Jenni loved folk music as a child, wearing down the grooves in family records and checking out songbooks from the library.  Finding the multi-volume collections of Sir Francis Childe as a young teen, she devoured them and commenced a lifetime interest in the origins and families of folk songs and ballads.  Lomax, Abernethy, Niles, Owens and Library of Congress recordings followed.  When she was given enough money for her high-school graduation to buy a guitar, those were the first songs she learned to play.  In 1987 after the birth of her son Andrew, Jenni awoke from a dream with a fully-formed original ballad and began to write.  Around that time she met elder members of her family in Arkansas, Olaf and Orilla Pinkston, folk music collectors and musicians who helped found the Ozark Mountain Folk Festival.  As a songwriter she has had fun and gotten attention in Texas and beyond.  She won Dallas’ BW Stevenson Song Writing Contest in 1990 (as Jennifer Mansfield), played the main stage at The Kerrville Folk Festival, and made musical tours of Ireland and the US.  In 2010 Jenni was named North Texas’ best folksong writer among four by CBS/DFW Blog.  Although Jenni’s musical and performing interests have involved her in other styles, including Celtic and Jazz projects, her abiding interest is in the songs that people write and sing to express their most humble questions and observations about life.  That’s about all Jenni can say that folk music is.  She is herself humbled and grateful to have the opportunity at KNON to share the music she has enjoyed and sought out for so long, and to connect with other folks who love it too.   Everybody’s Folk will present a mix of archival and folk-revival songs with contemporary and local recordings, showing their continuance of themes and style, for the purpose of pure entertainment.

email: folk@knon.org