Meghan Tonjes

"Singer/songwriter Meghan Tonjes has a great voice – it has a rich, smoky quality at times, but also has impressive range. Her voice is clearly the best part of her debut CD, Be in Want" - Independentclauses.com

Be In Want is the debut release from Meghan Tonjes, an independent singer-songwriter based in Detroit, Michigan. A folk-pop collection of songs dealing with relationships, love, and self-love, Be In Want is musical medicine for the broken-hearted. “The End” (ironically the first track of the album) is a meditation on healing and moving on from a love lost. The humorous yet heartbreaking “She’ll Make You” is sung from the perspective of a woman in love with a man engaged to someone else. “Saved” reflects Tonjes’s experiences with close-minded people she encountered while attending a Christian university. The short interlude “Anthem” is a sexy and assertive declaration of desire, and “Be In Want,” the album’s title track, chronicles the frustrations of an almost-relationship. Tonjes’s lyrics are crafted with a poetic sensibility, her melodies are addictive, and her vocal delivery is stunning: like golden ribbons of honey swirled into strong black tea, simultaneously smoky and sweet.

Tonjes is also the founder of the revolutionary YouTube channel ProjectLifesize, a collaboration of kick-ass women giving voice to issues of body image and self-acceptance in a size-phobic world. Tonjes started the channel in response to negative comments she received on her personal YouTube channel regarding her weight. As opposed to being discouraged by the criticism she faced, she instead transformed this negativity into a positive force of change. In “Saved” she sarcastically tells her critics: “I want to learn how to hate / How to judge and to fear everything,” illustrating that hatred is a learned behavior that can be revised through activism and education. As an alternative to ignorance, she espouses the belief that, as she states in “Space Between,” “I’m to you as you are to me,” or that we are all intricately interconnected. Tonjes is funny, feisty, feminist, and unabashed in speaking the truths of her experience. Anyone who has felt like an outcast because of their weight, race, gender, or sexual orientation will connect with her message of acceptance and self-acceptance.

Whether listening to her album, viewing her personal YouTube channel where she performs original music and covers for her weekly “Request Tuesdays” (and actually makes Britney Spears songs sound good), or her collaborative project, Tonjes will have you in want of more. To paraphrase “She’ll Make You”: “Nothing’s gonna stop her now / No one’s gonna hold her down.”

Be In Want can be purchased from Tonjes’s website: www.meghantonjes.com/music or from iTunes.
Tonjes’s personal YouTube channel: www.youtube.com/user/tonjesml
ProjectLifesize: www.youtube.com/user/ProjectLifesize - seejeffread.blogspot.com