Meet Jake Diorio and Jenny Markell

Today we’d like to introduce you to Jake Diorio and Jenny Markell.

Hi Jake and Jenny, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstories with our readers.
Jenny: We both grew up loving music and playing music. Jenny grew up singing from the time she could talk and Jake picked up guitar around 11 years old. Jake grew up in Pennsylvania listening to country music- from Cash to Garth, to Alan Jackson- Brooks and Dunn was his first concert! I, growing up south of Boston, wasn’t really introduced to country music until Kenny Chesney started coming to Gillette Stadium and had friends who really pulled her into the genre.

We had both fallen out of playing and performing until about 2018 when I found Jake on a Boston area musicians’ site and messaged him out of the blue to ask if he wanted to jam. We did, and we clicked and decided to give it a shot and see where we could go with it. Four years later, it’s safe to say it was worth the risk!

I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle free, but so far would you say the journey has been a fairly smooth road?
Jake: Well, everything has its challenges, but we really don’t have any particular end goals or expectations beyond having fun and entertaining people, and to that end, what obstacles can there really be besides getting in our own way of that by overcomplicating it or taking it too seriously.

Jenny: Agreed. You know there’s always the challenge of writing fresh music and keeping that going. But even that- we don’t have any constraints or expectations on us. We are always learning and growing and trying to get better- improving our performance skills and our musicality- but the truth is being independent artists, we have a lot of freedom to do what we want to, say no to what we don’t want, and make this whole journey what we want it to be.

Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
We have kind of taken the idea that Jake is from the country and Jenny is from (outside of) the city and tried to put the two worlds together. Melding that traditional country idea with a modern take on it. Our new single, Wine and Whiskey, recorded at Direct Image Studios in Nashville, hits that sound spot on. We took the idea of a drinking song- no deep lyrics, just something fun to jam out to and added a rock edge to it and what we got at the end of those recording sessions was exactly what we were hoping for in terms of sound. We’ve grown quite a bit in our time together to figure out where we wanted our sound to be, and while it’s always a work in progress, the city meets country sound is for sure where we want to land.

Besides, the sonic concept being a little unique, we think what sets us apart is that first, we are a guy/girl duo, even when we have a band with us- then it’s just an enhanced version of us, but we are a pair, all of the time. There are a lot of soloists out there, but we are committed to being a duo and there aren’t a lot of those around.

We are most proud of how we play every show to have equal importance. We’ve played in empty rooms and we’ve played in a small amphitheater and bars in between. It all has to have the same enthusiasm and we feel strongly that 10 people deserve our best performance just as much as 1,000 people do.

Risk-taking is a topic that people have widely differing views on – we’d love to hear your thoughts.
Jenny: Yeah, I think we have taken some risks. Throwing a lot of money into recording in a high-level Nashville recording studio with no guarantees about what the return on that investment would be was a risk. When you’re an independent artist, you’re fully self-funded (we have not crowd-funded to this point) and so taking your hard-earned money and pouring it into recording a couple of songs- I mean I think some of those close to us didn’t quite get it and thought we were crazy for spending that kind of money haha! But we saw it as an investment in ourselves and an educational experience, so for us, the return on that was really more about personal return than any sort of commercial success.

Jake: I believe in balancing the risk factor. Some things are super low risk, but it also becomes just the status quo. Then there’s the calculated risk, where you don’t know how it’s going to turn out but it seems like mostly a good opportunity so you go for it. And then there’s a major risk, where you are totally all in, not knowing what it could really gain you. There’s a place for all of it.

Jenny: Agree. I used to never be a risk taker. I was always a low or very calculated risk. Jake has definitely taught me to go outside of that comfort zone a bit. I think the recordings we did were very high risk- lots of money, with little chance of seeing a return on the money financially. But like I said, I don’t think we were expecting a different kind of return on investment like we got, so it really ended up being totally worth it.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.jakeandjennymusic.com
• Instagram: www.instagram.com/jakeandjennymusic
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/jakeandjennymusic
• Other: https://open.spotify.com/artist/4rfQSNFOzCni0XTG7tC20g?si=nXjU6pOHS–wC3Awjs0TGw

Image Credits
Leah Romig and Eric Lothrop