Bio: Joann Hamick Quintana

Origins

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Eclectic Singer-Songwriter, Midwest roots

Joann Hamick Quintana, daughter of a music-loving railroad engineer, grew up on the wrong side of the tracks in a small Illinois town. She loved an eclectic assortment of music, ranging from Hank Williams and Peggy Lee, to Bob Dylan, Otis Redding and Jefferson Airplane.

Joann grew up singing duets with her sister in a makeshift room off the kitchen that included a piano, ironing board, freezer, cat litter box, and washer/dryer. It was a working class upbringing in what later became a dying industrial town.

In her teens, she sang folk songs and took up guitar, thanks to a loaned instrument from her eighth-grade biology teacher, who encouraged Joann to participate in a school talent show.

Leaving home

For many years, Joann left music behind to focus on an education and earning a living. She dedicated herself to writing, learning, travel and surrounding herself with beauty and art – things that seemed in short supply where she grew up. And she moved west to California, then Seattle.

Back to music

Decades passed and Joann realized she needed music back in her life. After striking out with a clinically depressed guitar teacher — and a voice teacher who taught grunge singers to growl — Joann hit pay dirt with gifted Seattle guitar teacher Rob Hampton. There were bouts of performance anxiety and an embarrassing recital where she completely forgot a song. Things changed for the better when she wrote her first song at the age of 56 while standing at her kitchen stove making Brazilian black bean soup.

Discography

Joann wrote more songs, joined bands, then had her own band. In 2015 she released her first studio album of all-original music. “Sometimes A Sinner,” produced by roots music guru Michael Thomas Connolly and recorded at Seattle’s Empty Sea Studios.

Joann spent much of her life writing for other people. In songwriting, she writes for herself, pulling from a present and past rich with off-beat characters, irony and imagination, love and treachery.

More recently, Joann moved to an island north of Seattle, filled with musicians, writers and artists, and she began intensive study with voice coach Jana Szabo. In her second album of original songs, “Not Enough Sundays,” her early musical influences are on display, from the twinkling Americana humor of Hank Williams, to the sultry jazz of Peggy Lee, the poetry of Bob Dylan, the beats and grooves of Otis Redding, and the soaring rock-and-roll of Jefferson Airplane.