Semi-Finalists from around the world have been announced for the 2021 International Songwriting Competition. Out of more than 21,000 entries worldwide, Jenny Lou Drew’s song, Mending Fences (Americana), was announced alongside roughly 2300 entries selected as Semi-Finalists Friday.
The Maine singer and guitarist has been etching out a living performing at resorts and restaurants along the rocky coast of Maine for years. Drew, who is self-taught, plays entirely by ear. She started out having to memorize her own songs as a child before she learned to write the alphabet.
ISC has the most prestigious panel of judges of all the songwriting and music contests in the world. If Drew’s song makes it to the next level, it will be reviewed by ISC’s 2021 judging panel of music legends. Judges for the 2021 International Songwriting Competition include Tom Waits, Nancy Wilson, Hozier, Sara Evans, Coldplay, George Thorogood, Jeremiah Fraites (The Lumineers), and many more.
Drew joins the likes of past International Songwriting Competition Semi-Finalists including Tones and I, R.LUM.R, Illenium, Vance Joy, Gotye, Bastille, Kehlani, The Band Perry, Kimbra, Passenger, Kasey Chambers, Lindsey Stirling, Kate Miller-Heidke, Gregory Porter, King Charles, Gin Wigmore, Andrew Bird, for King & Country, and more.
This year marks Drew’s fifth placement in the Semi-Finals of the ISC. A song of Drew’s has reached this level for every year she has submitted to the competition. in 2015 and 2018, her song, Strangelove, reached the Semi-Finals, and in 2019 Mending Fences was announced as a Semi-Finalist. In 2020 another song off of the album Rockbiter, American Beauty, made the first cut. For 2021, Mending Fences, a song that also won song of the year at the Maine Songwriters Association Annual Songwriting Contest in 2019, makes the Semi-Finals of the global competition for the second time.
Drew records at home with her husband, Scottie “Sugarbear” Morgan. Morgan, a master guitarist, picked up lap steel in 2015 for the making of the duo’s first album as a production team, Cornish Folk Songs. Currently at work in the studio on a record slated for release in 2022, Drew and Morgan have been restoring a 1969 travel trailer to take on the road to local shows and festivals. The pair plans to cover some ground throughout the Northeastern United States and Mexico this year.
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