Jane Wade

I was born in 1957 in a 'Category D' coal mining village in County Durham, England. Although it was a backwater, in my early life I was surrounded by music, books and 'pitmatic' socialist politics. I began singing, playing instruments and acting very young age. In the late 1970s punk allowed me to learn my trade in public through participation in a series of bands.

I was frustrated by people's perception (especially male musos) of the 'female singer' role, and I was fuelled by a growing desire to write songs that expressed something of my feminism and related political beliefs. I formed Jazawaki with some like-minded friends in the early 1980s, and for the remainder of the decade we toured extensively at home and abroad, getting a lot of radio play and TV as we went along. I also worked with Big G, The Posh Monkeys and, in the late 1980s, an embryonic version of The Questionnaires.

In the late 1980s I moved back into theatre, working with Live Theatre, Living Memory and Northern Stage in Newcastle upon Tyne, UK as actor and musical director. I have had leading roles in musicals such as 'Cabaret', 'Oh What A Lovely War', 'Lenya', 'Threepenny Opera', and, quite recently, 'Tom and Catherine', the music for which was written by Tina Turner's guitar player John Miles. Somehow I got a reputation for being one of the North of England's premier interpreters of the songs of Kurt Weill. I arranged the music for BBC radio 4's award-winning series 'My Uncle Freddie'.

I took up teaching vocal technique and singing to keep the wolf from the door and feed the bairns, as well as hopefully enthusing a younger generation to discover the possibilities of music. I have no interest in celebrity, but I have always had a physical need to sing and play music of many different kinds; I can't remember a time when I didn't, and I have been lucky enough to work with the North's finest in all styles - Indie, pop, jazz, classical and theatre.

Talking about the North's finest, The Questionnaires were re-born when I bumped into Steve Hall a couple of years ago, my musical partner-in-crime during the band's brief life in the late 1980s (more details on the 'people' page on www.thequestionnaires.com ). Steve has a huge reputation in Newcastle for his musical skills - guitar, piano, songwriting and arranging. During his career with Newcastle's premier soul/jazz band of the 1980s, The Eastside Torpedoes, he trod the boards alongside the likes of Herbie Hancock, B.B. King, Stan Tracey and Ray Charles. We share a number of musical and political visions.

-Jane Wade

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