User:Robdisner/Jeffrey Dean Foster

Singer, guitarist and songwriter Jeffrey Dean Foster's musical career dates back to the mid-Eighties, when he co-founded The Right Profile, a Winston-Salem-based quartet that played high-energy, rootsy rock and roll. Foster also piloted an early-Nineties group called The Carneys which included Andy York, who now plays with John Mellencamp.

Foster's next band, The Pinetops, released one album called Above Ground and Vertical. It contained the song "I'm So Lonesome I Could Fly," which has been covered by Marti Jones and others. After the Pinetops' demise, he cut a raw, quasi-live solo EP called The Leaves Turn Upside Down. Foster would spend the next five years working on Million Star Hotel, his first full-length debut as a solo artist.

Members of Foster's old group, the Pinetops, and his current band, the Birds of Prey, contributed to Million Star Hotel. Noted musician-producer Mitch Easter, known for his work with Let's Active and R.E.M., stepped in toward the end of the project to mix the album and add a few guitar parts.