Marleigh Jones is a slim girl with red hair as fiery as her passion for music. Jones graduated high school in May 2014 and is following her dream of being a folk musician.
Her first album, "Jubal," was released in April 2014 through Noise Train, a music blog, under her solo project's name Streetparty in Liverpool.
Jones played shows throughout the summer after the release, but is now taking a break to work on her next album.
"I need to get another album out," Jones said. "I was going to tour during the summer, but nothing panned out. So next is the tour after this album is out."
Jones music career began five years ago when she started playing the guitar and performing.
Now Jones plays guitar, ukulele, banjo, bass, sings and writes her own music.
"It's folk music," Jones said. "It's acoustic, banjo-based."
The lyrics on Jones first album are very faith-based, she said, though she's recently written two love songs.
In addition to her solo project, Jones is also in a duo named Sand Moose with Logan Denham. Jones sings and Logan plays guitar.
"It all started in June," Logan said. "My mom was working on Amplify OA Youth, and that's where I met Marleigh. We started goofing off and from there, we found some websites with some stupid names on them, and we decided to start a band named Sand Moose."
Sand Moose is a reference from the television show "Parks and Recreation;" a sand moose is a camel.
"(Logan) sent me a picture of a camel with the caption sand moose and it was really funny at 2 a.m.," Jones said. "So we decided to call our band Sand Moose."
Jones and Logan are writing their first album together, with Jones writing most of the lyrics.
They said they look forward to begin recording in the upcoming week.
"It's interesting, because she has a special voice," Logan said. "The way she pronounces stuff doesn't always sound like what the lyrics actually are, so it's interesting trying to get melodies through to her, but I try. I do the majority of music stuff."
Logan's mother, Nia Denham, owns a music company called Amplify, which is how she got to know Jones and Logan.
"About three years ago, she was looking for gigs, trying to get started," Nia said. "She came to us and she actually did her first gig [with us] at Beef O'Brady's."
Jones said she has progressed in many ways since she started performing, from nervousness to stage presence.
"They were so bad," Jones said. "I remember I was playing a song and I was on a stool, and I was so nervous I slid off the stool and ended standing up. I didn't fall down, I didn't fall off the stool, but I don't know how I got there. I've gotten slightly better at using stools. It took me five years, but now I'm on it."
After establishing her own presence as a musician, Jones said her performances became more organic and more reflective of herself.
"I finally had to stop and say, 'I can do this differently, and not like other people, and I need to stop pretending to be other people,'" Jones said. "After I said that, everything progressively got weirder and more like me and easier. It's a whole lot of awkward and I tell some bad banjo jokes. I'm working on that being-charming-between-songs thing."
Jones said she has decided to not go to college because what she is doing now is what she wants to do.
"I don't want to spend a lot of money for people to tell me what I'm doing," Jones said.
Jones works as a nanny while she gets on her feet as a musician. Having performed at venues in the Auburn-Opelika area; Columbus, Georgia; Atlanta; and Birmingham.
She has her sights set on the Newport Folk Festival in Rhode Island
"Newport is where Bob Dylan first played his electric set, and other people I really look up to have played there, and even more modern people, because it's been around for 60 years," Jones said. "It looks really fun."
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