www.jennbostic.com

 

“Love me, hate me/Leave or take me/Just don’t make me change”

Born in Philadelphia, but raised in Waconia, Minnesota, a small town 30 miles west of Minneapolis, Jenn grew up singing with her family around the piano. Jenn went on to perform wherever she could, taking voice, piano and acting lessons, singing in choirs and school musicals. She would sit in with a local roots band, Traveled Ground, that consisted of teachers from her middle and high school, and once included her father on accordion.
She went east to attend the famed Berklee School of Music, where she honed her performance skills while studying music education, a field still vitally important to her.

“God must need another angel/Around the throne tonight,” she sings on “Jealous of the Angels,” a song on her second album, the follow-up to her promising debut, Keep Lookin for Love. “Your love lives on inside of me/And I will hold on tight.”

Jenn also writes ""Jealous of the Angels," was written for my dad. He passed away in a tragic car accident when I was ten years old. Music and songwriting became the only forms of therapy that truly allowed me to express my emotions. I have written multiple songs on this subject, but it wasn't until fourteen years after his death that we (cowriters Zach Runquist and Jimmy Fortune) created something that represented everything I felt. I remember saying that night that my one wish was to know that he was smiling down on me and that he was proud of me. That night I prayed. I prayed every night for two months that God would give me some sort of sign that my dad was smiling down on me. I didn't tell anyone what I was praying for, but I was believing God for a selfish answer. On Christmas Eve that year, my best friend in the world, who has been with me through everything, called me from Oregon at 7:15 in the morning to tell me about a dream she had had the night before. She said my dad was in her dream and said, "Please tell Jenn I'm so proud of her and that I'm at every one of her shows."

 

I share this story whenever I perform "Jealous of the Angels." It is a huge part of my testimony. As I began sharing it inspired others to tell me there stories. Soon I was receiving emails and facebook messages from strangers telling me their intimate stories about loss and how much my song had spoken to them. When we had written this song I thought this was a blessing for me to have some sort of closure with any uncertainty I might have had, but I started to realize and continued to everyday, that God is using this song to touch the hearts of those who have lost loved ones, to comfort them and to help them heal. I feel so blessed to be a part of it. The stories kept coming, I cannot count on two hands the amount of people who have come up to me in tears after a show telling them how much "Jealous of the Angels" touched them and exactly who it makes them think of. The stories have not only been an affirmation that God is at work through the song, but they are healing and comforting to me as well. This is what inspired my team and I to develop a weekly blog featuring one of these stories each week. The stories and comments continue to blow me away. I thank God everyday for the gifts He has given me, and am now trying to live up to responsibility I have with them.