BILLBOARD

August 5, 2000

Acclaimed Boston Singer/Songwriter Was Inspired By Year In Jamaica

BY JIM BESSMAN

A trip to Jamaica six years ago when she was in college affected Jess Klein so much that she began playing guitar and writing songs-to the tune of growing acclaim in her Boston base, four independent releases, and now, her hotly anticipated Rykodisc/Slow River debut, "Draw Them Near."
 
"As a producer and label head, you're always looking for that one song-and Jess has got dozens," says Rykodisc president George Howard, who produced the Aug. 22 release. "Draw Them Near" does in fact deliver 12 songs by the 26-year-old Ryko Music (ASCAP) writer, who had been writing prose and pursuing other creative outlets prior to picking up the guitar.
 
"I'd been singing with other friends in college, and playing clarinet and sax and writing short stories and dancing my whole life," says Klein, who hails from Rochester, N.Y., and has lived in Boston since her return from Jamaica. She ventured to the island to study liberal arts in Kingston and "experience something different," she says. During her year there, she hung out with local artists and musicians and realized she could write songs and perform.
 
"I came back and continued to listen to a lot of music and work on writing songs and get experience performing," says Klein, who proceeded to release three tapes independently, sign with Gabriel Unger Artist Management, and self-release an album, "Wishes Well Disguised," in 1998. She eventually sold 6,000 copies of the album from the stage; the disc also helped her earn four Boston Music Award nominations and a song on last year's acclaimed anti-domestic-violence compilation "Respond," as well as an impressive following.
 
"I first saw her two years ago opening for some band, so it wasn't necessarily her crowd," says Howard. "But she stood there with her acoustic guitar and won the whole audience over. So it was real easy to be drawn to her because of her songwriting, and then I started doing research and found out she was a working musician with a fan base, ambition, and goals-so it was a no-brainer on the signing front."
 
On the production front, "Draw Them Near" was recorded in Nashville with Wilco drummer Ken Coomer, Ron Sexsmith, Matthew Sweet bassist Brad Jones, and Kim Richey and Josh Rouse guitarist Will Kimbrough.
 
"We listened to a lot of Mick Taylor-era Rolling Stones, because he brought soul to the Stones, and to me Jess is ultimately a soul singer," says Howard, who calls Klein "the anti-Britney Spears." "She's a young, beautiful girl who also writes her own songs and isn't manufactured in any way, and I find a lot of people are out there who are looking for someone who represents a certain element of reality on a musical level.
 
"She's a really good guitar player whose fingerpicking is out of this world, but what struck me was that she's old and soulful beyond her years: If you listen to her songs, there's a kind of redemption through their sadness, which to me is what soul music is all about," he adds.
 
Howard will now try to "build a story" at noncommercial triple-A and college radio stations by servicing them the full "Draw Them Near" album out of the box. Heavy online marketing will include an MP3 download of album track "Little White Dove" on numerous Web sites-including those of RealNetworks, Launch, and Rolling Stone.
 
Ancillary marketing efforts involve placement of Klein tracks on various samplers, including those from Starbucks, Caf Network, the Anthropologie women's clothes catalog, the hotel-serving Patio Music, and the high school-targeting Shagg Marketing.
 
"We've also made a tremendous amount of two-song samplers to be handed out not only at Jess' own gigs but at other artists' who are similar, like the Indigo Girls, and at the Newport Folk Festival," says Howard. The samplers feature "Little White Dove" and "Ireland."
 
"Little White Dove," Klein says, is an "ultimatum to a hiding lover," while "Ireland" is about "escaping to somewhere far away to solve your troubles." Citing influences including the Stones, Tom Petty, Sheryl Crow, Fleetwood Mac, and Motown, she adds that the album is "sort of a launching point for me to continue to explore all sorts of different directions with my music-and still sound like me."
 
Klein, who is booked by Drake & Associates, performs some 200 dates per year. Howard thinks that "the big key" is to get people to see her live.
 
"She wins fans with live performances," he says, "so we'll work a lot of marketing around her performances, because it's very hard to see her and not be convinced."
 
Indeed, Greg Harrington, GM of downtown Boston's Tower Records outlet, saw Klein perform a couple months ago. "She's terrific," he says. "She's a great songwriter, and when I found out a couple days later that she'd signed with Ryko, I said we'd have to have an in-store."
 
Harrington, who has done well consigning Klein's preceding indie CD, has now scheduled an in-store performance/signing with the artist on the new album's release date. Over at triple-A station WXPN Philadelphia, PD Bruce Warren, who has been seeing Klein perform for a couple years, is equally enthusiastic.
 
"She's a very articulate songwriter whose lyrics actually say something," says Warren, "and she's exhibiting terrific growth as an artist."
 
Klein will perform at the Fuji Rock Fest July 28-Sunday (30) in Tokyo and the Newport Folk Festival Aug. 6. Mixing headlining and support slots, she'll tour the U.S. and Canada from the fall through next March, with time out for a return to Japan and the U.K.