Jason McNiff - Ten Blue Songs Jason McNiff

Ten Blue Songs is Jason McNiff's 10th Album and, despite the melancholy title, it is a record of celebration. A celebration of the musical life he has spent years trying to build.

"A superior singer/writer “ No Depression

"Songs like a Raymond Carver short story“ Shindig!

'Wistful and nostalgic' Will Hodgkinson, The Times

”UK's premier fingerstyle guitarist“ Mojo ****

The album was produced and recorded by Trevor Moss (Trevor Moss & Hannah-Lou) at his studio Bexpop, in Bexhill-on-Sea. Trevor learned this craft from Ethan Johns, the legendary producer and drummer, and son of Glyn. The aim was to value feel and performance over technical perfection.

The album began totally live in the studio. The best moments of clarinet, double bass, piano and violin were then woven around McNiff’s vocal and guitar performances. The result is a studio album that has the feel and immediacy of a live performance.

'Nightshift Blues' was inspired by Italo Calvino's short story, Tale of a Married Couple, set during Italy’s post-war economic boom. “It’s a very tender story about a husband working nights while the wife works days, and the tiny amount of time they get together. But in the song, I wanted to get inside the man’s head and imagine something darker — an inability to truly possess his wife’s beauty!”

Elsewhere, 'Whoever I Am' takes inspiration from the stripped-back storytelling of Raymond Carver and Ernest Hemingway. “I love how writers like Carver can create emotions while only presenting the facts - stories where nothing happens. I’m always trying to do that in songs, though songwriting seems to only grow more mysterious to me.”

McNiff cites 'Scared to Love' as the emotional centre of the album. “It made me quite uncomfortable to sing that line, to admit that feeling. I almost threw the song away. But I knew that discomfort meant there was something real in it.”

Jason McNiff was born in Bradford, Yorkshire, in the mid Seventies. He was drawn to the guitar from an early age and by the time he moved to London in 1995, he was set on becoming a musician. Copying the guitar style of Mark Knopfler, he crawled the capital's dying blues circuit, jamming, and learning from older players, eventually landing at the Easycome Acoustic Club in Nunhead. This Wednesday night folk club was, and still is, run by Andy Allan, aka Hank Dog (of Hanks Dogs and Sex Pistols fame) and it was Andy who produced Jason's early records, Off the Rails (2000) and Nobody's Son (2003) - the latter voted Americana UK's album of the year. He played a midnight residency at the 12 bar club, meeting and opening for Bert Jansch, and later singing to a label owned by the Scottish guitarist's brother-in-law.