Jennifer Niceley

Jennifer Niceley was just a teenager from Jefferson County when she started hitting the amateur nights around Knoxville. She paid her dues through her days at the University of Tennessee—a folkie by day and rocking at night with Soulpenny at the Ace of Clubs and Mercury Theater. (Former Mercury owner Kevin Niceley is a cousin.) Last year, twice as old as that 16-year-old kid who dragged her guitar around to the coffeehouses and scores of thankless open mikes, she was playing the massive Bonnaroo and Austin City Limits music festivals.
Her poppy torch music is languorous and lush, inviting yet hair-raising. Maybe long-time supporter Benny Smith, the general manager of WUTK 90.3, nailed it when he said, “Now we know what Nina Simone would sound like if she’d grown up in Dandridge.”
The urbane sound she demonstrates on her new album, Luminous, seems contrary to her rural roots in Jefferson County. There’s not a whiff of Americana in her music—even though her songwriting is illuminated by a very pastoral sensibility developed as a child growing up on her family’s horse farm. (Jack Rentfro)