Album Notes

Datri Bean grew up in a small town in windswept Wyoming. The day her neighbors moved, they gave Datri’s mother their upright piano. Datri was five years old, and her life was forever changed by this event.

Fourteen years later, Datri stumbled into the home of an 80 year old piano teacher from Brooklyn. After an abrupt interview and audition, in which Datri nervously fumbled through the piece, Datri was accepted as a student. Datri was 19 years old, and again, her life was forever changed by this event.

This piano teacher would become one of Datri’s closest friends and would be called “Ruby,” in the title track to Datri’s new album. Comprised of thirteen originals, these are love songs from the perspective of a happy marriage: thoughtful, vulnerable, complicated and intimate. In these songs, there is the unmistakeable flavor of pre- war jazz, but also klezmer, folk, pop– a quirky, modern reinvention that is a distant cousin of the work of Hoagy Carmichael and Billie Holiday, but also of Randy Newman, Tom Waits, and Andrew Bird.

Datri Bean is a nationally touring artist and has been honored by Kerrville New Folk, Telluride, Sisters and Rocky Mountain Folk Festivals for her songwriting. On the heals of the release of “Ruby,” she will tour the West Coast and Northeastern United States, Europe, and Japan. Datri sings and plays piano, ukulele and accordion.

Currently, Datri lives in a tiny shack in Austin, Texas with her husband, three cats, and a flock of unruly chickens.

When she is not recording or touring, she is leading her “little side project”– the Minor Mishap Marching Band– a 25 piece renegade brass band, Bourbon Street meets Budapest, washboard-tuba-trombone-punk-folk: fun, loud and in the streets.

“languid melodies and sultry vocal lines... Bean’s vocals recall Billie Holiday, only with sheer joy replacing all that pain.” – Seattle Post-Intelligencer