Jess Klein   Tom Freund

It’s always a recipe for something special when two acclaimed songwriters share the road together. Having met for the first time in the Lower East Side of NYC nearly a decade ago, the two soulful, genre-bending troubadours have been eager to tour together since.  Klein explains, “His music is comforting and inspiring to me… we both still play because music feeds our souls.  There’s a musical yin-yang and a personal kinship between Tom and I, and those two things combined make for the best kinds of shows.”

A troubadour whose talents have been lauded on the national and international scene for almost a decade, Jess Klein writes songs that tell the story of the soul – from wrenching heartbreak to finding the strength to pick up and move on.  Weaving her own inimitable blend of folk, soul and rock ‘n roll, Klein’s music features spot-on, speak-to-the-heart lyrics, percussive guitar and a voice as sweet as it is strong.

The Rochester, New York native picked up the acoustic guitar and started writing songs while living as a student abroad in Kingston, Jamaica in her late teens. She returned to the US, moved to Boston and released two albums on indie-giant Rykodisc:  2000’s Draw Them Near,  [3.5 stars, USA Today], launched Klein on a worldwide tour where her relaxed confidence and rootsy soulfulness wowed 70,000 attendees at the Fuji Rock Festival in Japan.  Klein’s 2005 follow-up, Strawberry Lover, was given four stars by MOJO, and the emotive and sensual title track was named one of the “Top Ten Sexiest Songs of the Moment” by the NY Daily News.  In 2006, Klein released the blues and Motown influenced City Garden which was given an impressive five stars by MOJO Magazine and described by Roots Music UK as having “The best roots sound of any album heard this year.”

Klein moved to her current home, Austin, TX in 2008, inspiring her 2009 release, Bound To Love.  Shining as Klein’s most confident work to date, Bound to Love evoked the dusty roots of Texas songwriters and made her a household name in the Austin music world.  Bound to Love again took Klein across the globe, including a tour of Ireland supporting folk legend Arlo Guthrie.

Her newest album, A Room of Your Own, reflects a maturity and seize the day attitude influenced by her father’s inspiring battle with the disease ALS (aka Lou Gehrig’s Disease) which took his life in early 2011.  A Room of Your Own will be Jess’s first independent album in 14 years and will be released in April 2012.

It’s in the seemingly effortless ease with which he delivers his conversational lyrics and mellifluous melodies, this natural magic that is at the heart of Tom Freund’s music. Though he’s well-schooled and widely-traveled in a variety of genres — from hearftelt folk to buoyant pop to boho jazz to straightforward rock ‘n’ roll, and beyond — Freund ultimately comes across simply as a singer-songwriter with his own singularly distinctive and engaging voice.

His newest album, The Edge of Venice is produced by John Alagia (John Mayer, Jason Mraz, Dave Matthews) and features of some of LA’s finest musicians joining him. The album comes in the wake of his latest EP “Fit To Screen” whose songs have been featured in this seasons “Parenthood” on NBC; and his latest full length “Collapsible Plans” which was produced by his musical cohort Ben Harper and hosted Jackson Browne as a special guest. The song “Collapsible Plans (Sugar) was seen performed live on “Last Call With Carson Daly” in January of 09: “I’ve always been a fan of Tom’s work, and I thought that I had something to bring to Tom sonically that was maybe a place he hadn’t stepped into yet,” Harper says.

A sought-out standup bassist, the talented, versatile Freund plays most of the stringed instruments as well as piano on his albums.

Tom writes all his own material and his songs continue to be featured on such prime time TV shows as “Las Vegas” and “One Tree Hill” as well as such films as “Charlie Bartlett,” and “12 Bucks.” Steven Spielberg’s SHOAH Foundation also used three of Tom’s compositions for their Giving Voice video. He also won a Telly Award for the music behind a National Public Service Announcement concerning child abuse.

“Every year the mounting landfill of new releases that threatens to bury the working music journalists yields a few unexpected gems, and Tom Freund is one of them.”
– THE NEW YORK TIMES