There are artists who enter music because they need to express themselves or simply enjoy performing. And then there are artists who make music because it's part of their being, an inner force that manifests itself in a sense of purpose, a mission, a need to communicate thoughts and ideas and to impart a positive energy upon their listeners. Jen Foster hails enthusiastically from the latter school. On her melodically rich and exuberantly rocking debut effort, "Everybody's Girl," the award-winning singer, songwriter and guitarist displays a spirit that's both timeless and up-to-date. She belts and purrs, attacks and wails these dozen songs with the k ind of conviction found in the classic rock music she was exposed to even before she considered making music her personal path. That said, however, Foster notes that "I always felt this was my calling. This was just something I knew from the time I first started that it was what I wanted to do with my life." That first inkling came as she grew up in Texas, where her two older brothers played guitar, had their own bands and indoctrinated her into music. "They listened to a lot of stuff that was before my time -- the (Rolling) Stones, (Led) Zeppelin, the Beatles," Foster recalls. "I learned about that through them." They also kindled in her a desire to perform, and Foster began lighting up the stages at school talent shows and contests. "I started playing at school, and everybody loved it," she says. "I got off on the rush and kept doing it. For a teenager, the attention was kind of what it's all about." And being on stage has not lost its allure for Foster, whose calling card is as a dynamic performer with a crack band pumping behind her. "The best part of this for me is still playing live," she says, "connecting with an audience and feeling like you moved them, even for a minute." Indeed, since the release of "Everybody's Girl," Foster has toured the U.S. from coast-to-coast, performing over 80 shows in recent months. She's headlined, opened for such diverse acts as Sophie B. Hawkins, Crash Test Dummies, Lisa Loeb, John Mayer and more. She's performed at South By Southwest, made her New York and Los Angeles debuts, and has seen her audiences grow. Foster continues to build her fan base the old-fashioned way...on the road. "It's really the only way for a new artist to spread the word. I happen to love touring...so this has been great." After graduating from her small Catholic girls' school. Foster attended Whittier College in Los Angeles, where she majored in English and minored in music. Her real education, however, was in the clubs and coffee houses, where Foster performed with a band she had put together and schooled herself on both performing and the business. Jen moved around a bit, switching locales as she continued to nurture her ambitions. She began recording demos and playing small gigs, while keeping the bills paid by waitressing and working private affairs for a catering company. She worked for a time with George Marinelli (Bonnie Raitt, Bruce Hornsby), who introduced Foster to guitarist Danny Torroll, with whom she made an instant creative click. Foster's team was further bolstered when she met manager Sandra Flach, who in turn brought "Everybody's Girl" producer Glenn Rosenstein into the mix. About this time Foster laid down the song "She," an earnest love song which put her on the map as a finalist in the Pop division of the John Lennon songwriting contest and a First Prize recipient in the Great American Songwriting contest's Pop division. "I wasn't sure how open to a song like that people would be," Foster notes. "I guess the honesty of it just came through." And that frankness -- heartfelt and forthright, but never cloying -- is, in fact, the hallmark of Foster's songwriting. "I wanted to write a song that did not have an agenda, that was about the thing itself -- the relationship -- and how love transcends labels," explains Foster, whose empathic skills were already evident as a teenager, when she served as a peer counselor at her high school. "My agenda is not to change people. I do want to affect them, though, and I think you have less of a chance of doing that when you preach to them. I like the subtle approach that's personal. I want to involve people, not isolate them." That philosophy is displayed throughout "Everybody's Girl," which takes events and lessons from Foster's own experience and transcribes them into universal sentiments. The title track, for instance, hearkens back to what Foster calls "the wounds of my past...and how those were driving me to want to be everybody's girl, kind of everything to everybody." Tracks such as "Superwoman," "Water in Your Hands" and "The One Who Got Away" are more incisive examinations of relationships, while "Seize the Moment" champions the benefits of doing just what the title says. And who can't relate to the sentiment expressed in the title -- and the lyrics -- of "I Just Wanna Be Happy?" The public embrace became clear in the months following the album's release, as a wave of favorable press coverage took Jen Foster from 'unknown' to 'center-stage.' She'd made the connection. Then there's "In Between Poses," Foster's personal favorite on "Everybody's Girl" and an emotional lynch pin for the entire album. "It was actually the last thing I wrote for the record," Foster says. "I was thinking about being in this business where you've got to think about image and looking good and how you present yourself. And it occurred to me that it's when we're in-between poses we're at our best. That's when we're the most beautiful and the most honest." This very personal song ultimately made its way to mainstream America, when Starbucks added the track to its in-store playlists in late-2003. The intimate approach may be heady terrain, but Foster trods it with the guitars plugged in and the amplifiers turned up. "Everybody's Girl" likes to rock, as Foster and company do on the first single, "Used Black Cars." The track showed surprising strength at AAA Radio, debuting as the Third Most Added track in its first official week of release, trailing only Dave Matthews and Lyle Lovett. There's also a pair of songs -- "Seize the Moment" and "Ready To Go" -- which Foster co-wrote with veteran rocker Randy Bachman of the Guess Who and Bachman-Turner Overdrive. "I went up to his studio (in Winnipeg), and it was great," says Foster, who met Bachman through a mutual acquaintance. "My favorite part of it was listening to his stories -- he's got so many -- but I learned so much from working with him, too. " "Everybody's Girl," in fact, is the product of a life spent learning good lessons and turning them into charged and captivating music. Foster arrived in the record racks as a fully formed talent driven by potent creative ambitions. Her music was quickly embraced by a broad range of critics, who responded to her no-frills approach and direct, honest lyrics. Media interest has been seen in all corners of the U.S., with early reviews describing Foster's music as "Captivating" "Impressive" and "Consistently Engaging". Recent press has compared "Rising Star" Foster to Sheryl Crow, Joan Osbourne, Bonnie Raitt and others. "I want to be seen as a great songwriter," Foster declares. "I don't think I'm there yet, but this is something I'm in for the long haul. I want to be doing this for a long time, and I want my career to grow and get bigger and bigger. This is what I love to do, and I want to be good at it." With the response Jen Foster has generated in her first few months in the public eye, all signs point to a promising road ahead.