Flanfire

Flanfire flew up to New England last week to check out the hometowns of T-Bird Crane and the queen of Momo’s, Princess Grace — and fell in love with both Northampton (MA) and Burlington (VT).  And why not?  Austin’s own (since a year ago, at least) Jess Klein played shows in both cities, opening her first tour with her new CD, Bound to Love.  Jess will be back at Momo’s on October 3rd to formally release the CD, produced by Mark Addison and Scrappy Jud Newcomb, that friends are saying is Jess’ best of the seven recordings she has released in her storied career.

Burlington is on Lake Champlain, which I hear ices over many winters, but which on this weekend had a thriving outdoor music scene highlighted by historic Church Street where restaurants open out into the closed old street and musicians perform up and down the six-block area as people chow down on a wide variety of delicacies and consume local Vermont beer (my favorite, Long Point Blackbeary).  I, however, stopped by The Skinny Pancake to get a Nutella and strawberry crepe (The Love Maker). 

Northampton, home of Smith College and just a few miles south of UMass Amherst, is another smallish city with lots of good restaurants and several music venues.  My man Tim (T-Bird) took me to the Haymarket for tea and some delightful food, and steered me to nearby Look Park where Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings and Grace Potter and the Nocturnals opened at an event celebrating the 10th anniversary of the funk band SouLive (those guys are good!).  Ms. Jones and her band put on quite a show (though I think several of Austin’s soul bands have better songs and more overall energy), but the highlight for me was the presence of the Waking Dream puppets.

JESS KLEIN – Bound To Love

There is something apparently magical about the Austin music scene that is attracting seasoned musicians to relocate here and find new energy, new hope for their futures.  In the past year alone Flanfire has had the great pleasure of getting to know such artists as Jackie Bristow, Jess Klein, and Ruby James (others, too) who have come to Austin to live and record new music.  Others (Alyse Black, Aly Tadros, and brand-new Austinite Barbara Nesbitt, for a few) made records elsewhere and then came to live in our fair city – certainly not because they love 100-degree weather all summer long.  Reviews will be coming soon for Ruby, Jackie, Barbara, and hopefully that pixie Jackie Daum (who came here to record with Billy Harvey, worked at Botticellis and rarely graced a stage but made a lot of friends before relocating to San Diego).

She has lived here for a year now, but few Austinites even know Jess Klein, despite the fact that she has six or seven (depends on how you count) prior CD’s, is a Telluride Troubadour Songwriting Contest winner, toured worldwide (Europe and Japan) with her first Rkyodisc release, Draw Them Near, performed her song “Little White Dove” on Good Morning America, and had her song Strawberry Lover  voted as one of the 10 sexiest songs of the year by the New York Daily News. 

The Rochester, New York, native has lived in Boston and New York City but came to Austin, she says, to “find a home where I could park myself between tours and feel inspired and supported. Living here and writing these songs uplifted me. Recording them was so much fun, and playing them live feels like a pure expression of my love for the world.”  Indeed, Jess’ new record, Bound To Love, is a pure expression of her gratefulness — and her courage to stand before sometimes rowdy audiences to pour her heart out, telling stories from deep within her own soul and sometimes her vivid imagination — all of which grip our hearts especially when her voice soars to the higher registers.

I first met Jess Klein at Momo’s Club (where else?), but when I first saw her on stage at Flipnotics in January (it was cold outside) I thought seriously about opening the windows thanks to the hot flamesshe was sending out to an enraptured audience.  I still sometimes get tongue-tied around this gentle woman whose passion for life has been rekindled by her move halfway across the USA.  I recall the other night at Threadgill’s she was sitting on a low wall in the back listening to a Jimmy LaFave song — and you could just see the boogeying energy that was largely in her head but yet emanating out into the night with a force ten.  Probably getting inspired to write another song.

I recall one night long ago in Washington, DC’s Montrose Park, a bunch of us were hanging out long after dark when someone came over and whispered, come into the maze and listen — but be very quiet and still .. and we tiptoed in and heard this young woman playing the flute and it was wonderful and we instantly knew why we had been warned against bluster.  Jess Klein is sometimes like that flautist — you have to be quiet so she can soar and touch your heart in ways you had not imagined possible anymore. 

Her old friends tell me Bound to Love is Jess’ best record yet, and lots of thanks must go to Mark Addison and Jud Newcomb, as well as to supporting musicians Rob Hooper, Harmoni Kelley, George Reiff, Slaid Cleaves, Matt the Electrician, Kim DesChamps, Susan Howe and Freedy Johnston.  The truth is that good as this record is, it cannot capture the electricity of Jess’ live performance, but people often drive while listening to CD’s and we do not need autos on cruise control with drivers and passengers totally oblivious to their surroundings.

