niceley; the fifth or so "J.J. Niceley" in my father's deeply southern bloodline, but the first to be a woman. I've been an independent musical artist with an undying love for the written word since my early teens.

I started putting it all together -- the lyric, melody, emotion -- on my father's old Gibson guitar, all those years ago, for the same reason I do now: to lift my poetry off the page, to say something in the container of song that I know no other way of expressing.

Born on a farm in East Tennessee at the end of a bygone era, I grew up with farmhands and dairymen who still lived on the land they worked, who still made moonshine behind their tenant homes where they raised prodigious families. In that fertile valley, where spirits of the ancients and not-so-ancient alike freely roam, I was raised by a river, in the shadow of the Great Smoky Mountains.

My parents, equally passionate about their respective Tennessee and Texas heritages, both instilled a sense of pride around 'home" and 'place'. I was listening to banjo music (played by my father and his nephews) before I was born, the haunting essence of mountain music marked me. I grew up on passed down war stories, local histories, tall tales and jokes neverending. Country and Western radio and cassette tapes were the background to every drive. My mother's legendary kitchen table was the center of our universe, and horses were held in higher esteem than most humans.

The poetry of place I absorbed and began to create myself, will always be stamped by what I call my "out of time" childhood; and yet my songs from the beginning until now carry a tone that is hard to define, with a lyrical voice that was born to live outside the bounds of standard songwriting.

After years and years of writing, releasing albums, performing solo and with a band, going quiet and living on the land again, I have come to call my music "Mystical Country". It describes the sound, the frequency, and the mythopoetic place I am always in search of, within my work and on my life journey itself.

I released my last album, Not Lost, in July 2024, and since then have been performing regularly again. Mostly, with a stellar group of players in Nashville, including my partner in music and life, Feathered Mason (Eric Davis), who produced the album and with whom I'm working on my upcoming project as well.

It is a rebirth, plain and simple, but it is also yet another chapter in the story, a story far from over, in fact, maybe just beginning?

"Now the days are getting longer, I'm going back out to the edge -- where the end meets the beginning...look for me " --- ("Look for Me", from my upcoming album)

Stay tuned for the latest news in my career relaunch — live show and tour dates and the occasional poetic offering, by signing up for my free Substack newsletter. ~ JJN

Discography

Jennifer J — Jennifer Niceley, 1997. Produced by Don Cassell.

Seven Songs EP — Jennifer Niceley, 2004. Produced by Joe McMahan.

Luminous — Jennifer Niceley, 2007. Produced by Joe McMahan.

Body + Soul — Jennifer Jane Niceley, 2010. Produced by Jon Estes. (Available only on Bandcamp.)

Birdlight — Jennifer Niceley, 2012. Produced by Jon Estes.

Angels, Demons, Red-Tail Hawks — Jennifer Jane Niceley, 2017. Produced by Eric McConnell.

Songs From Before 2007 - 2014 — Jennifer Jane Niceley, 2019. (Compilation bringing together J.Niceley and J.J. Niceley releases from Luminous, Body + Soul, Birdlight)

Depending on the Light EP — Jennifer Jane Niceley, 2020. Produced by Ryan Rummery and Eric Davis.

Not Lost — Jennifer Jane Niceley — released July 19, 2024. Produced by Eric Davis.