"Southern-fried vintage jazz," ...with its languid melodies and sultry vocal lines, it does sound as if it could have floated off a Georgia porch and landed by accident in rainy, cold Seattle. Bean's vocals recall Billie Holiday, only with sheer joy replacing all that pain." - The Seattle Post Intelligencer

Bean was raised in a rodeo family on the plains of Wyoming. Listening to her mother's scratchy Scott Joplin records, at the age of five, she began to study piano. She studied at the Boston Conservatory of Music, but found it a bit stuffy, so she quickly high-tailed it for Austin, Texas. She kicked around here and there, eventually landing in a big house full of jazz musicians, hooligans, exchange students and bike mechanics, from whom she learned to play jazz, fix bicycles, speak Russian and drink hooch- all at the same time.