WHEN Jess Klein was at a "really hard point" in her life, she turned to her music.

"The only thing I knew to do to make it easier was to write. I sat down and the song All I Ever Had came out, and it felt like a faucet had been turned on because it was such a release of emotion, and I wanted every song on the album to have the same power to release and heal."

That album, her sixth, was released on Rykodisc this week, and on Monday she will be playing tracks from City Garden in a solo performance at Fibbers in York.

Cutting to the chase, what was the "really hard point" Jess had reached?

"I had about 7,000 terrible break-ups, like everyone does, but, on top of that, I had some people in my life telling me I was crazy to continue doing this career where I drive around in a beat-up car and sing to people, which is outside the schedule of most people's lives, " says the Boston-raised singer-songwriter, who now lives in New York.

"You reach that point and it makes you solidify what's important to you, and for me that was to sing. This is who I am and this is what I do. I'd been listening to a lot of blues albums at the time and for the first time I understood the power of the blues, which is that the blues can take as much emotion as a singer can give them.

So I've taken that as a directive."

Explaining her City Garden album title, she says: "I live in Brooklyn and my garden is basically a plot of weeds and it was just a fitting image, as I was here in my apartment one day and I was thinking it was a perfect metaphor: your own world surrounded by grime."

Jess Klein, Miles Cain, Alana Levandoski and Boss Caine play Fibbers, York, on Monday.

Tickets: £7 advance, £8 door.

Please note, Jess Klein will not be appearing at Crooked Still's York show date, contrary to notices elsewhere, although she is on Crooked Still's bill at Sheffield Memorial Hall on Sunday