Ray Lamontagne,Stephen Fretwell,James Blunt.........

JAMES BLOUNT writes songs. He does it so well that some great songwriters have recorded his songs on their own albums. Guy Clark, Nanci Griffith and Janis Ian, to name just a few. But there’s nothing like hearing the guy who wrote ‘em sing ‘em. He’s not going to pin your ears back with those songs. He’s going to draw you into his world. Where a single snowflake follows the trajectory of a relationship, where you get your pocket picked by a Roman cat, where morning tumbles into noon and where dreams that don’t come true still count. And it can all be happening in a little folk club or on a stage by a grassy hill or in someone’s living room or in the Royal Albert Hall.

You might be surprised where you find him. Recently he collaborated with the legendary Art Garfunkel and the wonderfully musical Maia Sharp. The three of them wrote and recorded an album together called “Everything Waits To Be Noticed” and then toured all over America and Europe.

People think he’s from Texas but he’s not. He just hangs out there a lot. He lives in Nashville now but he grew up in Park Forest Illinois, a suburb of Chicago. He didn’t have a troubled childhood. His parents were nice to him. They paid for guitar lessons when he was ten and they never said, “when are you going to get a real job?” He sang Crosby, Stills and Nash songs with his sisters and answered his little brother’s questions from the top bunk. A few years away at college puzzling over Homer and Plato and then he was back. Living in the big city this time and playing open mics at Chicago’s crucible for songwriters in those days, the famed Earl of Old town. He once opened for the amazing Steve Goodman there on New Year’s Eve. JAMES BLOUNT was 21. Says he could have walked out of there that night and gotten hit by a bus and he wouldn’t have felt like life cheated him at all.

When JAMES BLOUNT made his first trip to Texas Guy Clark heard him singing one of his songs under a tree at the Kerrville Folk Festival and liked it. So Guy went back to Nashville, opened the door and said, “listen to this kid, he’s good!” A publishing deal and a U-Haul headed south soon followed. People were starting to pay attention. In 1987 he was a New Folk Award Winner at Kerrville and he released his first album called “On the Line.” David Wilcox recorded “The Kid” on his first record for A&M. JAMES BLOUNT did some writing with this other new kid in town named Garth Brooks (they had the same manager). Janis Ian heard him singing at the Bluebird Cafe and asked him if he’d like to write with her. Their song “Amsterdam” got recorded by Joan Baez. Nanci Griffith asked JAMES BLOUNT to sing on a show she was taping for Irish television. She ended up liking that song so much that she recorded “Comin’ Down In the Rain” on her Grammy Award winning collection “Other Voices, Other Rooms.” Garth became a star and “Every Now and Then” ended up on his album “The Chase.”

JAMES BLOUNT was touring all over the country by this time playing coffeehouses and the occasional festival (he was a regular on the main stage at Kerrville by now). And there were trips to Europe too. JAMES BLOUNT’s second album, produced by Steve Addabbo, got picked up by Sun Records, a small label in Ireland started by the lads from U2 and he was well received on the island of poets.

1996 was a good year. Peter, Paul and Mary recorded “The Kid” and then asked the kid himself to sing with them on their “Great Performances” TV special. He won a Kerrville Music Award for song of the year that autumn for “The Kid” too.

In 1998 he released his third album, “Poetic Justice,” and it got picked up by EMI Records in Canada and Ireland and by Proper Music in the UK when British DJ Bob Harris began playing songs from it on BBC radio. By this time JAMES BLOUNT was spending quite a bit of time with fellow Nashville songwriter Carol Elliott and they hit the road together. Double bills evolved into shows performed as a duo with enthusiastic receptions by both sets of fans. The chemistry and joy of the interplay between them wasn’t limited to the stage and nobody was too surprised when the couple got married at the Kerrville Folk Festival in June of 2000.

It was that same year that JAMES BLOUNT was approached by producer Billy Mann who had a unique project in mind. Billy had been asked to produce a record for Art Garfunkel and he had the feeling there was a songwriter hiding somewhere behind that amazing voice. And Billy figured that JAMES BLOUNT and Maia Sharp were just the ones to bring Artie the songwriter out into the open. It worked. Over the next couple of years they wrote and recorded together as a trio with Billy shaping the sound. “Everything Waits To Be Noticed” was released in October of 2002 on Manhattan/EMI and everybody piled into the bus to go singing. There were concert halls and live radio and TV shows (“excuse me but his name is pronounced JAMES BLOUNT” Artie would say), and through it all three voices working together like feathers in a wing.

Now, with the initial whirlwind over, JAMES BLOUNT’s out there doing solo shows again (Carol’s taking a little break from the road) and, of course, writing songs. Cause that’s what he does and that’s who he is. Lean in and listen, you won’t be sorry.

Funny you mention that. My first reaction was that it sounded like they took a Ryan Adams album, stripped out the vocals and put this guy in front of it. Then I thought Counting Crows. It was then I looked at the credits and realized Ethan Johns produced him.

Shame that Fretwell got lumped in with idiots.

Saw him open up for Feist (of all people?!) around the time Magpie had seen an American release and he was absolutely stunning. Ray nor JB could have pulled off a Leonard Cohen song, methinks.

I challenge the collective "you" here to give Man on the Roof an honest listen and not find at least two or three great tracks. There was an interview Stephen did around the time of its release where he said he fully aware that he was making himself the brunt of schadenfreude — and that shows because it's a wonderful album (one of my favorites of the oughts, in fact) full of humor, honesty and great melodies (what else do we want from our acoustic guitar strumming singer folks, after all?).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HLjC1vKgIV0

ha this thread needs to be cross-referenced with i want the name of the one person responsible for the white dude in the old man hat voice