The music business is a strange place with, if you think about it, a hell of a lot more people trying to get in to it, than there is capacity for and it was listening to Jay Stone’s album that reminded me of that. He hails from that that vaguely denied area of England called The Midlands and that too seemed so very appropriate.
You see, Jay Stone is an everyman singer. He is the kind of singer that you find in the back room of the pubs of this fine country of a weekend. The kind of performer that exists on the periphery of the business. Earnest almost to a fault and respectful of his influences, he plays straight forward, blues rock influenced songs with a directness and honesty that runs contrary to current fashion. Accordingly, while stylistic approach pervades the album, it is songs with a bit of social insight in them like “Tommy Don’t Work” that benefit most from it.
In a way, he reminded me of Mickey Jupp in that he seems to be keeping alive the past in his songs about today. I kind of like that and, despite the limitations of the low budget production, I felt all warm and a bit sentimental after listening to “The Time Is Now”.