Jamie Lynn Fletcher review by Roy Elkins

I’ll be honest, this review of Jamie Lynn Fletcher and her music is biased.  She is one of my favorite Wisconsin artists and is truly a talent to be reckoned with. If I was an A & R person at a label, she would be in our roster.  An incredible writer, arranger and performer who is in a league of her own.  Hope you enjoy this!  Roy Elkins.

Through the influence of my mother and her record collection, I grew up listening to a lot of great singers and songwriters. To this day, I find myself playing Hoagy and Gershwin a couple of times a week at the piano. But I am not sure one has to grow up on this type of music to connect with Jamie Lynn Fletcher and her songs. It helps, but her songs are so well written that the listener engages immediately. I wouldn’t be surprised if at some point in the future, someone will be sitting at a piano playing her songs.

In songwriting circles, we talk about the lyric and the melody being “married” to each other. In this case, she has progressions, lyrics, melodies and a performance all standing at the altar together. She is clearly a veteran who has played hundreds, if not thousands of gigs and has perfected the delivery of her own songs. One is not born with this talent, this is an example of Gladwell’s 10,000 hour rule at work.

Here are my thoughts on a few of the songs in her songlist, which can be found here:

The Fool – Just an awesome performance of an awesome song. Great vocal on this. Cons: Vocal is too hot on the mic. Distortion is present and any licensee would definitely ask to have it re-cut. In some ways the distortion adds an interesting quality to the song, but I do think it’s a showstopper.

Infatuation – Pros: Another strong vocal with great feel. Love it when the groove kicks in at 3:13. Cons:  Tough to place this kind in film & tv….Broadway producers would be a good target for this.

My Love For You – Pros: Good vibe, nice juxtaposition with the vocal and guitar.  A very visual song. You can watch the performers playing this while listening to it. Cons: Not really any serious problems with this track. There are some slight noises that could be edited out.

Proper You – Pros: Excellent lyric. Great marriage of lyric, melody and progression. Cons: Musically none…..slight noises in the tracks.

The eq’ing of the vocal is excellent and the mic choice was right on. Arrangements were as tasteful as I have heard in a long time. Her ability to “leave things out” is amazing.  I know what you’re thinking, “What the hell does he mean by that?”  These songs are so good, it would be so easy to add horns, strings, backup vocals, etc. and the writer/producer keeps them simple, sexy and clean. Great work.

The only downside I see is that the vocal recording was a little hot on a couple of the songs and a few artifacts remain on the tracks throughout most of the songs. Sometimes you may want to leave things like a breath, vocal expression, etc., but noise in the process could easily be removed with an editor. If one is listening for enjoyment, these things don’t matter. However, when someone is considering the song for any type of broadcast, it needs to be free and clear of noisy artifacts. Anyone who listens to lots of music everyday will hear these immediately.

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