People might remember Jennie Knaggs from her stint as guitarist and vocalist in local rock outfit I, Crime, but these days, Knaggs is in a new bunch of bands about as eclectic as you can imagine.
I'm in Lac La Belle, and we're about to release a new record called A Friend Too Long on Oct. 2. In that band, I play guitar and accordion and mandolin and ukulele, and I'm singing and writing songs. We're an Americana duo, although this album is with a full band, with bass, piano, and cello. We're putting it out on vinyl at Detroit's Archer Records, so that's very exciting. And then I'm also working with Clem Fortuna, the pianist, and we've been doing this microtonal duo where he's playing a pedal steel and then I'm singing. And I've been playing wine glasses — they're called "singing classes" — and then I'm also playing a 14-tone electric guitar and we're playing with an 84-tone scale. We make sure they sound like songs, though, even though we're using a lot of rules, we do make sure it sounds very musical. And then I'm also still with Odu Afrobeat Orchestra, singing backup with our local hero Adébóyè Adégbénró, and Joel Peterson, Nick Schillace, and an ongoing onslaught of Detroit talent. I've also been playing with Orpheum Bell in Ann Arbor. And I'm also a co-founder of the Detroit Music Teachers Collective, so while I'm playing music, I'm also teaching.
