A Minnesota-based singer/songwriter steeped in American roots traditions, Jack Klatt emerged in the middle part of the 2010s with a style that traversed fingerstyle blues guitar, folk, country, and early rock music. A close friend and stylistic cousin to fellow Minnesotans the Cactus Blossoms, Klatt's penchant for presenting modern original material in a vintage-inspired package followed a similar trajectory to theirs and by his third album, 2019's It Ain't the Same, he'd adopted a richer, full-band sound. Growing up in the Twin Cities, Klatt was attracted to music with an immediate straightforward appeal. His love of punk eventually led him backward to his favorite bands' influences, and before long he'd followed a thread to the earliest recorded sounds of jug bands, country-blues, folk, and ragtime. He'd already immersed himself in these early roots sounds when he met Page Burkham and Jack Torrey, the close-harmony brother duo who front the Cactus Blossoms. Sharing similar influences and aesthetics, they became friends and Klatt would play music with them on and off over the years. His first album, 2013's Love Me Lonely, was essentially a live analog set of solo acoustic country-blues cuts, both originals and covers. A few years later, he followed up with Shadows in the Sunset, a slightly more arranged set recorded in a 100-year-old Wisconsin farmhouse by producer Tom Herbers (Jayhawks, Trampled by Turtles). Though still minimalist, Klatt was accompanied by double bass, drums, and scatterings of accordion and fiddle, and the album earned him plenty of acclaim in roots music circles. For his third outing, Klatt headed to Chicago and worked with an expanded group of collaborators, including members of the Cactus Blossoms, with whom he'd also been touring. Released by Yep Roc, 2019's It Ain't the Same, signified a more robust and refined full-band sound for Klatt. ~ Timothy Monger