It was important even before Jennifer Terran recorded her first album, "Cruel", a record that delved deeply into dynamics of family history and the ramifications of her mother's early death. It showed up in her passion on the second record, "Rabbit," which focused on her more playful and experimental side.

Never has the concept of commitment seemed more unrelenting than it does on Terran's newest recording. As she's proud to announce on both the album and in releases promoting it, Terran wrote, produced, engineered, mixed and even mastered the entire recording herself. It took a full three years to complete from the point of conception throught the final mastering - a skill she learned just for this record.

In actuality, it has taken even longer. As, in a whole lifefime.

The CD is called, simply, "The Musician." The concept album succeeds, perhaps more directly than any record ever released independently in Santa Barbara, in examining what it is to be a musician, and what it means to make music for public consumption.

"It's about the psyche of the musician," Terran says directly, sitting on the balcony of her Riviera apartment, husband and fellow musician Brendan Statom (the bassist, a founding member of the Transylvanian Mountain Boy, plays in the Santa Barbara Civic Light Opera) at her side. "It's about being an artist. Creating something. The world you have to fit into or not fir into. Being received or not. Everything."

The album's 13 songs take the listener on a journey from Terran's earliest experiences with music in the family home ("The den was filled with fold out chairs and a little stage for me") to attempts to break out of the mold ("By the time you hear this recording I will have moved on") and avoiding the trappings of labels ("you're getting into something but you don't know what it is/ Does it have to have a name?") and finally, redemption of her dream ("i've traveled through miles of desert and it seems that's all there is... Grand Canyon... When I jump in commit my love / I can do anything.")

Not suprising, given the process of recording, a central theme of independence emerges throughout the record.

"Everything about this album is about being independent," she agrees. "It's about taking back your power, and not feeling that you have to be part of a structure to make music. The focal point was love not money. My philosophy is good business is put the heart first, and the rest will follow."

SOUNDING A SIMPLE CHORD
Terran tackles head-on through her alter ego who literally kills a record industry executive for the good of the music. (She had a purpose in heart and a perminant part in the sickness of the music scene.)

"I'm challenging the idea that you have to be signed to make music," says Terran. "That's why I did everything myself, so I didn't have to rely on other people and was able to keep the music true and free."

As direct as "Magdaline" is, the true centerpiece of the album is "Sounding a Simple Chord." With characteristic directness and strikingly uncommon clarity, Terran delves into the motivation to create and the pain that arises when one strays from the path:"Why do I feel so old? / Where did I go? / I used to be moved to tears by the sound of a simple chord." By the end of the song, Terran is urging herself back on the track to "get up and start over again and again and again."

"This record is the turning point in my life as a musician," Terran says. "it's so incredibly more lucid than anything I've ever done. It's awake. It's developed. I'm more developed. I know how to say what I want more clearly... I talk about feelings that I believe other artists must also have. Personal is public. If I change my beliefs about the world and what I can do, then that makes its own wave in the larger community."

The musical community will be out in force for Terran's CD-release concerts at SOHO, set for successive Sundays, Oct.8 and 15, in order to accomodate more people. The musicians who played on "The Musician," inluding Statom, viloinsits Sally Barr and Laura Hextine, drummers Tom Lackner and Kyan Wnuck, cellist Misha Bodnar and Laura Mihalka, and Terran's dad, session trumpeter Tony Terran, will all be on hand. And in what may seem a curious and perhaps self absorbed move, Terran has asked several similarly minded singer/songwriters to open the show by covering material from her two previous albums. Terran says the idea came about when one of the singers earlier asked if she could do just that. Well known local artists Joe Woodard, Ellen Turner and Pat Milliken are amoung the nine performers who will offer their own readings of Terran's music. The composer herself is as much in the dark about how they will interpret her considerably personal songs.

"These are people I love and who have supported me through the years," Terran says. "I can't wait to check it out myself."

(For mor information about Jennifer Terran and "The Musician," check out her website at www.jenniferterran.com or call Grizelda Records at 805-564-3868)