Jennifer Trynin

Rip It Up, Issue 218, 1 October 1995, Page 21

Jennifer Trynin

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Remember the movie Withnail and I? Remember the desperate duo’s alcoholism-induced logic that if they could only get to the country, everything would be all right? Jennifer Trynin doesn’t know the movie, but her debut single, ‘Better Than Nothing’, gives me the feeling she’s given some thought to the crazy CAT (country as therapy) Syndrome.

'Maybe we could pool all our money I Maybe head out west to the country / It'd be just like here, but we'd be there...'

“I’ve always been interested, or, I’ve always found it comical, people around me who get dissatisfied with their lives and their big answer is to move,” says Jennifer. “But, of course, that’s never the answer because you always have to take your sad self with you.” The Boston-based singer/songwriter/guitarist’s savvy world weary point of view is in abundance on her debut album, Cockamamie. Stand out track ‘Happier’ was written in her Boston apartment, but could just as well have been written in the house of anyone who’s almost tired enough of being holed up in their house, while the uproar on the streets knocks relentlessly at their door, to do something about it.

'What could make me happier, than sitting right here? / Trash in the walkway and the boys down in the street there screaming bloody murder, 'cause that's what you do when you don't stand a chance...'

“The town I live in is very multicultural, and there are people of all different race, creeds, colours, everything, living on top of each other,” says Jennifer, by way of explaining the song’s genesis. “I’m just kinda fascinated with the idea,

not really of racism, but of the mixing of cultures in such a close proximity. For example, that day [I wrote the song], there were some kids outside playing like salsa music really, really loud, and it was really pissing me off — partially ‘cause I don’t like salsa music, but also because I was tryin’ to write my own music — and it’s just a constant problem during the summer there. The neighbourhood I grew up in, that would never have happened. “The fact is, people are brought up differently and what is okay in one culture is not okay in another. It doesn’t mean anything’s wrong with that. “So, I was just kinda thinking about that, and thinking the old thing: ‘l’d like to be part of the solution and not part of the problem,’ but I’m kind of a lazy fuck, and I figured I would just keep sitting there and not try to reach out to them. People just don’t reach out to each other that much.”

Jennifer’s currently reaching out to audiences on her first national tour in the States which means, if it’s Wednesday, she must be calling me from...

“Um, I’m in, urn, where am I? Charleston, North Carolina, I think.” Such confusion is par for the course when you’ve been on the road for two months, and there’s five more weeks to go. Jennifer says she had no prior expectations as to what touring would be like, but she didn’t count on it being so boring. “You spend most of your time travelling,” she says, and that’s just one of the things rock ’n’ roll dreams are made of. When you’re not travelling or playing, there’s always sleeping and doing interviews to look forward to. “I haven’t been able to do a whole lotta writing on the road, ‘cause it just doesn’t seem to work out that way. So, you do your laundry. It’s great fun,” chuckles Jennifer.

Aah, dry humour. Still, such is the stuff one must put up with in order to avoid the horrors of day jobs and enjoy the chance to make a living from that

thing they call ‘a passion’. “I’ve always loved playing music (I started playing piano when I was about three), and I enjoy it the way I enjoy eating and sleeping,” goes Jennifer’s statement of passion. “To me, it’s a very essential part of life, and I don’t know how other people go through their lives not playing an instrument.”

■ “I'd like to be - part of the solu- . tion and not part of the problem, but I'm kind of a lazy fuck." ■ . ■■ ■ ~- ■'

BRONWYN TRUDGEON