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Jo Anne Kurman

 is a twenty-first century troubadour, having been a professional singer and guitarist since she was sixteen years old. Her first music job was at Disneyland, playing one of their famous Hootenanny Nights with a folk group called the Fourmost. That same night they shared the bill with a skinny young singer named Hoyt Axton.

Jo Anne’s musical adventures range from playing in a bluegrass band in Montie Montana Jr.’s Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show in Jakarta, Indonesia, to singing backup for Iron Butterfly in the “20 Years After: Woodstock Reunion Concert.” Jo Anne was chosen by BMI in Los Angeles as one of the top upcoming country songwriters in 1995, and the songs she coauthored with Randy Pugh and Ron Guffnet charted in the top ten of the Top 100 Country Hits across Europe. She won Nashville’s Music Row Magazine’s Discovery Award for her CD Hometown Beauty Queen; performed as the opening act for Billy Preston, Sawyer Brown, and Lee Greenwood; and has sung on many radio and television commercials.

Jo Anne’s talents garnered a Silver Mike Award for Best Radio Commercial in which she sang lead vocals, and in 2007 she kicked off her record-producing career with Al Timss’s jazz CD Last Call. In 2008, she performed for former First Lady Nancy Reagan at a Fourth of July celebration, and she just completed a successful four-year run at the beautiful Montage Hotel in Laguna Beach, California, as a single act. She was the feature entertainer for former President Carter’s Habitat for Humanity in Los Angeles and has performed extensively in hotels and restaurants throughout the Los Angeles area.

Jo Anne’s inspiration for writing the title song from her Hometown Beauty Queen CD came from the combined experience of winning and surviving the titles of Miss Inglewood, Miss Los Angeles County, and Second Runner-up to Miss California the year she turned eighteen. Besides her album Hometown Beauty Queen, Jo Anne also has available for sale her CD 500 Miles, a tribute to some of the beloved folk music songwriters of the 60s and 70s, and her most recent CD, Countrified, a collection of favorite country songs that she wrote or cowrote with other songwriters.

Jo Anne graduated cum laude from Long Beach State University with a BA in Theater Arts; she cofounded the prestigious Burbage Theater in Hermosa Beach, California, where she acted and musical-directed a number of plays and was honored with a Drama-Logue Award for Most Outstanding Performance as the lead in the play Death of a Miner. Currently airing on TV is Jo Anne’s first commercial, where you’ll see her looking at color swatches in a Home Depot and painting a wall in her “home.”

Having written poetry for most of her life, Jo Anne is excited to announce the release of her first poetry book.

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Special thanks to:
Tim Mercer at TimMercerDesign.com for web design
Rachel Perlmutter at TheGreaterLAWoman.com for web pages photo wardrobe
LefterisPhoto.com for web pages photography
Elizabeth Stabholz, makeup artist, at for web pages and acting photos.

© 2009 Jo Anne Kurman