"Theatrical, spirited, humorous, heart rending, and musically exquisite."  ~ Rod Kennedy, Kerrville Folk Festival

"Jessica's voice is mournful, rich and powerful... as full of careful description as a fine painting... an accomplished singer." ~ Bloomington Herald, Bloomington, IN

"...absolutely, incredibly outstandingly the best... expect to be enthralled." ~ The Good Times, Santa Cruz, CA

Interview with Amy Franks:

During our interview I ask Jessica what inspires her. "I think the thing that's inspired me most in my art is loneliness - my own loneliness.  And because I'm lonely I want to be known… because I was lonely I endeavoured to describe myself and describe what I see and the way I see it.'  She contrasts her own approach with the obscure and difficult work that can be found in the art world, explaining that she would never 'splash paint across a wall and say "ohhhh, what could that possibly mean?'  You know?  It's not that - I'm too lonely for that.  I want you to look at it and say "ohhhh, that's what she means.  OK I get it"'.  And if this attitude sounds like a refreshing change from so many artists who would have you climb a mountain before winning the right to grasp their superior interpretations, the unique music that results from such a position is even more bracing.  Again, as with the sense of exclusion, it seems that the unusual quality of her voice manages to convey and contain the attitude in her soul.  Indeed, having puzzled over the striking effects of Jessica's voice for nearly twenty years, I'd guess that Jessica's desire for people to 'get' her, might help to explain the things that happen - and boy, do they happen - when her singing fills the air.  Why is it that the sweet-sounding, passionate, or uplifting songs I have played over and over still manage to unnerve me when they first hit my ear?  Why is it that I have seen audiences who stay hooked to Jessica all night doing something like squirm when she first starts to sing?  The more I hear of Jessica's supple, ranging song, and the more I compare it to those other voices that we might call 'honest', the more I become convinced: this singer has an openness in her voice so rare as to be almost terrifying at first.  In a total departure from other, excellent, honest voices, she does not just tell you her truth - impact upon you in the normal singer-to-listener relationship - but instead uses her voice with such flexibility that it seems to let you come inside, letting you feel the truth for yourself. It's the trust, the vulnerability, and the appeal to our essential relatedness involved in such music making that can scare you at first encounter.  How many of us expect a performer to share, really share with us?  But while this quality might initially throw the listener who was expecting less, it's also one of the things that keeps you listening.

she repeats the line, 'ask a question, make a wish', each time her voice just seeming to travel further and more freely into wild, beautiful ranges. Indeed, despite its delicate, soft fluidity, there seems to be a brave explorer in Jessica's voice that picks up where her philosophical lyrics leave off. Later when she sings 'somehow love is never finished', its like her voice goes on a pioneering search, demonstrating with sound all the scope and possibility of the 'unfinished' love of which she speaks.

At the time of our interview Jessica is in the thick of her latest album project - a musical celebration of the summer solstice to follow up the magical homage to winter (Beautiful Darkness) already in existence.  For this album, Jessica has friends, family and the sounds of nature in on the act to produce a collection of dances, spoken poems and more of her own idiosyncratic songs, all meditating on the wonder of summer.  In this material the, playful, child-like quality ever present in the woman herself comes through in abundance.

One of the ways that this child-like trait shows in Jessica's art - and I put this to her - is the way that she allows herself to feel the awe and magic of everyday life.  In the ballad We Were All Heroes she paints her time in a squat like an epic and isn't ashamed of admitting the importance of something that would not be considered grand or epic to other people.  And while there's nothing preacher-ish in the song itself, hearing it nevertheless feels like a reminder of how big everyone's life can be if they will just respect it for what it is.  'We're a ragged little party that just won't end', goes the moving acknowledgement of this part of her life.

Then there's the poem If Jesus Had a Girlfriend in which the innocent, wondering voice of someone not yet trained into saying 'appropriate' things, teases out profound questions about the place of women in Christian scripture.  'I'm wondering….', trails Jessica's equally musical speaking voice on track three of the poems and stories album Ruby Slippers, '…. if Jesus had a girlfriend.'  Of course, the child-like voice used here to suggest for example that, had Jesus had a girlfriend, she might have sniffed out the fifth apostle with her feminine intuition, shows the sophistication of using supposedly 'naïve' ways of thinking to highlight the ludicrousness of accepted ideas.  (In this case the accepted lack of female wisdom in the bible.)  Here, Jessica's apparent 'child's voice' could be seen as just one of the tools of her intelligent, affecting communication.

But the girlishness in Jessica's art is more than just a clever and stylistically pleasing act.  On the subject of this child-like quality, Jessica says 'I am very child-like, I know I am.'  She refers to the idea that 'when you have a great shock that isn't resolved in your life you often stop your emotional growth at that stage', and talks of the death of her younger brother when she was eight as being one of those moments.  'He was six and he was my only friend in a horrible life. He showed me what love was.  He was love, he was amazing.  And once he'd shown me love he left…..that [death] was the absolute defining moment of my life'.  Later she returns to the subject; 'I'm also about 14 - when I started taking acid.  They also say that when you've been into drugs in your life your emotional growth stops when you've started to get really messed up.  So, I mean we all live with these things whether you identify them or not and who knows when Margaret Thatcher's emotional growth stopped'.  We laugh, and I notice how Jessica, whilst admitting to her distress wholeheartedly, is quick to seek out the tonic - of beauty, of laughter, of the thing that helps you leave the distress behind.  But perhaps the extraordinary thing is the way that, although the childhood was where the distress lay, it is not the child in her that she leaves behind.  Indeed, if you listen to songs such as The Mermaid on the album Red Roses, it becomes clear that Jessica, having run away from the home she did not want, has ever since been weaving the lullabies and play-times that she does.

As you might expect from one who puts the whole of their self and their life into it, Jessica Radcliffe's art is varied.  And for all the girlish, youthful wit, the deep-feeling lover, mother and friend in her are by no means compromised or eclipsed.  ...poems such as If Jesus Had a Girlfriend and others too many to recount have always made me aware of the teacher in Jessica.

When I put this to her, she's not too comfortable with such a badge.  But after turning it over she says, ' I want to show you what I know in a way that might be assimilable, so that you can use it in your quest for what you're doing because we're all in this together.  We're not separate, and if anyone has figured anything out that helps somebody else it would be very nice.  We could all use a little.  And I try to share the things with people that I wish someone would have shared with me.  And I've had a few older people who've been like teachers and I really, really, really appreciate them…'.  Jessica's attitude in this confirms what her willingness to reveal her uncertainty and vulnerability has always suggested.  It confirms what her ability to 'let her audience in' and her desire to connect though art already makes clear.  Here is an artist who seeks equality, not superiority, in her art.

Talking about her art and her life, and indeed making no distinction between the two, Jessica finds further answers to my initial question; 'what inspires you?'  'The other thing I would have said would be "finding the link in things that feel real" because I think that it's almost like there's a middle place in everything where it's beautiful.  Or where it's real.  I choose to see it that way.  It's sort of like choosing your magic.  You can be confused. You can never be certain.  What is certain in the world?  You have to make up your own certainty.  So I choose to believe that there's something in existence that's like a beautiful, friendly place.  So [she laughs] I'll just try to be there'.  To those of you who also like getting to the real, beautiful places: try listening to Jessica Radcliffe's music, where there appears to be a pretty good map worked out.