John Jennings (musician)

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John Jennings is an American musician: a guitarist, multi-instrumentalist, and music producer.

Among his producer work are 8 albums and four #1 singles by Mary Chapin Carpenter, as well as releases by Beausoleil, John Gorka, and Janis Ian. Jennings has played acoustic, electric, slide, lap, steel and baritone guitars, synthesizers, organ, piano and percussion, sung background vocals and/or produced albums for Carpenter, the Indigo Girls, the Rankin Family, Cheryl Wheeler, Iris Dement, George Jones, Robin & Linda Williams and Auldridge, Reid & Coleman, among many others. As a recording artist, he has five albums to his credit.

Raised in Virginia, New Mexico and Washington, D.C., Jennings grew up listening to everything from classical music and big-band swing to country music and rock & roll. Although he took piano and trumpet lessons as a youngster, he steered towards the guitar after hearing the Beatles. His performing debut came with a rock band in the sixth grade, and he continued to perform in the 1970s with Bill Holland & Rent's Due and Big Yankee Dollar, a group that mostly played his original songs.

While he concentrated on writing advertising jingles in the early 1980s, Jennings' musical career took off after Bill Danoff (of the Starland Vocal Band) introduced him to Mary-Chapin Carpenter. Performing together in the Washington, D.C. area, Jennings and Carpenter began to garner attention. An album recorded to be sold at their shows was reissued by Columbia Records as Carpenter's 1987 debut album, Hometown Girl.

He has been nominated for several Grammy awards, and has won more than a dozen Wammie (Washington Area Music Association) awards over the last 20 years.