Janis Ian Takes a Final Bow With Her 10th GRAMMY Nomination For Her New Album, The Light at the End of the Line
Published
Lauded Musical Legend Janis Ian
Takes a Final Bow With Her 10th GRAMMY Nomination
For Her New Album, The Light at the End of the Line
Steps Down From Performing And Recording
But Will Remain Creative
Mining And Donating Her Extensive Musical
And Career Archives And Other Projects
Shares Her Treasures, Memorabilia, And Music
With Fans in a Special Online Sale
LOS ANGELES – Hailed by The Guardian as proving Janis Ian is “still sensational,” The Light at the End of the Line will be the last album of new songs and recordings by the eminent singer, songwriter, musician, and author. But her public presence will remain robust, as signaled by the nomination of the record for a Best Folk Album GRAMMY 55 years after her first nomination for the same honor – out of a rare 10 nominations in eight categories – in a profession Janis began a more than a half-century ago as a prodigiously-gifted 13-year-old.
Ian says this life and career change is not “retiring but rewiring,” and is both “a bittersweet moment and a grand one.” A virus she caught while on what was planned as a final farewell tour, much of which she had to cancel, resulted in vocal cord scarring that has no definitive treatment or cure, and leaves her unable to sing with the agility and emotional resonance that helped such indelible classic hits as “Society’s Child” (Top 15 hit in 1967, and a GRAMMY Hall of Fame song) and her Best Pop Vocal Performance GRAMMY winner “At Seventeen” (#3 in 1975 and five-time GRAMMY nominee) become enduring cultural landmarks. In her lifelong indefatigable way, Janis will nonetheless remain busy in her artistry and creative endeavors.
The Light at the End of the Line, released on her Rude Girl Records label and her first collection of new material in 15 years, is a record “that acts lyrically as a perfect summation of all that she has stood for, while musically being a real pleasure to listen to from start to finish,” acclaims Americana-UK.com. On its lead track and single, “I’m Still Standing,” Janis yet again shows herself as what The New York Times describes as a “cultural clairvoyant.” She paints the colors, contours, and essences of a significant stage of life in a fashion that expresses what countless others also feel as they live through crucial benchmarks in their lives. “[H]er light will continue to shine brightly through this collection of illuminating lyrics and enduring music,” hails Folk Alley.
Ian will continue to release music, with plans for a duets album of songs she recorded prior to her vocal affliction (including work with Dolly Parton and Willie Nelson), work tapes, live performances, unheard songs, and more. Her website store will remain active selling CDs, vinyl, and downloads, offering special deals and bundles of her albums like the current twofer of The Light… and a new definitive CD version of her best-selling Between the Lines album. A new second store page offers signed copies of the albums and bundles as well as a range of her professional and personal items to go on sale soon: unused guitar straps, laminated tour and VIP backstage passes, capos, “Janis Ian” thumbpicks, microphones she’ll no longer need, and more, plus rare items like a vintage 1937 Gibson L-50 guitar she got from GRAMMY-winning fingerstyle guitarist and instructional guru Al Petteway.
Janis is also donating her archives to Berea College, the first college in the American south to offer coeducational and interracial higher education. ”It’s everything pertaining to my life as an artist,” Ian notes. “Rough drafts of songs and books, FBI files, signed scripts, correspondence with fellow artists, art other artists have given me, contracts and the negotiations that went into them.”
“It’s the sort of life that could serve as fodder for the Great American Novel,” says Performing Songwriter of Ian’s musical and personal journey. And her accomplishments over the course of 23 albums that have sold some nine million copies worldwide is only the most prominent aspect of a tale rich with experiences that are noteworthy, fascinating, and at times were quite challenging.
Singers as diverse as Roberta Flack, Joan Baez, Bette Midler, John Mellencamp, Celine Dion, Nina Simone, Mel Tormé, Cher, Glen Campbell, Kathy Mattea, and others have recorded her songs. She was the musical guest on the premiere episode of “Saturday Night Live,” sang backing vocals for James Brown and duetted with Leonard Cohen, was drinking buddies with James Baldwin and Nina Simone, and hung out with Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin in her teens. Among her many awards are being honored by Queen Beatrix of The Netherlands for “extraordinary artistic contributions” in raising consciousness about the Holocaust, the Elton John AIDS Foundation for her fundraising efforts to battle AIDS, and Berklee College of Music saluting Ian with its inaugural Liberal Arts Award as “An Artist For All Times.”
