The sudden and unexpected arrival of Spinning Jenny’s The Great Story in the summer of 2022 was a welcome blast from the past. This offshoot of Three Merry Widows enjoyed only a short run in the mid-’90s, yet that time provided the band’s six players an opportunity to create at least one album’s worth of great material. Featuring nine songs, The Great Story is available for streaming and purchase on Bandcamp.
There, the group’s short bio summarizes the group’s existence: In the summer of 1994, after the breakup of seminal St. Louis folk-rock band Three Merry Widows (TVT Records), four remaining members, Sean Garcia, Brian Simpson, Charles Shipman and Matt Albert, regrouped, set aside their electric guitars, and began to explore the musical space that could be created by limiting themselves to only acoustic instruments. With the addition of Meryl Press (vocals) and Mira Tanna (violin), they formed Spinning Jenny, a musical experiment influenced by the British and American Folk Rock scenes of the 1960/70’s. A collection of 8 original songs, recorded and produced by the band, garnered label interest, but the band members soon went their separate ways, and the music was never officially released. Fast forward almost 30 years, and the original recordings, remixed and mastered, are now available for the first time on The Great Story. Acoustic guitars, bass, violin, mandolin, banjo, sitar, and other found instruments simultaneously create melodic lines that weave around the vocal melodies sung by Press, whose tonal purity belies the musical power that sits just below the surface of every word. From: https://thomascrone.substack.com/p/silver-tray-qa-sean-garcia-of-spinning?utm_source=%2Fbrowse%2Fmusic&utm_medium=reader2
