Jeanne Marie Boes tickles the keys in a way that puts you next to a fireplace with a glass of scotch in your hand – but if you’re a cheating man, that glass of scotch might fly into your head.
The singer/songwriter, born and raised in Astoria, has had her share of heartbreaks, but the songs from her three studio albums – “A Seasoned Heart,” “One Sweet Ride” and the newly released, “Chase Desire” – are truly meant for her audience to connect with their own experiences.
“My voice tends to lean toward that end,” said Boes of her sultry, woman-scorned inflection. “Love is something that everyone experiences in different ways. I’m just trying to tell a story and add a melody to that story.”
Her stories have a lot to do with love and the different ways that both sides of the relationship can be guilty of emotionally destroying the other. “Men will be dogs when they can, I’ll drink to your mister/you drink to mine, sister,” the 22-year-old sings on “A Toast to Cheatin’ Men,” a song that makes her sound wise beyond her years.
A love of music has surrounded Boes since she was a young girl. Her mother and father constantly filled their home with the sounds of Frank Sinatra and Judy Garland. She counts them among her chief influences, along with those Lads from Liverpool, The Beatles.
Boes showed a strong interest in music early on, prompting her parents to send her for piano lessons; they figured that since she was always running around the house singing, she may as well have an instrument in front of her as well.
“I started singing, but for a while it was on the down-low,” she said. “Right before I graduated high school, I started writing music and now I write my own lyrics more than ever before.”
She started performing at several open-mics around Queens and Long Island before she was offered a paying gig at a bar under the LIRR in Babylon, Long Island. She was paid $20 for the gig and still has the bill stapled in a scrapbook.
“I was floored,” said Boes about the notion of actually being paid to play music. “It was weird and nerve-racking, but I love being on stage. I love the feeling of making someone think about their own experiences during a song.”
LIC Bar is just one of the Queens haunts that are busy exposing the city to the burgeoning Queens music scene. Getting more attention now than ever before, musicians in the city’s largest and most diverse borough are getting looks from an industry that once only had eyes for Brooklyn.
“The Queens music scene is coming up pretty strong,” she said. “It’s so new, but Queens audiences are really accepting of new music. Rap, reggae, pop, folk; it’s broadening the horizons for the up and comers.”
Boes recently got some prime exposure in the Battle of the Boroughs, where she placed in the top five. She relished the experience and the positive feedback that trickled in after the competition and said that the fans she gained made the experience worthwhile.
Fans old and new can find her on Facebook, follow her on Twitter and buy her music on iTunes. She also has a web site, www.jeanneboes.com, where fans can follow her blog and listen to album cuts.
