In 1999 a 20-year-old Norah Jones came to New York from Texas and was quickly gigging around town with a home-made demo recording in her pocket. In the spring of 2000 she came to the attention of Bruce Lundvall, the head of Blue Note Records. Impressed by her grasp of the standards and her originality, Lundvall offered her a demo deal with the option for the label to extend this to a full album deal. Norah mixed up the record with a focus on originals she and her band had written rounded out with a few jazz standards she loved. The collection of 13 songs, recorded over three days at Sorcerer Sound in Soho was engineered by Jay Newland who had worked on Etta James’ Billie Holiday tribute record ‘Mystery Girl’. The band: the same as that she had been gigging with—Jesse Harris on guitar, Lee Alexander on bass, and Dan Reiser on drums. Adam Rogers and Tony Scherr played guitar on a few additional songs and tabla player Vikram Gosh joined for one cut on the demo. Lundvall signed Norah as a Blue Note artist off the back of the thirteen tracks submitted.