People often get the pronunciation of my last name wrong. It doesn’t really bother me, but just so you know it is pronounced ‘Sigh-deez‘. I first felt the pull of music when I was three. My mother would always turn on the radio while we ate dinner, and one day I surprised her by singing to her by heart one of the songs we had heard. She was pretty excited about that, so I immediately learned another. When I was four, my parents bought a piano, but it was my older sister that was supposed to get the lessons. Well! I wasn’t having any of that! So I would go to the piano after she was done practicing and pick out and play her songs. By the time I was four and a half, her teacher was convinced I needed lessons too — especially when it turned out I had “perfect pitch” (I can tell which note it is in the same way that most people can identify colors) Later on, I turned that into a way to make money, as songwriters used to need a written copy of their songs in order to copyright them. I would transcribe the songs of writers around me, and it turned it a kind of crash course in song-writing for me. I took piano lessons for 14 years and then studied piano and composition, exploring folk, classical, jazz, pop, rock and country at the University of Texas School of Music, where I graciously accepted my musical degree. When I was old enough to leave home, I learned to play the guitar too, mainly because they’re portable, and moved to New York City, and then to Austin, Texas. I fell in love with traveling, and out of that began touring with my music. Really, I haven’t yet decided which is in the service of the other. I’ve left footprints in almost every state in the U.S. by now, played in many unique and rewarding venues, and had a great time. The first time I crossed the Atlantic, I found out that venue owners and audiences in Europe and the UK are very receptive to original music. Most of the time, really, all I had to do was ask. I’ve played in some wonderful listening rooms, and met a lot of very friendly, music-loving people. I understand that many people don’t get the chance to do what they most desire in their lives. More often than not, people simply work in any job just to pay the bills. I am fortunate in that I live my life involved in my most desired thing in the world – music. From Leicester Bangs: "Singer-songwriter Jan Seides may well be based in Austin, but she’s a hardly a typical Texas troubadour. Though she tells it like it is, with an honest-to-goodness style that’s incredibly effective, she does so with a level of polished sophistication, which has led previous reviewers to describe her sound as Patty Griffin meets Broadway. Intrigued? I certainly was, and she doesn’t disappoint ..."