Kara Jackson is a singer-songwriter and a poet, whose direct, intimate songs balance their lyrical weight against a thread of inventiveness and musical spontaneity at their core. She plays in the folk style primarily, with arrangements that tend to be sparse, often involving muted instrumentation led by a guitar or a piano, and a keen focus on her voice. Her pieces vary in length between roughly a minute plus quick bits and six, seven minute tomes. She likes to defy song conventions in the way she takes sharp midstream turns and shifts that give her tunes an extra nudge. There is an overt Laurel Canyon/Joni Mitchell type imprint in quite a few of her songs though it is also possible to catch her tipping her hat to the classic '40s style bluesy ballads as well.