Jess Tardy has been on the Boston music scene since she came to the city to study at Harvard University. Tardy has made a name for herself as a piano player singer plying her country soul tunes at numerous clubs.
Her latest gig since September has been a Friday night residency at Bull McCabe’s. Tardy performs every Friday night with a revolving cast of backing musicians and a special guest every week who gets to do a mini set of their tunes. “I say, ‘Come on down. We’ll learn your tunes and you just get up and sing.’ We’ve had Jesse Dee, Dennis Brennan, Amy Fairchild, Amelia White. Tonight’s it’s John Cate. I’ve had Jim Gambino from The Swinging Steaks.”
The steadies in her weekly house band are Steve Sadler, Austin Nevins, and Jim Scopa. Tardy’s other project of late has been working on a E.P. of classic country style duets with Jim Gambino, pianist from The Swinging Steaks. Tardy is just getting back in the saddle after taking a year off from playing music to care for and do fundraising for a sick friend. She had been working as an advertising copy writer for the Arnold company, writing for many of their clients.
Tardy had used that time away from playing to focus more on her songwriting. She has enough material for a new album. She plans to get into a New Orleans recording studio this summer to record her first album in almost ten years. Club Passim has granted Tardy an Iguana artist grant to kick start her recording.
“I’m hoping to go into the studio with a guy named John Porter,” she said. “I think it’s going to be country soul. I never know what to call what I do. I think I’ll use some LA guys and some New York guys and some New Orleans guys. I’m leaving a lot of it up to the producer. He’s very experienced and very good. I’m happy to let him take the wheel.”
Tardy’s country roots music explorations belie her extensive background in jazz. As an advanced high school jazz musician at Nokomis Regional High School in Newport, Maine, she got to play the Montreuz jazz festival as a saxophonist and vocalist at ages 16 and 18. Her school band later played at the North Sea Jazz Festival. Jazz legend Clark Terry heard her singing there and suggested she become a singer.
“He said, ‘Maybe you should think about singing,’ and he asked me to sing with his house band at a clinic, which was Clark Terry, Marshall Royal, and Ed Shaugnessy. I got to be the chick singer with this band of legends, and I was hooked. I almost never really practiced the saxophone again. It was all that singing.”
At Harvard, Tardy’s major was Folklore and Mythology with a concentration in ethnomusicology. She wrote her senior thesis on Bessie Smith. “I studied as much music as I could without having to take a music theory course,” she said. Yet, she sang in Harvard’s jazz band that played a George Gershwin tribute at the Chicago Art Institute. “I got to sing these Quincy Jones arrangements of Count Basie versions of Ella Fitzgerald sings Gershwin,” she said.
Tardy received good press in the windy city when she made a fan out of Chicago Tribute columnist Howard Reich. “It opened up a lot of doors for me, and it got me hooked on fronting a band,” she said. Tardy never really switched from jazz to the country soul she is known for in these New England parts. Instead, she said she has always carried and continues to carry both influences.
“My upbringing was equal part Ray Charles and Hank Williams,” she said. “It was a mixed marriage in some ways, musically. My mom had all the soul and jazz records and my dad had all the Buck Owens, Hank Williams. At about eighth grade my friend’s dad, after hearing me sing, said ‘You know, you should really check out Bonnie Raitt. Because I was in a huge Diana Washington phrase. I was obsessed with Dinah Washington until I sang the song ‘Since I Fell For You’ at a talent show. Bonnie Raitt had a version of that on one of her first records.”
That’s when Tardy knew what she wanted to do. “It all kind of stems from Modern jazz and country western music,” she said. “It all hovers around those great songs and songwriters.”
Tardy released CDs in 2002 and 2004. Although Tardy does not consider her songs to be personal diary entries, she does focus on love and relationships. She likes writers Ryan Adams, Lucinda Williams, John Hyatt, Gram Parsons, and Neil Young.
“What does it for me lyrically? I don’t know,” she said. “It’s all kind of a mish mash. One of my biggest records I’ve been obsessed with for five years is that Solomon Burke Don’t Give Up On Me. He had everyone writing for him on that. Van Morrison wrote one. Tom Waits wrote one.”
A good song that gets to Tardy is one that makes her believe it and maybe sometimes there’s a little bit of pain in there. “I like sad songs. I’ve always like sad songs,” she said. “I don’t think that makes me sad. I think sometimes sad songs just feel good. You can either identify with it or you can be like ‘I’m glad that’s not me.’ There’s something cathartic about a sad song. I think sincerity goes a long way.”
Tardy’s debut CD Waiting For You received a lot of notice when it was released in 2002. Yet, Tardy did not have any plan or vision going into the studio to make it.
“I didn’t know what I was doing, no idea,” the singer-songwriter said. “I just sort of shot from the hip and booked a studio in Portland not having a clue, and I think it came out OK. I’m so proud that I had been able to make that not knowing what the heck I was doing. I was like ‘All right, I think this is how you do it.’ I had ideas about how I wanted it to sound, like whose records I kind of wanted it to sound like.”
Tardy feels that was a good next step in her growth as an artist. She went on to make “half an album” for a major Music Row label after she moved to Nashville and landed a development deal. Tardy refers to it as “half an album” because the project was halted by the powers that be before she could finish it.
“I think they lost money on women that quarter. I don’t know,” she said, with resignation. “I think they didn’t know quite what to do with me. I think they were like ‘Eh, you’re not really so country. You’re not super country. We don’t know what to do with you.’ It got dropped.”
Tardy wasn’t completely happy with the disc. She loved the rough mixes but for the final mixes producers added many things to make it sound more commercial, and, it ended up no longer sounding like Tardy. Today, those tracks sit in that label’s vault somewhere.
“I could buy them back if I wanted,” she said, “but I don’t even really like them. I like the songs, but I don’t love the production. I was hoping to be on the fringe of country. I was hoping they would give me a Shelby Lynn, Norah Jones, Bonnie Raitt path. I think they really wanted Carrie Underwood. It was a great experience. I got to record with Clayton Ivy, Dan Dougmore. I have no regrets. I just didn’t feel any connection to the final product. But I was in the end disappointed when they passed.”
Tardy had enjoyed hanging out in the music city and she still thinks about going back to Nashville, but “I think Nashville music is a little bit broken right now.” Even though Nashville had warmer weather than Boston, “I actually missed the seasons and I missed the Red Sox,” she added.
For her 2004 sophomore album Hold On, Tardy worked with a co-producer on it. The disc incorporated a lot of her country influence from her Nashville experience. She was listening to a lot of John Hyatt and The Goners and their open Nashville tunings. “I think I really become a little more and more country with each passing year,” she said. “I wouldn’t say Reba or Dolly. I love them, but I’m more of an Emmylou Harris-Linda Ronstadt girl.”
Tardy will take her experiences to a new height when she records her next album in New Orleans this summer. “My ultimate goal is just to be able to continue to make a living doing this and to be able to make records more frequently than I have been.”
Bill, this is a great piece! Nice job on capturing Jess Tardy’s complexities. She’s a great singer.