Jennifer Daniels is one of the two winners in this year’s Chattown Stages Songwriters Stage competition. Truth be told that wasn’t really surprising. She was up against some very talented songwriters, but she’s a veteran of songwriting contests. According to her bio, in the early 2000’s when she first started touring, “Jennifer Daniels made Decatur, Ga’s legendary Eddie’s Attic—an acoustic-music listening room known for launching the careers of everyone from the Indigo Girls to Shawn Mullins—her home away from home. During this period Daniels was a regular contestant at the venue’s “Open Mic Shoot-Out” contests. On one particular night, she made it to the final but fell just short of the top prize, edged out by a young upstart named John Mayer. Daniels won the contest later, topping another notable singer/songwriter, Zac Brown (whose Zac Brown Band now is blowing the doors off country radio) to do it.”
When she played a session for us a month or so ago (when she was a winner in one of the eliminating rounds of the Songwriters Stage) Jennifer played solo. This time she has the full session (she shared the last one with Heidi Kalua) and her husband Jeff Neal was with her to add his stellar guitar playing to the mix. Her daughter Kate also played a couple of songs.