Jane Weaver is a singer, songwriter and guitarist

Acoustic guitar

An acoustic guitar is a guitar that uses only an acoustic sound board. The air in this cavity resonates with the vibrational modes of the string and at low frequencies, which depend on the size of the box, the chamber acts like a Helmholtz resonator, increasing or decreasing the volume of the sound...

 from Liverpool

Liverpool

Liverpool is a city and metropolitan borough of Merseyside, England, along the eastern side of the Mersey Estuary. It was founded as a borough in 1207 and was granted city status in 1880...

, England

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

. She runs the record label

Record label

In the music industry, a record label is a brand and a trademark associated with the marketing of music recordings and music videos. Most commonly, a record label is the company that manages such brands and trademarks, coordinates the production, manufacture, distribution, marketing and promotion,...

 Bird.

Background

Weaver has performed as part of the Britpop

Britpop

Britpop is a subgenre of alternative rock that originated in the United Kingdom. Britpop emerged from the British independent music scene of the early 1990s and was characterised by bands influenced by British guitar pop music of the 1960s and 1970s...

 group Kill Laura, the folktronica

Folktronica

Folktronica or electrofolk is a genre of music comprising various elements of folk music and electronica, often featuring samplings of acoustic instruments—especially stringed instruments—and incorporating hip hop rhythms...

 project Misty Dixon and as a solo artist.

Between 1993 and 1996 Kill Laura released five singles, two on Polydor and three on the Manchester Records label run by Rob Gretton

Rob Gretton

Rob Gretton was the manager of Joy Division and New Order. He was also a partner in Factory Records, proprietor of the Rob's Records label and a co-founder along with Tony Wilson of The Haçienda nightclub in Manchester, England. In 1977, Gretton became a leading figure in the Manchester punk...

. Her solo career began shortly after the demise of Kill Laura, and following a number of singles Weaver's first album, Like An Aspen Leaf, was released in 2002. It featured contributions from Andy Votel

Andy Votel

Andrew Shallcross, known by his stage name Andy Votel, is an electronic musician, DJ and record producer, co-founder of Twisted Nerve Records and the reissue label Finders Keepers Records...

, Dave Tyack

Dave Tyack

Dave Tyack who also recorded under Dakota Oak, was a founding artist on the Twisted Nerve Records label....

, Rick Tomlinson (Voice of the Seven Woods

Voice of the Seven Woods

Voice of the Seven Woods is the project of a Bolton based musician, Rick Tomlinson, who has released several 7" EPs and self-released CD-Rs. The band is most commonly associated with the Manchester alternative music scene, and is regularly associated with the B-Music collective; a Manchester...

), Sam Yates, Naomi Hart and two members of Elbow

Elbow (band)

Elbow are an English rock band. They have played together since 1990 and recorded five studio albums, the most recent of which is Build a Rocket Boys!, released in March 2011...

, Craig Potter and Richard Jupp. Since then, she has released three more albums. Seven Day Smile (2006) was a collection of home recordings that featured the band Doves on its title track. The NME review of Cherlokalate (2007) declared that “Jane Weaver is the sound of Cat Power

Cat Power

Charlyn Marie Marshall , also known as Chan Marshall or by her stage name Cat Power, is an American singer/songwriter and occasional actress and model. Cat Power was originally the name of Marshall's first band, but has come to refer to her musical projects with various backing bands...

 if she’d grown up next door to Oasis

Oasis (band)

Oasis were an English rock band formed in Manchester in 1991. Originally known as The Rain, the group was formed by Liam Gallagher , Paul "Bonehead" Arthurs , Paul "Guigsy" McGuigan and Tony McCarroll , who were soon joined by Liam's older brother Noel Gallagher...

, stealing their Beatles records and outshining them at the school Christmas concert”. Fallen By Watchbird was released in 2010. The Guardian wrote “Psych folk is back. It may have died out with the hippies in the 1970s, but now it has merged with folktronica, and the result here is not as twee and pretentious as one might fear… Weaver's fragile, unworldly voice is carefully balanced against more muscular backing”. The album also received a four (out of five) star review in Mojo

Mojo (magazine)

MOJO is a popular music magazine published initially by Emap, and since January 2008 by Bauer, monthly in the United Kingdom. Following the success of the magazine Q, publishers Emap were looking for a title which would cater for the burgeoning interest in classic rock music...

