Jennifer Markey

Born to musical parents in Akron, Ohio, Jennifer (she/her) learned to harmonize at a young age and grew up addicted to Rogers & Hammerstein musicals. Her whole family would sing hymns for people in the local nursing home near her home in Elgin, Illinois. After moving to the Minneapolis area in 1982, her mom, the music director at her family’s church, was gifted a 12-string guitar (off of which Jennifer promptly took half the strings), and she learned the twelve easiest chords from the back of a beginner guitar handbook, enough to play some of the Monkees songs she so desperately wanted to play. She sang with friends occasionally, but did not feel the drive to practice and get better, so she put the guitar under her bed, where it remained for more than ten years.

In 1993, Jennifer began a 31-year career teaching preschool (infants through age 6). She played guitar regularly at school and performed holiday programs and talent shows at Towerlight, a preschool with a purposeful connection to its attached senior center. Jennifer enjoyed playing guitar and singing with children and seniors together; a memorable and life-changing experience.

Unexpected life changes in 2003 along with an unplanned turn at the mic (singing Patsy Cline’s “Walkin’ After Midnight”) at South Minneapolis’ dearly-departed Hexagon Bar on country music night yielded a reborn sense of urgency and passion for playing music. The launch of a lightning-fast country music schooling at age 31 involved listening to the AM country radio station out of St. Cloud, WVAL, writing down the song titles on a notepad in the car, then heading out to local record stores to find those songs on albums by Buck Owens, Faron Young, Kitty Wells, Loretta Lynn, Wanda Jackson, Carl Smith, Hank Snow and Hank Williams, listening, writing the lyrics down, then playing along.

In less than a year, she had learned over 100 songs and joined a country cover band that was playing weekly at the South Minneapolis Eagles Club. In 2005, Jennifer started writing her own country-influenced songs, was forming her first band, and playing gigs at Lee’s Liquor Lounge and the 331 Club. Her first album, “We’re All Going To Hell!” released in 2010 along with another that same year, “The Sparta Session,” with her new band, The Tennessee Snowpants.

Jennifer played with her band at most of the clubs in the Twin Cities, and sat in regularly with local favorites Trailer Trash, The Roe Family Singers and Ol’ Yeller. Beginning in 2011 through 2017, she hosted Honky-Tonk Fest, an annual country music-themed fundraiser at Grumpy’s Northeast benefitting the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, featuring performances from The Cactus Blossoms, Trailer Trash, Texan Leo Rondeau and Jennifer’s own band.

Next, Jennifer started from scratch with a new band, The Hillions in 2016 and released albums “Hibernator” in 2017 and “Ruminator” in 2022, featuring mostly original music.

Jennifer lives in the Northeast Minneapolis Arts District with her two fuzzy rescue dogs, Levi and Opal, and her cat Virgil. She loves cooking, making art, eating out with her daughter and grandson, making Instagram and YouTube content, watching her emotional support television show “The Walking Dead,” decorating her home with thrifted items and doing light DIY home renovations

Jennifer teaches Beginning and Intermediate guitar and ukulele as well Early Childhood piano and group classes.

Take lessons from Jennifer