After 20 years in the music industry, Lady Gang releases her debut, self-written, self-recorded album, “Full Throttle.” This album is appropriately titled because Lady Gang goes hard all the time. Lady Gang is a one-woman band fronted by Jen Korte of Jen Korte and the Loss and a 90s tribute band. She has devoted her life to music, but the hustle never allowed her to explore a side of herself that exploded during the pandemic when the art and music industry experienced a great pause from live events. Jen is a performer, and she thrives off the crowd’s energy; without it, she needed an outlet, and her egress became a recording and creating both audio and video content for this new album.
Full Throttle took two years to produce from concept to release. “I started recording demos in a GarageBand and then graduated to logic and just, you know, recorded an album,” says Jen. “For over a year, I’ve been trying to find a date to put it out.” Putting out an album during the pandemic was terrifying for some, with so many unknowns. And there is the ‘how-to release an album during a pandemic’ and ‘how-to promote an album when there is no tour.’
First, Jen made a brief video clip of almost every song on the album to share visually who she is as Lady Gang. Then she made full videos for every song. Lady Gang is not Jen Korte and the Loss, which is a blended Colorado-Texan-Americana-Romance induced act, even though they have the same visionary leader. Lady Gang is lyrically intriguing in the same way as The Loss, but it plays more on dream-pop.
Full Throttle is layered with ambient sounds and looping textures that weave in synth, harmonies, and unique percussion. Jen recorded the album in her home studio, teaching herself the production and editing process for both audio and video. Lady Gang highlights Jen’s theatrical side, in which she boasts her lifelong love of the theater. When watching the videos and seeing this pendulum swing within her music, Jen is genuinely embracing her authentic self. This self is happy with her life’s accomplishments. “People keep talking about, ‘Where’s your power? Where’s your voice? Like, where’s your power? Who are you as an artist? Are you using your power? And sometimes I feel like I don’t have any, and then I would post something silly, and I get so many people private messaging me like, ‘Hey, thanks or speaking to that,’” says Jen. “Or, ‘Hey, thanks for saying something about this or something about that.’ And I’m like, well, even if it’s my little fishbowl of people, I can still stand for something.”
And she does. She stands for a lifetime commitment to the craft — a soulful journey of never giving up. “There are many identities that I have that I feel like I can speak to, being gay, being biracial, all of those things that you wouldn’t know if you just looked at me,” says Jen. But you know it when she speaks. Jen sits in her studio pondering her journey, saying she used to write about heartache and heartbreak.
But now, she is with a loving, supportive partner, with a home in the city that she owns (after being gentrified from her last rental). She is cleaning Airbnb for income. It is a stable job, and it pays her bills. It frees her mind from worry, and she has more creative energy stirring to do meaningful projects.
“I’m just now to the point where I feel like I can have a seat at the table, and I have a voice, and I have a skill set, and I have something to offer. I think this last presidency just really pulled it out of me where I was like, ‘Oh, I have shit to say.”
Lately, Jen has been wrestling with identity, unearthing who she is as an artist. It is hard to tell the story with so many identities at play. One of Jen’s projects with Lady Gang that started last year was creating theme songs for people doing podcasts or needing music for videos (The Silver Lining has one). That developed into a world of interest in sync licensing.
Jen is a cohort in The Workout: Sync Licensing at The Music District in Fort Collins a nine-week program focused on music creation and collaboration for sync licensing. She hopes to create more jingles for commercials, films, and podcasts.
“I’m just very, very thankful. I just keep trying to practice abundance and gratitude and help people when I can and do things for other people,” says Jen. “Because the world is keeping me safe, and I’m trying to reciprocate.”