.

Weaver formed Misty Dixon in 2002, and the band released one album, Iced To Mode (2003).

Bird Records is an offshoot of Twisted Nerve Records

Twisted Nerve Records

Twisted Nerve Records is a Manchester, England-based record label. It is most well known for being the home of the singer-songwriter Badly Drawn Boy, who co-founded the label with Andy Votel.-Musical artists:...

 and is run by Weaver. It was founded in 2002 and mainly releases recordings by contemporary female folk

Folk music

Folk music is an English term encompassing both traditional folk music and contemporary folk music. The term originated in the 19th century. Traditional folk music has been defined in several ways: as music transmitted by mouth, as music of the lower classes, and as music with unknown composers....

 artists. Most notably, Bird has released the 2007 compilation album

Compilation album

A compilation album is an album featuring tracks from one or more performers, often culled from a variety of sources The tracks are usually collected according to a common characteristic, such as popularity, genre, source or subject matter...

 Bearded Ladies (jointly with the Finders Keepers reissue

Reissue

A reissue is the repeated issue of a published work. In common usage, it refers to an album which has been released at least once before and is released again, sometimes with alterations or additions....

 label). The album brought together both contemporary and vintage psych folk

Psych folk

Psychedelic folk or psych folk is a loosely defined form of psychedelic music that originated in the 1960s through the fusion of folk music and psychedelic rock...

 female singers such as Brigitte Fontaine

Brigitte Fontaine

Brigitte Fontaine, born in 1939 in Morlaix in the Brittany region of France, is a singer of avant-garde music. During the course of her career she has employed numerous unusual musical styles, melding rock and roll, folk, jazz, electronica, spoken word poetry and world rhythms...

, Bonnie Dobson

Bonnie Dobson

Bonnie Dobson is a Canadian folk music songwriter, singer, and guitarist, most known in the 1960s for composing the songs "I'm Your Woman" and "Morning Dew"...

, Susan Christie

Susan Christie

Susan Christie is an American singer-songwriter from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She had a minor hit with the novelty song "I Love Onions"...

 and Cate Le Bon

Cate Le Bon

Cate Le Bon is a singer-songwriter from Penboyr, Wales and now based in Cardiff, Wales, who sings in both English and Welsh.She first gained public attention when she supported Gruff Rhys on his 2007 solo UK tour. She has since played Glastonbury, Latitude and the Green Man Festival...

. The album has spawned a club night at the Dulcimer bar in Chorlton-cum-Hardy

Chorlton-cum-Hardy

Chorlton-cum-Hardy is a suburban area of the city of Manchester, England. It is known locally as Chorlton. It is situated about four miles southwest of Manchester city centre. Pronunciation varies: and are both common....

, Manchester

Manchester

Manchester is a city and metropolitan borough in Greater Manchester, England. According to the Office for National Statistics, the 2010 mid-year population estimate for Manchester was 498,800. Manchester lies within one of the UK's largest metropolitan areas, the metropolitan county of Greater...

.

Weaver appears on the cover artwork of the 2002 Badly Drawn Boy

Badly Drawn Boy

Damon Gough is an English alternative music singer/songwriter. He was born on 2 October 1969, in Dunstable, Bedfordshire. He grew up in the Breightmet area of Bolton, Lancashire, England....

 album, Have You Fed the Fish?

Have You Fed the Fish?

Have You Fed the Fish? is an album released by Badly Drawn Boy in 2002. The album's title originates from the question which Gough asks his daughter each day "to the point where it got to sound like one of those words you say too many times and it sounds silly."Also included with the album's...

.

Albums

• Like An Aspen Leaf (mini album) (2002)
• Seven Day Smile (2006)
• Cherlokalate (2007)
• The Fallen By Watchbird (2010)