Get to a Jess Klein live show (I heartily recommend Momo’s on October 3rd, when Jess will be joined for the evening by fellow TB Artists performers Josh Grider (new CD release that date as well) and the incomparable Randy Weeks (how many songwriters can you listen to for four hours and never get tired?).  But when you come to see Jess Klein, get up close and be quiet and still — well, that is, until she blows you away and you cannot contain yourself.

“When the Time Comes” opens the record — “What you want is up ahead and what you had is all behind, all the voices in your head have finally left you peace of mind, and you walk like you’re on water now, you’re following a sign ….”  This song Jess wrote traveling toward Austin with a clear vision that freedom was in her future and she needed to be ready to soar.  Now let’s imagine Jess is telling a fictional story in “Don’t Wanna Say It,” as she sings that, “I have tried, oh I’ve tried to let no one see me cryin’, but the world passes on and I’m dyin’.”  This is a song about surrender .. and hope.

The title cut speaks to those voices that our writer has “seen the proof in the breeze blowin’ through my window shade, seen the proof in the sun glowin’ on the house I’ve made, where my heart’s growin’, where I’m not afraid — I’m free … and I’m bound to love.”  The key to this new joy and confidence — “My energy comes from giving to you … you help me pull the right things through…”  “I Just Want To Know Your Name” is a penetrating song that asks all of us are we just putting on a show and do we even know who we really are?  About being on stage, our writer says, “When I’m not smilin’ for them I’m starin’ at my shoes, I walk a mile for them, I sing another blues.” 

Then Jess tells another of her famous stories — “Postcard” is about a woman whose “true” love did not quite work out, and her memories of what might have been that keep her going.  Jess’ cover of John Hiatt’s “Before I Go” fit right in with the theme of the recording, and Jess too “will try .. and stumble” but like Hiatt, she can sing, “But I will fly, He told me so.”  Thanks so much to the loverly Abi Tapia (in whose house in the Berkshires Jess spent a few days last week) for co-writing “Fool,” and to Slaid Cleaves for his powerful duet vocal on this airplay-necessary cut.  Another story song — about a waitress and a truck driver finding and quivering through the beginnings of what could be true love.

“Putty” is a tough song about a “mental love affair” — and the presumptions so many of us have that we are so indispensable to another person whose life we want to manipulate for our pleasure.  As Jess says, “Buddy, what will you do when I’ve laid it all out on the floor and I ain’t got no more lazy days or time to spend?”  Life is not a game we can win but an adventure we must let take us where it will.

“It Will Come to Me” is one of my favorites – Jess here sings that she is embarking on a “bigger ship in a broader sea” (could that be Austin?) and yet recognizes that, “you won’t ever get too far if you don’t let the stars do their work and pull you out of that corner where you are.”  And just to remind us that she is one tough cookie, Jess tells a fictional story about a ”Traveling’ Woman” who is just plain frustrated with all of the phony lovers and would be boyfriends none of whom is really true – and she says what she wants — with the key being that whoever would be hers would not try to put her in a cage – if you want her love you had best not try to make her put her suitcase down!  This is a sexy song — and live she just flat out BELTS this one (as Jess says, her family always said she was too loud!).

“Rosalie” goes to the other side — a quiet, tender song about a lost love.  This song makes you cry when Jess’s voice soars into the stratosphere … and if we can learn anything, it teaches us to cherish each moment and be very careful with our own hearts and especially the hearts of those we profess to love.  Maybe Jess is even singing about someone who foolishly walked away from her long ago.  This could be the one song here that defines why Jess Klein touches the heart so deeply.

But “What For” is an anthem — you want to stand and place your hand on your heart.  Jess dedicated this album to her father, and this song reflects a deep love for someone whose “rare, sole example gives a night flyer ample fuel for the burning and the turning up for more.”  This very personal song lets us know that this woman who “live my life safely, making steps like a baby” would get on stage “where I’d open the cage and soar….”  Now, after years of dealing with a world that often makes us call into question our own deepset values, the die is cast and the time has come to stand bravely up and let those whom we love know that “we are all in this together” and maybe it is time that the one who was being led takes the lead in love and grace.  This Jess Klein is quite a woman, and Austin should be proud that she feels loved here …  and just might stick around for a while if we are willing to let her keep her suitcase packed to travel to Narnia and back and places in between.