Lauded by UK music reviewer Three Chords and the Truth as sounding like she was “…born to gypsy poets and raised in the mountains by Emmylou Harris,” Asheville, North Carolina songstress Jane Kramer has garnered international recognition for the sultry, heartrending originality of her vocals and for the heavy-hitting lyrical eloquence of her songwriting.
With deep roots in the musical traditions, culture and lore of her beloved Appalachia, Kramer’s songs are introspective, gracefully gritty and fiercely memorable. They elegantly sweep listeners down the gravel roads and southern coastal highways, midnight truck stops and lonely motel rooms of “hard learning” and lead home to the wooded Blue Ridge Mountains with moving acceptance of our flawed human experience. Kramer’s live performances are equally as poignant and engaging; rich with accessible, warm, often hilarious storytelling and gracefully lifting the veil between audience and performer.
After a seven year stint as founding member, guitarist, vocalist and songwriter in the nationally-touring, Asheville-based all female Appalachian Folk outfit, The Barrel House Mamas from 2003-2010, Kramer recorded and released her first solo album, Break & Bloom, in Portland, Oregon in 2013. Following the February 2016 release of her acclaimed sophomore solo studio album, Carnival of Hopes, Kramer has been touring nationally and internationally, playing for sold-out audiences in listening rooms, theaters, pubs, festivals, living rooms and arts councils in support of the record. This has gained her a loyal following from Portland, Oregon to Scotland, U.K to Florence, Italy.
A former social worker, domestic violence crisis counselor and avid humanitarian, Kramer continues to perform and teach about the songwriting process in prisons, shelters for the unhoused, programs for at-risk youth, classrooms, hospitals and animal shelters, sharing her message of music as a powerful tool for healing, connection and compassion.
Whether Kramer is solo, wielding only her custom EJ Henderson guitar and her most important instrument: her emotive, ethereal voice, or backed by her full band featuring the virtuostic instrumentalists that comprise Asheville’s Free Planet Radio and internationally renowned multi-instrumentalist Billy Cardine (Biscuit Burners, Acoustic Syndicate, Lover’s Leap,) the power and poignance of this truly gifted songstress is deeply felt and long-remembered.
Quoted as “…an artist on the rise” by acclaimed American songwriter Mary Gauthier and as “…a voice that can only be described as one of the purest in modern Americana” By Dave Stallard of Blue Ridge Outdoors, Kramer has performed with such well-known artists as Joan Osborne, Amy Ray of the Indigo Girls, Gretchen Peters, Appalachian troubadour Malcolm Holcombe, Shawn Mullins and Maria Muldaur.