en Shankman is a young, very talented independent musician originally from Westchester (she currently resides in the West Village) who, for the last four years, has been regularly performing in the City and in other places in the East Coast, such as Washington, D.C., Boston, and Maine, where she regularly performs her original, unique music.

Once she finished school, she came to New York. For the first couple of years, she took a full-time job, and basically didn't do music. "That job basically made me realize that wasn't what I wanted to be doing", she said as she giggled."A friend booked my first show in Manhattan - He called me up and said 'you're opening for me tonight' and I did , and it was great." A few months later, she began playing regular gigs at The Bitter End.

Jen made it very clear that her family has always been supportive of her music -something rare when children of traditional families make the decision of becoming artists, "My dad is all for going after my dreams", she told me, "he comes to every show at the Bitter End - they follow me all over the place. My parents are really great about it. They know it's not always going to be successes, but that sometimes it's going to be slow. They're still supportive of all of it.

We asked her when she'd realized that she was going to really take the plunge into playing professionally. She said that there was never really a realization of that, but just the will to keep trying to make a career out of her music, in addition to the other things she does. "If it pans out, it pans out", she stated. "If it doesn't, I just keep doing what I'm doing. I've certainly struggled with it, spent a lot of energy thinking about it - but if you keep thinking too much about it, you make yourself crazy, which makes you lose sight of why you're doing this in the first place."

"When you're doing the independent thing, you have to be a businessperson too. You can't just be a musician, dealing just with the creative side. You have to be both sides of the thing - which I'm still figuring out, whether I can do it or not."

As for being an independent musician, that is not really an option, but she has yet to submit her work to large labels. She is not one of these performers who just have to be independent as not to "compromise" their work, such as Ani Di Franco, who remained independent for many years during her career. "It's a lot of work - there's so much you really have to be, or you have to have a good team behind you, whether they're friends or family - people who have supported you early on."

Being independent was not a "conscious choice", says Jen. "I knew early on that my kind of music might not be marketable - especially with what there's out there now. I also hear stories about people who go to major labels and get run around in there and eventually lose their deals anyway. Why should I waste all that time when I can be on the road, playing gigs around the country, making and selling my own CDs."

"I think the ideal situation would be to find an independent label with the financial backing and a big enough team that's can help me out with the distribution and promotion where I can still keep some of that myself and not compromise everything else that I do."

In the meantime, she is distributing her CDs online and hitting the road playing college concerts and clubs in Boston, upstate New York, Massachusetts and other places. She is currently planning to play in California - "the West Coast will be the next thing."

Although she usually plays solo, the upcoming concert at The Bitter End will be a band show - "the guys who are playing with me are amazing!",

In the beginning, she used to take the band to the college concerts, but after a while it became difficult to always have a band, and for various other reasons, she began doing solo performances.

The fact that she has been playing solo has contributed for her skills. "After a year playing with the band - only with the band - I started hiding behind them, and so when I started to play solo again, which was back in April, it got kind of scary. I've slowly been getting comfortable with the songs in a solo setting again."

"I'm more honest when I play alone", said Jen after I asked her about it. "because it's not as rehearsed - when I get up there, I have the room to slow down, to change something. With the band you don't have that, but you do have that energy because I feed off the people that are up there with me, and I think that the audience tends to do that too."

"It's nice to come out to a solo show, a mellow thing - and if you're into that kind of music, it's great."

Jen plays a lot outside New York City. After the interview, she was scheduled to play in Massachusetts, Boston and Upstate New York. We asked her how she felt about that. "It's nice to feel like you're building up a following in places more than just New York City. If I am going to shop something around to labels, it helps when you already have a grassroots following, because in case something goes wrong (if they drop me), I can't be any worse than I was before. "

"Also , there are certainly places in the northeast where they're more receptive to this kind of music. Not that New York isn't, but here there's so much going on, you're not always going to get people out to your shows, and in a lot of the places you're getting paid based on how many people you bring in - and you can't play every week and accomplish that."

She is currently working on her next CD, which she hopes to be a blend the folky style of her first album and the electricity of her second. "I participated in a song writing circle in July, and I met another songwriter there. "We started working together - we're doing three songs and after that we'll see what happens. "

Jen has not yet set a date for a release. "I want to take my time on the next one because I want it to be a combination of the things I liked on the first CD and the things I liked on the second CD, representing the things that I am writing now a little bit better."

We inquired Jen how her creative process works, and she told me that she mostly writes words and music at the same time. Now that she is beginning to collaborate with other writers, she joins them with a semi-finished idea of the song. "I try to bring my lyrics with a somewhat finished melody - almost in a finished state to people and then we work through it together(co-writers, musicians, etc.) - that's the best way that I do it. I haven't had much experience writing a song from scratch, but that's going to be the next thing."

In the majority of her gigs, Jen plays almost one hundred percent original songs. "I played a coffee house the other night and I played some covers, but when I play places like The Bitter End or colleges I play only original songs." When covers are played, she performs whatever she is in the mood to play, such as songs by Shawn Colvin, The Indigo Girls, Bruce Springsteen and others. "Just whatever songs hit me. "

Has she ever felt any kind of prejudice or sexist attitude due to the fact that she is a woman performer. She says that she never had any kind of problem, except when she went into music stores. In a recent occasion, she went guitar shopping with two male friends and she did not get the appropriate attention. But apart from that, she says she "gets a lot of support from people. "

Her feelings as a female performer are sometimes reflected in her songs. "One area where it comes out for me a lot is in my writing. Other than the relationship issues that I've written about, I think that a lot of times in my songs it just comes out like the way people see me or the way I see myself in all of this."

Upon looking at her, one wonders if her good looks have been an asset or a burden for her music. "What I think is (I guess I'm setting myself a million years back by saying this) most of the places I play, people are very respectful. They look past just this ( the looks) - and yes, they look at this, but I believe mostly they look past it."

"There are some places that I'll go in and I think 'you know what? If it gets them to listen and gets them to buy a CD, then so be it, and I guess you have to work with what you have (laughs). But I believe that people look and then they listen. People want to be touched by music, and get something out of it - maybe that's naïve of me, but I like to be positive about this."

Jen participated in the latest edition of V-Day at Madison Square Garden where she performed alongside various female celebrities to a sold-out crowd. She describes her participation in the event as by far the coolest experience of her life. "It was scary as hell! I mean, who gets to play at Madison Square Garden? "

Maybe it was a teenage dream come true? "Of course", she said. "But you usually work towards it so you're ready when you get there."

" It was kind of random, but it was great. It forced me to have a focus that I didn't think I had, and now that I'm capable of that I sort of started to carry myself a little differently. "

Jen was not star-struck by being performing in front of so many celebrities. "It was such an honor to participate in such a great event. My roommate came and she said 'Do you understand that Oprah was watching you play, and Brooke Shields was leaning forward in her chair watching you as well?' I said, 'No, I was looking at the two people on stage with me, focusing on what I was doing"

The interview ended by asking her where she mostly like playing at. "New York, by far", she says. "Because Boston is easier - people sit and listen, but here it is much harder, since there are so many singers and songwriters in town. "

"People are going to choose what they're going to do at night, and there is so much good music here. No matter what I'm doing, there's always someone else out there who's doing it better, different, worse, but it's all out there - which makes me more grateful that people do come out, they listen and it makes me want to work much harder when they come out and don't listen - it's a humbling experience but it's also great learning."

photos for this article by Ernest Barteldes