Judith Owen has cultivated an eclectic body of work as a vocalist and songwriter, resulting in albums tagged variously as singer/songwriter folk, adult alternative pop/rock, cabaret, and jazz. Her recording career opened with Emotions on a Postcard in 1996, after which key moments encompassed two duets shared with Richard Thompson and Julia Fordham on 2003’s 12 Arrows, evoking the classic 1970s singer/songwriter era on releases such as 2006’s Here and 2014’s Ebb & Flow, and exploring blues-tinged vocal influences stretching from Pearl Bailey to Peggy Lee on the spirited jazz set Come On & Get It issued in 2023.
London-born into a musical Welsh family, Owen grew up immersed in classical music, theater, and the arts, while her parents’ collection of jazz greats and Broadway musicals helped shape her vocal approach. She started composing songs in her teens and was launching a professional music path when she met actor, writer, and musician Harry Shearer; they wed in 1993, and she supplied vocals and keyboards to his 1994 album It Must Have Been Something I Said. Emotions on a Postcard, her debut solo effort, appeared on the Dog on the Bed imprint she founded herself in 1996.
Limited Edition, an adult-alternative collection originally tracked for producer and composer Glen Ballard’s Java Records before restructuring at parent company Capitol, arrived in 2000 and contained one Ballard co-write; both “Creatures of Habit” and “Get Into It” from that album appeared in the film Olive Juice. Her last Dog on the Bed release, the introspective, singer/songwriter-oriented 12 Arrows from 2003, featured a cover of Soundgarden’s “Black Hole Sun” plus duets with Julia Fordham (“That Scares Me”) and Richard Thompson (“Poseidon”). Owen also contributed to Thompson’s Mock Tudor, 1000 Years of Popular Music, and Old Kit Bag. She toured in support of k.d. lang, issued the Christmas in July EP in 2005, then moved to Courgette—the label she and Shearer launched that year—for a run of albums that began with 2006’s Here.
Blending adult contemporary pop, jazz, and theatrical ballads, Here contained covers of Survivor’s “Eye of the Tiger” and the Kinks’ “I Go to Sleep.” The similarly styled Happy This Way followed in 2007 and included collaborations with Thompson (“Nicholas Drake”), Ian Shaw (“Cool Life”), and Cassandra Wilson and Quantic (“Enough”). Owen sustained her broad stylistic range on 2008’s Mopping Up Karma before issuing The Beautiful Damage Collection in 2010. Courgette’s final Owen title, 2012’s Some Kind of Comfort, drew material from the darkly comic stage production Ruby Wax, Losing It.
A further duet with Fordham, their version of “White Christmas,” surfaced in 2013, after which Owen and Shearer inaugurated Twanky Records with Ebb & Flow, her tenth studio album, in 2014. Rooted in the 1970s singer/songwriter tradition, it included a cover of James Taylor’s “Hey Mister That’s Me up on the Jukebox.” In 2015, Owen and Shearer released the holiday EP Christmas Without Tears, featuring appearances by Fred Willard and Catherine O’Hara. A year later she delivered the piano-forward, stylistically diverse Somebody’s Child. The covers collection redisCOVERed appeared on Twanky in 2018, paying tribute to artists from the Beatles and Joni Mitchell to Wild Cherry and Drake.
Come On & Get It, her first jazz-focused album, arrived in 2022. Recorded in New Orleans with Nicholas Payton, drummer Jason Marsalis, saxophonist Donald Harrison, and others, it drew from the bluesier mid-century jazz influences of Dinah Washington, Pearl Bailey, and Peggy Lee. To promote the record, Owen performed with her band the Gentlemen Callers, including sold-out European shows, a residency at New York’s McKittrick Hotel, and an appearance at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival.
