A bit of homecoming for touring musician

By: JIM TRAGESER - Staff Writer | Wednesday, January 24, 2007 1:38 PM PST ∞

Those hoping to hear singer-songwriter Jana Losey on Saturday at Hot Java Cafe would do well to keep quiet about the cold spell we've been having here. A former San Diego resident, Losey moved back home to her native Lawrenceville, Pa., a year ago and is hoping to escape the winter's wrath with a return to her old stomping grounds.

"We knew we were going to be a little bit 'California sick' of the winter here," Losey said by phone of her and her writing/performing partner Melanie Peters and their impending West Coast minitour, which starts Saturday and then works its way up and down the coast for the next couple of months. "We knew we were going to do this, so thought why not go on tour for the winter? It just started to happen. We booked one or two dates, and then it just grew and grew and grew, and now we're up to 25 or 30 dates in seven weeks."

Losey grew up on the family's dairy farm in Lawrenceville, but said she was attracted to music from the get-go.

"I've always been a musician. I started taking piano lessons at about 8 at the coaxing of my grandmother. When I was in the fourth or fifth grade, I started playing saxophone, and picked up flute after that.

"I was a voice major in college, but picked up guitar a little bit because I could carry it with me."

It was while attending Ithaca College that she discovered an interest in theater, eventually joining the Pittsburgh-based Squonk Opera Co. It was while with Squonk that she began writing songs in a serious way.

"I did all the lyric writing and melody writing for them," she said. "I used to write songs as a little kid, but then I didn't write for a long time. I just studied classically and performed that way."

It was her involvement with Squonk that eventually led her to San Diego.

"We did lots of different shows all around Pennsylvania, and toured a lot. Ending up on Broadway was a bit of an accident ---- we were supposed to be off-Broadway, but the theater fell through and someone approached us. Broadway wasn't really ready for us ---- it was a bit too avant-garde."

After that show ended, Losey said she decided she was ready to try something else.

"I just sort of put it out there that I wanted to move. A friend got a job at the La Jolla Playhouse."

Losey followed her friend to San Diego and also got a job at the Playhouse in the summer of 2000.

"I worked wardrobe for the 'The Cosmonaut's Last Message to the Woman He Once Loved in the Former Soviety Union.' I worked at the La Jolla Playhouse another couple of years, went to massage school and was a massage therapist, and played all around San Diego with my own projects."

It was during her time in San Diego that Losey finally came into her own as a musician ---- but only after first walking away from it.

"I was fatigued beyond compare," she remembered. "I decided I was never going to do music again. I became a massage therapist."

But Losey said she needed music in her life, and so she started writing again.

"If I have to have a job that doesn't involve music, it doesn't make me feel very good even if it's doing good for others."

Meeting Peters also led to a renewed commitment to the music. The two began writing music together ("Melanie is an apparently endless supply of musical hooks") and performing as a duo. The musical partnership is so tight that when Losey moved back home to Pennsylvania last winter, Peters went with her.

They had begun recording Losey's debut CD, "Bittersweet," while in San Diego, and recently completed it in Pennsylvania. Now they're heading out on tour to promote both the CD and their careers.

"I'm glad we've made this our full-time thing, because I don't see any other way we could have gotten as far as we have as fast as we have.

"At this point, I know I'm in it for the long haul."