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When I met Jodie Manross for our interview at the Tomato Head in Knoxville, Tennessee, recently, I was struck by her soft speaking demeanor and also by a maturity that belies her youthful appearance. I realized shortly into the interview that two things are most important in her life, social issues and music. Growing up in Pennsylvania, Jodie was raised by an activist family in a community where the welfare of others mattered. She has always been involved with and aware of social concerns. As a teenager she was active in SAF, Student Action for Farmworkers. Today as a musician, doing benefit concerts remains paramount to Jodie; she is always willing to perform on behalf of others.
Jodie's passion for music has been with her since childhood. As a youngster she would get her parents to take her to theme park auditions, even though she was too young to be hired. "I'd forge my age just to try out." All she wanted was to be on stage singing to an audience. Manross claims that in high school she was a nerd, hard to imagine, waiting eagerly through every class for it to be time for chorus. An introvert by nature, she says music brought her out.
After high school Jodie went to Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina, where she majored in anthropology and expected she would continue in a Master's program. However, the pull of music was too much, and so in 1996 she headed to Knoxville in pursuit of those goals. Her first job was as a social worker; the turmoil and stress of that position can be seen in the lyrics to some of her early songs such as "Waiting My Whole Life." While the job was keeping her in the thick of social activism and providing material for her music, she found it too draining to allow her to concentrate on her musical ambitions, so she exchanged that job for one in the Children's Room at Lawson McGhee Library. Although still working full time, she has the energy left over to do what she does best, write songs and sing them.
Manross's voice is an instrument whether she is singing a moving a cappella piece or belting out something more akin to Joplin's rock and roll. She studied piano from age eight through college, considered a major in opera, which she loves to sing, and began playing guitar in 1997. Perhaps the greatest source of pride for her, however, is her
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