Clearing My Head

Collection Contents

#		Title	Length
1		Tomorrow	4:08	Play
2		My Other Half	3:51	Play
3		Day to Day Life	5:42	Play
4		The Game	4:34	Play
5		No One But Me	3:43	Play
6		This Time	5:46	Play
7		Overboard	5:37	Play
8		Capture You	3:44	Play
9		Shout	4:39	Play
10		The Summer Tree	4:29	Play
11		Losing My Mind	3:49	Play
12		Running Scared	9:52	Play

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Description

Some younger sisters find fascination in their older sisters clothes, shoes, or boyfriends. Pop/rock singer, songwriter, and guitar player Jes Perry was infatuated with her older sisters record collections full of great 60s and early 70s pop, rock and folk albums. One weekend when Jes was 11 she snuck from her sisters room every Beatles album she could find including Help, Hard Days Night, Rubber Soul, and Magical Mystery Tour (Sgt. Pepper had been lent out) and systematically memorized every cut on each album. What Jes got in that weekend, unbeknownst at the time, was a crash course in pop songwriting. Listening to those albums she found not only great melodies and lyrics but also great vocal harmonies and instrumental arrangements. Jes learned to sing every vocal part of every song and then continued to borrow additional albums by other artists slowly and surely working her way thru the entire collection always concentrating primarily on melodies, harmonies and song structures.

Fast forward through high school and college and find Jes still singing and now playing guitar, writing songs, and releasing her first CD of original songs. Clearing My Head includes 12 adult contemporary pop and rock tunes that are rooted in the sounds from her sisters record collections -- The Beatles, CSN, Dan Fogleberg, Heart, Steely Dan, James Taylor and Stevie Wonder as well as her own early influences Pat Benatar, The Eagles, Fleetwood Mac, Neil Finn, The Pretenders, and eventually the Indigo Girls, Annie Lennox, Sheryl Crowe, and Wendy and Lisa. Jes also fills her songs with unexpected melodic twists, and her self-taught guitar style adds some daring chord and song structures. On top of everything is a voice that is both strong enough to fill a smoky rock club or soothing like a singers in a caf. Jes voice is always pure, commercially accessible, and the seed of her growing presence as an artist.

Over the past 4 years, Jes has played all over Boston including such clubs as TT the Bears, OBriens, the Sky Bar, the Kendall Caf, and Kirkland Caf and at smaller venues such as Starbucks and Borders. Throughout 2001 and 2002, she had a residency at the unlikely Bluestone Bistro, in Brighton, where she workshopped her songs in a smaller, more intimate setting. However, currently she making the rounds of the Boston clubs with her full band.

Jes has traveled far since discovering her love for pop music thru listening to the bands in her sisters record collections and making the decision that singing was what she wanted to do with her life. However, getting to the release of Clearing My Head and leading her own band has taken longer than originally anticipated. Growing up, although Jes studied classical vocal technique and felt assured singing cover tunes in high school talent shows, she was frustrated by not knowing how to go about writing her own songs. All of the classical theory, piano lessons and vocal technique learned in school just seemed to hinder her efforts when she tried to write simple pop numbers.

Like many singers whose voice is their principal instrument, Jes began to turn her poetry into lyrics and singing those lyrics to melodies created off the top of her head. With the classical training and theory still getting in the way, Jes finally turned to the acoustic guitar for which she knew no rules, and discovered it offered her unlimited inspiration. Teaching herself to play and combining her previously written lyrics with the chords she was learning enabled her to write her first batch of songs. But a devastating habit of comparing those early tunes to those by experienced recording artists caused Jes to hide her music away and not let anyone hear those first tunes. Singing and songwriting became her secret and she wasnt letting anything out.

Luckily for listeners, Jes ultimately decided to turn her secrets into habits. First, she forced herself to sing out loud at home. Second, Jes sought the support of other singers and songwriters who were also just starting out and in 1999 she became a regular at an open mic night at the Kells in Brighton. There she finally found the courage to start singing in front of an audience and debuted with a cover of the Indigo Girls World Falls, graduating just a week later to performing her own songs at the weekly gathering. The experience of singing her original material in front of a supportive audience broke a dam of creativity and between 1999 and 2000 Jes wrote over 40 songs. Her anxiety disappeared into efforts of starting a band, booking gigs, and recording.

With confidence and ambition in place, new songs flowing from guitar to tape, and her band eager to play, the only time Jes looks back now is to acknowledge the influence her sisters and their old record collections had on her becoming a singer and songwriter and how listening to those old records opened the doors to a lifetime of creativity and a lasting love for music.