Jami Lynn

Biography
Articles

Though Jami Lynn’s latest Americana album earned her a top 25 listing from the UK’s Telegraph, honors from the Planet Bluegrass Folks Festival Songwriting Competition, and one of Culture Spot’s “50 artists to watch,” don’t rule out her jazz chops.

Jami’s roots are in the old-time country, folk, and polka of the Northeastern South Dakota jamborees of her childhood, but a love for the great ladies of jazz developed right alongside her love of the banjo. While solo jazz pieces by Billie Holiday, Fats Waller, and Gershwin always work their way into solo performances, sitting in with the Sioux Falls-based, Dakota Jazz Collective, and jazz/funk band, Polyphase, has eventually led Jami to a full-on collaboration with bassist Andrew Reinartz.

When not performing for public audiences, Lynn also brings folk music to elementary students and hospital systems through the SD State Arts Council’s Artists in the Schools program and Touring Artists program. She is currently based out of Spearfish, SD.

Jami Lynn: Sparse

by Don Phipps
January 12, 2018

Recorded live at the Community Reformed Church, Sioux Falls, South Dakota, Sparse offers up new ground for folk singer Jami Lynn. The album is a collaborative effort with bassist Andrew Reinartz and members of the JAS quintet. Sparse presents a modest reading of such jazz standards like “Autumn Leaves" and the Billie Holiday/Arthur Herzog Jr. blues ballad, “Don't Explain." Lynn infuses the latter song with romance, but the mood is hampered by the repeating floor tom beat of the drum. ...