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A little bit of
country
Hillsdale freshman an aspiring country
artist
By Katie Truesdell
Collegian Reporter
Jenny Lynn Witham attends classes, sings in
the choir and runs for the track team. But she is not just any
regular Hillsdale College student.
She has performed live on several occasions
in Nashville, Tenn., and recorded an album. She performed the
national anthem at numerous professional baseball, basketball
and hockey games. She was the youngest person, at 10, to perform
solo at the Miss Michigan pageant.
Before Hillsdale, she was a country singer.
Witham, a freshman from Whitehall, Mich.,
may be a college student now, but she is far from being done
with country music. She continues to meet with entertainment
professionals and keeps in touch with other people in the business.
Her music has been played on the radio, and she hopes that one
of her singles will strike big and be played nationwide soon.
"I spent all of my Thanksgiving Break
doing 'music career work,'" Witham said.
Witham has been performing since she was 4,
mainly before audiences at her small Baptist church. It was
there that she discovered her love of music.
"As for country music, I decided I wanted
to perform that when I was 8 years old," Witham said. "That
was when I first heard Patsy Cline. After that, I was hooked."
Witham said her favorite thing about country
music is the importance of music to the artists and the fans.
She said she feels it's one of the few music genres that base
a singer or group's talent on their actual musical abilities
rather than their physical appearance.
The music itself is important to Witham, too.
She writes her own music and plays the piano, though none of
her own songs appear on her debut album. She also has a "burning
passion to learn the guitar."
"I feel honing these skills will strengthen
my artistic value and my music writing ability," Witham
said.
"My music is a real blend of the classic
country that I was raised on and hold dear to my heart, and
the modern pop-inspired country of today," she said. "My
self-titled debut CD offers a little bit for every country preference."
Witham shares her passion for country music
with her father, though her whole family (including her mother
and her older brother) is what she calls her "greatest
support system."
"My faith in God and my family are the
rocks that keep me grounded and focused on what I want to accomplish
in music," Witham said. "I'm so very thankful to have
them by my side."
Witham was born in Taegu, South Korea, where
her mother is from, but grew up in Michigan. She also lived
in Tennessee while she was working on her music career with
her label and management group. During the year and a half that
she spent in Nashville before coming to Hillsdale, Witham was
able to hobnob with some country music celebrities, although
not as many as she would have liked.
"I did have a chance encounter with Shania
Twain," she said. "She stopped by the studio I was
working in one day, because it was the same studio that she
did a lot of her earliest work in. She seemed to be a very sweet
woman, and I was pretty thrilled to meet her."
Also included in the Nashville lifestyle are
amazing performance opportunities.
"You name it, I've done it," she
said. "I've performed everywhere from small, intimate 'bar
room' crowds, to performing in front of 60,000 people at Fan
Fair 2002. That was a pretty awesome experience."
Though Witham sees herself becoming more involved
in campus life at Hillsdale, college does affect her career.
"If there is one thing I miss most about
being away at school, it's the opportunity to perform live,"
she said. "There's nothing quite like being on stage in
front of a crowd and doing what you love most to do. There's
really no rush like it."
To view a short profile on Jenny Lynn Witham,
see pictures, or listen to three full-length songs off her debut
album, go to http://www.talentmatch.com/jennylynnwitham.
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