She was mentored and encouraged in her music by her uncle, singer/songwriter Vic Chesnutt. As a teenager in the early to mid-'90s, while attending high school and then, for a year, the University of Georgia at Athens, she recorded her songs with Chesnutt producing. She moved to Oakland, CA, where she lived for a few years while her boyfriend, whom she later married, attended the San Francisco Art Institute. Then they returned to Athens, where she began performing in clubs. On February 22, 2005, WARM Electronic Recordings belatedly released Husk, a collection of her teenage recordings, and she began to perform more widely, touring the East Coast with Crooked Fingers in March 2005 and Europe as part of Chesnutt's band that spring. Her second, newly recorded, album, The Mezzanine, was released on January 24, 2006, and she spent the year touring the U.S. extensively. In February 2008, she toured Italy. Her third album, Outside Our Gates, was released September 9, 2008, ~ William Ruhlmann