Metro Pulse/Music/Jen Foster

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What:
Jen Foster

When:
Thursday, Oct. 23, 9 p.m.

Where:
Old City Courtyard as part of the Heartsong Festival, 5-10 p.m.

Cost:
$5 wristband admits wearer to all participating Old City venues.

Jen Foster's musical portraits reveal a beautiful truth

by Paige M. Travis

There are lots of pop songs about girls. Girls who drink coffee after midnight when the moment is not right (Train). Girls who want to meet a boy who looks like Elvis (Counting Crows). Girls who only sleep when it's raining (Matchbox 20). Girls who do completely ridiculous and self-consciously bizarre things that male songwriters must find fascinating. Male songwriters imagine these fantasy women and the quirky antics that make them so charmingly weird and supposedly special.

I hate these songs.

Sure, maybe these women really exist, but none of these inane songs reflect my adorable quirks, and isn't a good song supposed to strike a familiar, somewhat universal chord? Maybe I'm listening too hard to meaningless pop songs. Thank goodness listening to Jen Foster is way less trying.

Jen Foster doesn't write songs about girls. She writes about women who are real, free from goofy affectations. Women whose inner beauty is revealed in poignant moments of honesty. Women like herself.

Foster grew up in Texas and now hails from Nashville. Early on, she followed her guitar-playing older brothers' lead and entertained her high school chums with renditions of Don McClean's "American Pie." After going to Whittier College in Los Angeles and doing her time with odd jobs and solo gigs, she hooked up with the right combination of people: guitarist Danny Torroll, manager Sandra Flach and producer Glenn Rosenstein. Thus, her collection of songs became her debut album, Everybody's Girl, which comes out Oct. 14 on American Garage Records.

Instead of being chosen in advance by Foster and her team, the disc's first single ended up being pegged by the staff of Lightning 100, Nashville's triple-A station. "Used Black Cars" fits the bill for a catchy radio hit: a fuzzy/strummy guitar intro escalates into a fast-paced lost-love song with Foster's earnest and earthy vocals. Emotional and rockin', the song soars like the Goo Goo Dolls' best rock ballads, or if Dar Williams had been raised in the South instead of New England. But that's the closest comparison her music earns; Foster doesn't sound enough like any one artist to draw a clear comparison. It's a good thing.

"I think I have so many mixed influences, that it's like there's not one person to imitate," Foster says, calling between non-commercial radio appearances on the East coast. She claims her biggest influence is Stevie Nicks and other classic rockers like the Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin and Janis Joplin—all influential rockers, but she wears none of them on her proverbial musical sleeve.

"Sometimes you're thinking about another artist. 'Gosh I want to write a song like Coldplay,' but it comes out sounding like you." Foster definitely has her own thing going on. Her songwriting achieves a rare blend of smart observation tied up in alluring, charming melodies.

"When I write [songs] myself, I sit down at home with my guitar and go through the chord progressions. I play around until I find something catchy and unique, something melodic and hooky, but it's got its own thing. Then I usually scat-sing a melody." She writes lyrics—alone or with collaborator Kathy Scott—to go along with that melody. But if the melody isn't right, forget it. "If it's not great there's no point," she says. "You might as well write poetry."

Her songs are based on her life and the people she knows. "Superwoman" was inspired by her mother—a dedicated family woman who felt the weight of her generation's high expectations. Foster sings from the unappreciated caregiver's point of view: "Are you hungry? Are you thirsty? Are you empty? Is it getting cold in here or is it just me?" Foster says that women of all ages have told her how much they relate to the song and how pointedly it acknowledges the pressures on women to forego their own needs as individuals to take care of children, husbands and others. "There are a lot of teenage girls who can relate to that trying to be everything for their boyfriends. Woman are nurturers, but that can become a disease," she says.

The song "In Between Poses," which has been picked up for in-store play by Starbucks, is another personal song that paints a larger picture. It's the Anti Girlsong Song; it actually sounds like it's about real women who aren't weird for the benefit of coolness. They're just themselves.

"When you think no one's watching/When you're taken by the moment / When you forget what you're thinking and say what you really feel / When you're in between poses / And when your laughter takes over / That's when you're floating with the angels."

It's Foster's favorite on the album.

"It occurred to me that it's when we're in-between poses we're at our best. That's when we're the most beautiful and the most honest."

Now that she's out on the road, doing in-studio radio shows and playing the upcoming Heartsong Festival in the Old City Courtyard, she's feeling the heat of the spotlight more often. Recently, her hair has been the topic of discussion. Foster's manager felt her hair should look as it does on the CD cover—reddish tresses tousled into a sexy mane. "That took a lot of work," Foster says. So in an effort to recreate the look on demand, she bought an amp hairdryer, the kind that stands behind your chair like in a beauty salon. But, what with being on the road and sleeping in a van, the dryer has become a cumbersome joke.

Well, I'm not a songwriter, but if there's anything I've learned in life it's this: Evenly distribute a dollop of gel into towel-dried hair; hang your head upside down and dry, while scrunching, with a diffuser attachment on your normal hairdryer. Voila: sexy, tousled hair, and more time to write catchy, true-to-life songs. Just a tip from one real woman to another.