Best known as the singer with folk-rockers Oysterband, John Jones also has a solo career, and has become known for his “walking tours” across Britain, playing in festivals or pubs and always arriving on foot. The (mostly) self-written songs on his second solo album are influenced, he says, both by his travels and “my own story, having been diagnosed with colon cancer”. But this is not an album of sad or bitter songs. He’s in powerful voice, is helped by a classy band that includes the Oysterband’s Al Scott, and there’s an energy here that was sometimes lacking on last year’s Oysterband album. Jones’s subject matter may involve shooting, heroin, a hangman or the death of the English village, but there’s usually a glimmer of hope, if not a happy ending, and the same is true of the three traditional songs which include a gutsy rendition of Jim Jones.
