Singer Jonell Mosser might be the Kevin Bacon of music. And you could meet her next.

Jonell Mosser’s career has been filled with contradictions.

Mosser, who will perform Friday at Traditions, has spent much of her career in the background, singing backup for a long list of famed musicians. As a lead singer, she’s hovered for years on the edge of national renown and has many famous fans. She’s a songwriter yet loves singing other people’s songs. And she lives and works in Nashville, but her love is for rock and soul.

In her Olympia performance, Mosser will sing jazz standards, Latin music and some of her own “rockin’ Americana” songs, accompanied by a band of well-regarded musicians from Nashville (Tom Britt, Vince Gill’s longtime guitarist, and drummer Joshua Hunt), the Northwest (saxophonist Jim Pribbenow and pianist Brian Ward) and Cuba (bassist Gastón Joya Perellada, who, Mosser says, “is more famous than I am, for sure”).

“I’m going to sing some stuff I never get to sing,” she said. “There’s something really good about singing those old songs. It’s like reading a good book again. It feeds you. It refreshes your mind.”

One thing that’s never wavered is her love for singing, alone and with others. In a recent phone interview, she broke into song frequently, peppering the conversation with beautiful bits of “Please Come Home for Christmas,” “Autumn in New York” and Hank Ballard and the Midnighters’ “Work With Me, Annie” and “Annie Had a Baby.”

“I love great songs,” she said. “There’s nothing better, honey, is there?”

The Kentucky native’s solo career has included four albums, some touring performances, and regular shows in Nashville that draw crowds.

“Everybody in Nashville comes out to see her sing, because everybody in Nashville knows what she’s about,” said Pribbenow of Olympia, who met Mosser when she moved to Nashville in 1985. “She’s a cross between Janis Joplin and Aretha Franklin. She sings with a tremendous amount of soul and a tremendous amount of honesty.”

In a 1994 Washington Post interview, musician and record producer Don Was called Mosser “one of the greatest singers in the world,” praising her “direct link from heart to larynx.” Was produced songs for Mosser and in the ’90s put her in a band that included guitarist Mark Goldenberg from Jackson Browne's band, keyboardist Benmont Tench from Tom Petty's Heartbreakers, and even Ringo Starr.

Starr is but one of Mosser’s famous connections. In fact, she might be the Kevin Bacon of the music business. She’s worked with Garth Brooks, Bruce Cockburn, A.J. Croce, Rodney Crowell, Vince Gill, Levon Helm, Etta James, Waylon Jennings, B.B. King, Kris Kristofferson, Sam Moore, Patty Smythe, Mavis Staples, Trisha Yearwood and Wynona.

Also among her brushes with fame are a performance at Farm Aid VI in 1993 and songs on the soundtracks of 1993’s “Look Who’s Talking Now,” 1995’s “Boys on the Side” and 1998’s “Hope Floats” (“Stop in the Name of Love”).

“Usually on a soundtrack, you only hear a snippet,” she said, “but all three of the soundtracks I’m on, they play almost the whole song.”

She continues to sing backup in between doing her own shows. “They’re different parts of the same meal,” she said.

She also shares the spotlight with fellow backup singers Etta Britt, Vickie Carrico and Sheila Lawrence in Kentucky Thunder.

“We’ve done this gig for years and years, where each one steps up to the mic, and it’s the most fun ever,” Mosser said. “The onus is only on you every fourth time, and the rest of the time you’re doing background vocals.

“It’s like playing a beautiful game of tennis or dancing. When it all sort of melds together, it’s as joyful as anything in the whole wide world.”

She also works with Freedom Sings, a program of the First Amendment Center that combines a lecture on the First Amendment with music that’s been banned or censored. She’s been doing those shows since 1999 or so. It’s morphed over the years and might be more relevant than ever given “all this stuff that’s happening with the current occupant of the White House.”

Of all those gigs, she said: “This is how you make a living in Nashville, honey. You’re in a thousand bands.”

At this point, balancing all of that comes naturally for Mosser. Just like singing.

This story was originally published September 5, 2017 at 9:03 PM with the headline "Singer Jonell Mosser might be the Kevin Bacon of music. And you could meet her next.."