She recorded her album Stars and it led to a contract with Columbia Records. Her next album, Between the Lines, featured “At Seventeen” and went to #1 in America. At the 1976 GRAMMY awards ceremony, Ella Fitzgerald led the standing ovation when Ian performed the song that won her first GRAMMY, hailing Janis as “the best young singer in America.”
Due to the fickle nature of her industry, she later had to self-finance the recording of an album, Breaking Silence, which won critical praise and Ian’s seventh GRAMMY nomination. She was among the first well-known musical artists to come out as gay in 1993, loudly and publicly.
In 1992, Janis started her own label, Rude Girl Records (the first independent label to join iTunes), and has since released 10 well-received studio, live, and best of albums. She also expanded her writing into other mediums, penning her memoir, Society’s Child: My Autobiography, and then recording an audiobook of same, the first to also feature live singing as an integral part of the autobiographical journey. The audiobook won Ian her second GRAMMY for “Best Spoken Word Album,” winning over esteemed fellow nominees former President Bill Clinton, First Lady Michelle Obama, Rachel Maddow and Ellen DeGeneres. (Quips Ian, “I kept thinking there’s got to be a punchline there… an ex-president, the First Lady and three lesbians walk into a bar….”)
Ian has also written a children’s book, “The Tiny Mouse,” illustrated by famed Dutch couple Ingrid and Dieter Schubert (the only book they have ever illustrated not entirely penned by them). “Mouse” wasnamed a Best Book of the Year by Kirkus Reviews. In addition, she has published a collection of her early poems, received her second Audie Nomination for narrating the life of Medical Mission Sister Miriam Therese Winter in The Singer and the Song, and co-edited an anthology of short stories inspired by her songs, Stars: The Anthology, also available as an audiobook. She has also contributed her short stories and narration to a collection of science fiction written by women and another edited by Game of Thrones author George R. R. Martin (who was best man at Janis’s 2003 wedding to now-retired criminal defense attorney. Pat Snyder). For a number of years Ian wrote a column for the groundbreaking LGBTQ+ magazine The Advocate and was a masthead contributor to Performing Songwriter Magazine. She has also held master-class songwriting workshops for audiences ranging from The Swannanoa Gathering to Goddard Space Center. (Her topic? “Songwriting and the Art of Quantum Physics.”)
In recent years her Pearl Foundation (named for Janis’s mother) awarded nearly $1.3 million in scholarships to students at Berea and three other colleges, financed in large part by the donation of all her merchandise sales. When the Covid pandemic struck, stunting opportunities for musical talents to perform and record together, Ian created “The Better Times Project,” available at bettertimeswillcome.com and featuring more than 200 different versions of the same song, from jazz singer Diane Schuur to Neil Finn, all created during lockdown. The song itself is a feature on her new album, again soliciting contributions by friends like Vince Gill, Andrea Zonn, and John Cowan.
Her list of notable admirers is extensive, and includes such varied souls as Apple founder Steve Wozniak and best-selling authors Pat Conroy and Wally Lamb. “Janis Ian wrote songs that touch my heart,” says Roberta Flack, whose version of Ian’s song “Jesse” was a pop, R&B, and adult contemporary hit. “She tells stories in her songs that many of us can relate to – tender experiences that help us articulate what we feel about how the world treats us in so many ways.”
Ian “retires on elevated ground, affirming her stylistic and perspectival legacies while exhibiting once more how she has continued to evolve artistically and, more importantly, as a human being,” observes No Depression.
“I think it’s reasonable after 50 years of recording and touring for me to have a home life, and there are a multitude of reasons to stop,” she explains. ”I would like to spend time writing,” including a novel she hopes to finish, short stories, and haiku.
“I’d like to just have the opportunity to get bored,” Ian concludes. “I think that would be amazing.”
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