Product Description

A blues star quickly crossing over to a larger audience. Multiple Blues Music Award-winner delivers her finest album with the soulful intensity of STRONGER FOR IT, her first release to feature her striking original songs.

Review

“Her songs run the gamut of emotions from sorrow to joy. A master of the lowdown blues who is equally at ease surrounded by funk or soul sounds, Magness invigorates every song with a brutal honesty,” —
Chicago Sun-Times

“Magness is a blues star,” —
USA Today

“Magness sings superbly, with a scorching intensity.” —
The Philadelphia Inquirer

“One of the most fiery and original vocalists in contemporary blues and soul…Thoughtful, inventive and almost unerringly on the money.” —
MOJO

“a blues interpreter of the highest rank…punchy and tough…swaggering, incendiary vocal performances.” —
Blues Revue

From the Artist

“Every human being goes through times of huge upheaval and personal transition,” Magness says. “I think everyone can relate.”
Of her songwriting, Magness says, “Writing songs for me is laying out my experiences for everyone to see. It's another level of vulnerability.”
According to Magness, the ultimate message of the album is clear: “You can get through just about anything and come out better because of it. The title says it all.”

About the Artist

Magness is among the premier blues and R&B singers in the world today. Her voice possesses an earthy, raw honesty born from her life experience. She received the coveted
2009 Blues Music Award for B.B. King Entertainer of the Year (only the second woman to ever win this award, Koko Taylor being the first). She also won Contemporary Blues Female Artist of the Year, an honor she also received in 2006 and 2007. She has received a total of seventeen Blues Music Award nominations, including one for 2012's Contemporary Blues Female Artist of the Year.
Magness' fame has been hard won. Born in Detroit, Magness was inspired by the blues she heard listening to her father's record collection. By her teenage years, though, her life was in chaos. She lost both parents to suicide by the age of 16 and lived on the streets. At 17, she became a teenage mother who had to give up her baby daughter for adoption. One night in Minneapolis, an underage Magness sneaked into a club to see blues great Otis Rush, and it was there that she found her salvation. Magness recalls, “Otis played as if his life depended on it.” She began going to as many blues shows as possible, including Johnny Copeland and Albert Collins. She immersed herself in records by James Brown, Aretha Franklin, Etta James and all the other R&B greats.
Watching these artists live and listening to their recordings sparked Janiva and gave her life new direction. Her first break came several years later in St. Paul, Minnesota. Her boss approached her to sing some supporting vocals on a track. Finding her voice, she began working regularly as a background singer. By the early 1980s, Magness made her way to Phoenix and befriended Bob Tate, Sam Cooke's musical director. With Tate's mentoring, she formed her first band, Janiva Magness And The Mojomatics, in 1985 and soon after the influential Phoenix New Times named her group the city's Best Blues Band. She moved to Los Angeles in 1986. She recorded her second studio album, It Takes One To Know One, in 1997 (her debut was the cassette-only release, More Than Live). After three more independent releases, Janiva signed with Northern Blues and recorded Bury Him At The Crossroads in 2004 and Do I Move You? in 2006. Both CDs were co-produced by Magness and Colin Linden, and garnered Magness a tremendous amount of critical and popular attention. Magness and Linden won the prestigious Canadian Maple Blues Award for Producers of the Year for Bury Him At The Crossroads.
Magness signed with Alligator in 2008 and released her stunning label debut, What Love Will Do, to massive critical acclaim. Fueled by the positive press, NPR'