Fusing folk, rock, and country, Jill Jack draws comparisons to such singers as Emmylou Harris, Sheryl Crow, Natalie Merchant, "and any other chick with a guitar," she says. Jill didn't begin her music career until she was in her 30s, throwing over a high-powered accounting job to do so. She skipped the model-yourself-on-others part of her career, and she doesn't bother with categories. Jill is the winner of 24 Detroit Music Awards, in three different genres, and she's made friends in faraway places. Says Belgium's Rootstime magazine: "Life is a battlefield, and this Michigan girl seems to have won the battle." Jill opened for Loretta Lynn at Meadowbrook in 2007 and appeared at the Ann Arbor Folk Festival the following year. Tonight she'll be bringing songs from her brand-new CD, "Songwriter Sessions," and honing them just in advance of what could be a breakthrough appeareance at the Folk Alliance conference in Memphis.