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Jeff Klein plays the BMI Stage Saturday, 1:45-2:30 p.m.

XL on ACL:

Sunday
• Sunday's Photos
• ACLove: Austin At Its Best
• Sunday Photos
• Capsule Reviews
• Recap
• So Long!

Saturday
• Saturday's Photos
• When Pigs Fly
• Capsule Reviews

Friday
• Friday's Photos
• Yeah, baby, yeah!
• Corcoran Reviews
• Capsule Reviews
• Jam Bands

Need-To-Know
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• Band Schedule
• Interactive Stage Layout Map
• Critics' Picks

More XL ACL Reading
• CD Reviews
• Jam-packed
• REM: Still Shiny, Still Happy
• The Many Faces of Al Green
• Stapleton's Sweet Success
• Live music 101, v. 2
• Liz Phair
• Jeff Klein
• Raul Malo
• Rise of Southern Rock
• J.T. Van Zandt
• Beth Orton

XL on ACL: Jeff Klein's Impressive Road Record

By Michael Corcoran
Austin American-Statesman
Sept. 18, 2003

Jeff Klein had a good chuckle when he heard about a recent panel discussion for unsigned bands during which an expert revealed that the key to making it in the music biz is, first and foremost, to cultivate a strong local following. "If you can't fill clubs at home, you're not going to be able to do well on the road," the insider said.

Klein had just returned from a month in New York City, where he'd sold out venues ranging in capacity from 250 to 400. At his triumphant hometown return, fewer than 80 had showed up at Stubb's. "I almost hate to play here because it's so demoralizing," says the Newburgh, N.Y., native, who moved to Austin five years ago at age 21. "I think because there's so much music here, people kinda take it for granted."

In Europe, where his album "Everyone Loves a Winner" was released in June on Bj�rk's One Little Indian label, Klein is the new Ryan Adams. It's tour buses and groupies, encores and autographs. In Austin, meanwhile, he's just another cat with dyed-black hair trying to write songs like Tom Waits. But that could change when the stunning "Winner" -- think Paul Westerberg with cellos -- has its U.S. release the Tuesday after Klein's appearance at the ACL Fest.

"It's funny," Klein says, sipping an iced coffee at the Spider House coffee shop, just a couple blocks from his house. "As soon as I stopped beating my head against the wall, a lot of doors started opening up for me. Success in the music business is so random, and I feel like I just got a real lucky break."

It came, this reversal of fortune, when Klein's manager Diane Gentile got a copy of "Winner," which was originally intended for release on the local India label, into the hands of Bj�rk's label partner Derek. "One Little Indian is just so cool. Derek e-mailed us back and said, 'It's great. We want to put it out.' And I was like, 'Do you want me to do anything, like maybe tighten up something here or there?' and they said, 'No. We like it just as it is.' "

And just like that, the album Klein calls "just basically a diary of a year in the life of me" was released to critical acclaim in Europe. "The music magazines over there are so much better than the ones we have," Klein says. "Mojo, Uncut -- these magazines really make a difference, whereas we have Rolling Stone, which hardly ever even puts a musician on the cover anymore."

During his last tour of Europe in June, Klein was even outdrawing U.S. emo sensation Dashboard Confessional. "It's so much about fashion and trendiness over here," Klein says. "I have no image. Zero. I'm not some rail-thin hipster guy, but that didn't seem to matter when we played Europe. They were just so into the music for what it was. Playing a rowdy bar in Ireland and just hearing it go pin-drop quiet during a song. To me, that's the greatest compliment."

Like his previous album, 2000's "You'll Never Get To Heaven If You Break My Heart," "Everybody Loves a Winner" is titled after an old R&B/pop song, written by William Bell. But Klein's atmospheric music, which features backing vocals from his former landlady Patty Griffin on four tracks, is about as far away from R&B pop as you can get, without using fiddles and banjos.

Klein says working at an indie record store in New Paltz, N.Y., while going to college helped expand his musical vocabulary. "I grew up listening to the radio, but then we'd get all these weird albums in the mail -- Mogwai, John Zorn, Belle & Sebastian, Red House Painters -- and I really loved that stuff."

Klein says he identified with Jack Black's record clerk from "High Fidelity," who belittled mainstream music fans. "Oh, yeah, I was a complete snob. I took great delight in telling people who walked in looking for the Spice Girls that they had to go to the mall."

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