Lisa Lynn Bio –
2/3/2006
Like many others before her, Ohio-born vocalist Lisa Lynn felt she’d never
really found a home until she hit New Orleans. She’s been in that music loving
city since the 1990s, and has performed, to popular acclaim, in more than a
dozen top jazz clubs and other prominent musical venues around the town. Lisa
has one CD under her own name to her credit, and is currently putting the
finishing touches on a second. Offbeat magazine called her first effort, “Ten
Cents A Dance”, “sultry, bluesy, and even down home gutbucket…but with the
accent on drama.”
It was the dramatic arts indeed that first led Lisa into singing. Born and
brought up in Toledo, she became interested in musical theater as a youngster.
By the time she graduated from high school. Lisa could list more than a half
dozen musicals she’d played in, Bye Bye Birdie, Damn Yankees, Guys and Dolls,
and even the opera Amahl and the Night Visitors among them. Lisa attributes her
attraction to vocalizing to both her mother, who used to take the family to see
all kinds of musicals, and to her dad, a self taught pianist, who encouraged her
to sing while he took time out from rec room ping pong to back her up as best as
he could.
While going to school at Ohio State, Lisa landed a job at Ragtime Rick’s, a
local club in Toledo that often featured traditional jazz. She did some singing
at Rick’s but more importantly developed what became a life long love affair
with that kind of music. She also met a number of jazz musicians at Rick’s,
including several who she would encounter later in the Crescent City. At school
during these same years Lisa focused on English and Philosophy and wound up by
having a number of her poems published, including one that was put out by the
Ohio Arts Council.
Ironically, it was the poetry rather than the music that first brought Lisa to
New Orleans. She came there to work on a Master’s degree in poetry at the
University of New Orleans. At the same time though, she began sitting in as a
vocalist with some of the local jazz musicians. “I needed to sing,” she says.
“It was something that kept my spirit alive.”
That need eventually turned into a musical career. Lafitte’s Blacksmith Shop,
the Bombay Club, Fritzel’s Jazz Parlor, and the Fairmont Hotel are among the
places Lisa Lynn has been heard in New Orleans, most recently backed up by her
own jazz trio. Last year she joined with two other New Orleans singers, Julia La
Shae and Ellen Smith, for several performances as “The Swinging Singers
Showcase,” a program they are planning to renew in the near future. Lisa has
been performing recently at Fritzel’s where you can hear her on Sunday and every
other Monday night.