Anyway Records recently shared that Columbus, Ohio, music icon Jenny Mae has passed away. This is what they said:
“We are sad to announce the passing of Jenny Mae (Leffel) who died on 8/25/2017 from complications due to alcoholism and a life that went harder and quicker than most. Jenny made two full length albums for Anyway in the 1990’s and many singles for a variety of labels across the USA and Europe. She was a sweet pop beacon on the North High Street scene during the salad days of the Columbus music scene making a contrast to the punk and lo-fi sounds emanating from her peers Gaunt, The New Bomb Turks and Thomas Jefferson Slave Apartments. Her first band, Vibralux made a few singles and broke up and in that band’s wake she re-grouped and made her debut LP, “There’s a Bar Around the Corner…Assholes” with musicians culled from those aforementioned bands. Unlike their raging sounds, Jenny’s music was pure pop with sad underpinnings, SPIN magazine called her “the best Dewar’s bohemian songwriter in America” and “There’s a Bar…” received an “A-“ in Entertainment Weekly. A tour of the south with the Palace Brothers followed the release. Several singles were also released during this period, one a split with Guided by Voices and Bob Pollard once referred to Jenny as one of the finest songwriters he had ever met.
Her sophomore release, ‘Don’t Wait Up For Me” was more polished and brought Jenny more success, as she played east coast and Midwest dates with Cat Power, Chris Knox, Scrawl and Neko Case. The album garnered more positive press and ended up on many year-end lists. As Jenny was preparing to record her third record, she moved to Miami where her life unraveled in small degrees that culminated in a series of hospitalizations due to her Bi-Polar disorder. By 2005 she was back in Columbus following the death of her companion, and within a few months she experienced several stints of long term homelessness and hospitalizations.
Jenny touched the lives of everybody she met not just because of her music but also with her quick wit and ability to tell fascinating stories that she would sometimes fill notebooks with and then discard in a fit of mania. Her impact on other musicians was profound, Beth Murphy from Times New Viking  recently tweeted that “we lost the best musician” and as she remained largely a cult figure among other artists it was the people who came into contact with her that were struck by her captivating personality. She was akin to a moving earthquake, she will be greatly missed.”