Preview

Raised in the deep hollows of mountainous Scott County, Virginia, A.J. was fed a steady diet of bluegrass and traditional mountain music that strongly flavours his own vivid and haunting tunes. Roach’s lyrics are at turns deeply personal, lighthearted, comical, fanciful, and spellbinding, never losing sight of his first calling as a master storyteller. Roach’s ability to strip away all but the most necessary elements of a song gives his music a rarified clarity and distinctive simplicity unmatched in today’s music industry.

There's a sad beauty, a bittersweet melancholy that runs through the songs (on Dogwood Winter), as pure and welcome as an Appalachian spring - Paste Magazine

His Americana folk songs unfold beautiful narratives and a gritty sentiment not heard since the late great Townes Van Zandt last broke the hearts of an audience - Listen.com

From Builth, Jack Harris is undoubtedly one of Wales' most promising contemporary folk performer/writers.

Review

When tonight's opener Jack Harris, making a welcome Talbot reappearance, played at the prestigious South-by-Southwest Songwriter Festival in America last year, he earned the attention and encouragement of many of his US peers, not least A J Roach - it's a measure of the maturity of Jack's writing and playing that A J insisted that Jack should accompany him as opening artist on this, his own debut UK tour. Jack's made noticeably significant strides since his last Tregaron visit: still just 18, his stage presence is confident and engaging, the songs reveal intriguing inspirational directions and clever wordplay, the guitar playing's sensitive and clear, and his voice is developing a sound all its own - I heard someone make the comparison with current hot-ticket Ray Lamontagne, and there's certainly something of Ray's throaty breathiness there ... 'Happy Song For Baltimore' opened proceedings, followed by the extraordinary 'Tailor of Aquitaine' - written when still 16, the sophistication of this one still amazes - and the neat 'Kettling Bird'. Jack's precocious 15-year-old brother Harry then leapt onstage to add skilled mandolin work to an audacious slowed-to-a-ballad 'Jackson' (the Lee Hazelwood/Nancy Sinatra classic), current single 'A Plague on Both Your Horses', and driving set-closer 'Sailing'. It's not a matter of whether Jack will make a significant impact in the competitive acoustic songwriter jungle, just a matter of when ... his is a very special gift.

Although he's currently California-based, A J Roach, an engagingly quiet and affable fellow offstage, reveals his Scott County, Virginia roots just as soon as he opens his mouth to sing. On his stunning a cappella opening paean to 'The Hills of Old Virginia', it sounds (and looks) like he's singing his heart out in celebration and memory of all his Appalachian forebears - his voice is strident and hauntingly powerful, with a strong vibrato, always on the edge of breaking into a yodel, and is convincing evidence that Roach is the real deal, in contrast to those neo-Oh Brother Where Art Thou pretenders who cover their middle-class origins in 'yee-haw' pastiche. As a mountain man, A J doesn't have to reach out far for subject matter - it's all right there, in his memories and experiences of the backwoods, where narcotics ('Dimes'), suicide ('Clinch River Blues'), poverty ('Gifts'), illness ('Black Lung') and violence ('James White') all figure in day-to-day life. There are fond memories, too, of proud and resourceful men in songs like 'Grandaddy' and 'Sears & Roebuck Suit', as well as clever metaphor at work in the humane 'Smaller Scale'. There's real beauty in his more reflective ballads, too - 'Mean Goodbye' and, in particular, the heart-rending 'Temporary' justify the deserved (if inaccurate) Townes van Zandt comparisons that some critics have made ... Townes was pure Texas, A J is pure Virginia, but the impact of songs this good is equivalent. To sum up, Roach isn't for everybody: this is strong meat, and his guitar (and occasional banjo) playing is functional rather than refined, but serves as the firm foundation for a unique voice and narrative gift that marks A J out as a distinctive and genuine new contender in a genre overcrowded with bland soundalikes.