SWING APPEAL Miss Tess has the music to back up the persona. |
Miss Tess’s music is of a piece with her calculated stage persona. She’s always Miss Tess, even when she’s returning your phone call for an interview. Her thing is original tunes and covers that draw on early jazz and blues, with a bit of country thrown in, and she likes to perform in vintage dresses as well as play a sweet, full-toned 1920s Weymann electric guitar. On her new Live on the Road, she covers Fats Waller’s “Honeysuckle Rose,” Bessie Smith’s “Baby Doll,” and the Gaskill/McHugh standard “I Can’t Believe That You’re in Love with Me” — which, as she says on the disc, “I learned off a Peggy Lee record.” The Bon Ton Parade, meanwhile, put the emphasis on swing, with acoustic bass and drums, and the well-schooled local jazz reedman Alec Spiegelman playing saxophone and clarinet.Tess — who plays the Regattabar April 7 — doesn’t have as plush an instrument as Price, but the two share an honest approach to musicmaking, and you can hear her emotional directness in both her pliant phrasing and her songwriting. Home, her 2004 disc of 12 impressively mature originals, was recorded with just her musician parents backing her (father Marv on reeds and pedal-steel, mother Kathy on bass). The opening “When Tomorrow Comes” is typical: as well structured as a standard, a statement of fateful optimism. On disc (which includes 2006’s Modern Vintage) and live, her playfulness and humor are also evident. On Live on the Road, the upstroke of her guitar on “I’m on Top of the World” drives the band’s swing, and you can hear the smile in her voice. That and her up-tempo insomnia swinger “Can’t Sleep” are like hits waiting to happen. Somewhere.
Of course, it’s not out of the question for a 27-year-old to be playing such old music — Madeleine Peyroux has built a career on a Billie Holiday croon and an older swing style of playing. But Tess found her own way into the repertoire. A middle-class kid in suburban Maryland, she grew up with parents who played things like “Honeysuckle Rose” around the house, and it wasn’t unusual for Tess to come home and find her parents singing and playing.
Her first guitar lessons were from jazz players, so jazz chords came naturally to her writing and playing. She’d road-trip on vacations, traveling with her guitar. One year, she found herself at the Telluride Folk Festival in Colorado, and she stayed at a house shared by folk singer Libby Kirkpatrick. “When I saw her perform, I was floored, and when I got her CD and I was driving around the mountains listening to it in Colorado, it just hit me: ‘I want to be a singer!’ She laughs as she tells me the story at the 1369 Coffee House in Inman Square.
After college, “I was like, ‘Mom, I’m just going to drive around the country with my guitar for a while.’ And she’s like, ‘Honey, why don’t you go somewhere where you can make some connections?’ ”
That, of course, led to a few semesters at Berklee, and voice lessons with esteemed jazz vocalist Lisa Thorson. Tess did record one straight-jazz record, but post-bop wasn’t really her thing. “It crossed my mind, but I think I backed away from it. I want rhythm, I want people to be able to groove. Once you start doing more out stuff, you limit your audience to the people who are educated about jazz, and you just cut off a major part of your audience.”
In the Sweet and Low Down, with the Lake Street Dive rhythm section, she and Price are “learning all these songs we’ve been meaning to learn — rockabilly, Willie Dixon, Mills Brothers, ’40s jazz.” Her new moniker has been part of the deal: “I always wanted a stage name, and my last name just doesn’t flow, it doesn’t sound good. One of my good friends in college always called me Miss Tess. So, okay, Miss Tess. It works.”
MISS TESS AND THE BON TON PARADE | Regattabar, Charles Hotel, 1 Bennett St, Cambridge | April 7 at 7:30 pm | $12 | 617.395.7757 or www.regattabarjazz.com | LAKE STREET DIVE | Lizard Lounge, 1667 Cambridge St, Cambridge | April 9 at 8:30 pm | $10 | 617.547.0759 or www.lizardloungeclub.com
