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Irene Jackson
Irene Jackson has been a songwriter for over 25 years, performing in local
coffeehouses, festivals, and special events while continuing to work and raise
a family. She was born and raised in the lower mainland of Vancouver, but
has made Victoria British Columbia, Canada her home for the last 15 years.

Irene has written theme music for a number of television series’, including
the internationally syndicated home repair show “Home Check With Shell
Busey”, the SpeedVision series “Canadian Biker Television”, and WTN’s “At
Home With Herbs”.

Irene is well established as a guitar teacher on Vancouver Island and runs
songwriting workshops, as well as maintaining a webpage for songwriters on
the internet. Her songwriting continues to flourish, and Irene produces her
own recordings through her company, MOONSTONE
PRODUCTIONS.

In 1993 she released her first independent recording "Foolishly
Fantasizing", and in 1997, she completed the CD "Motor Scooter", which
she is now promoting at performances in the Pacific Northwest. A new CD
is in the works for 2000.

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Irene Jackson
Motor Scooter

Recorded between 1996 and 1997 in Irene's studio, Moonstone Productions, Motor Scooter was Irene's first CD release.  Participating in the recording were:

Iain Cameron, bass,
Deb Rhymer, background vocals,
Mike Sampson, lead guitar and
Sean Wallbridge, percussion.

The CD is a collection of fine folk/pop/country style songwriting, plenty of acoustic guitar and a fresh, "live" sound.  The recording was done over a period of 6 months using a 1" reel-to-reel Tascam MSR-24 recorder, a Mackie CR-1604-VLZ board, a ProVerb effects processor and dbx 1 compressor/limiter.  Irene was the jack of all trades, alternating between engineer, producer, songwriter and performer.  "My idea was to have the songs as the centre of the recording.  I began by building a simple arrangement around each one, that was meant to create solid support without interfering with each song's original feel.  It's difficult going from performer, filling in all of the "spaces", and then going into a studio and letting all of the players create those fills!  But I'm pretty pleased with the results."

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Irene Jackson
Catnip

"When we approached Dave to do the artwork, we had been messing around with a few ideas already as to how to approach the front cover...'Catnip', how the heck were we going to create THAT???

"We thought of the classic animated 'cat on a fence howling at the moon' idea, we took a zillion pictures of our cat, Picard, thinking maybe we'd get some ideas from that. But ultimately, we wanted something that would be upbeat to represent the feel of the title cut.

"What you always hear in discussions about album cover art is that they should reflect what's inside...well DUH! But it's true that you can't always judge a CD by its cover :-) Keeping this in mind, people have often described my music as a throwback to the 60's and 70's singer/songwriter styles of James Taylor, Joni Mitchell and others of that era. That's when the idea of giving the cover a 60's look came up. Dave went to the library and got a feel for colours and designs used in that time period from 'Life Magazine'. We also knew we wanted him to design a cat character...Dave has received many awards for his television animations over the years. If you live in the Vancouver/Victoria area, you'll often see his CHEK Television animations on station ID's!

And what's with the martini? Why, that's the 'people's catnip' :-) Doesn't music give YOU a buzz??"

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Irene Jackson
Undressed

Irene says "Many times I've been asked whether or not I have a recorded version of what I sound like live. You know, you'd think it would be the easiest thing to throw together, but as I found out, it's quite a challenge! Not only do you want to capture a great performance, but you need to account for all of the elements that are missing. Fortunately, I'm so used to performing these songs live, that they've begun to fit like a glove."

These are the "best of" three albums worth of material...FOOLISHLY FANTASIZING, MOTOR SCOOTER, and three acoustic versions of songs on the newly-eleased CD CATNIP! The very last song on 'undressed' is an updated version of "Let It Go" and the only song with a little more production. Oh, yeah, and then there's the cover art :-)

"Well, of course, the idea was to find a CD title that matched what was inside...unplugged is old by now, so I thought "undressed" would be much more interesting :-) My husband and I shot the cover art in my studio with a web cam! The idea was to get some blurred, but tasteful images, which I think we succeeded at. Of course, I've had a little flack from a few people who've previewed it, and I haven't shown my Dad yet :-)"