JP Harris & The Tough Choices - Thursday, November 13th, 2014
with special guest Christopher Paul Stelling
Thursday, November 13th 2014
Doors 7:00 PM / Showtime 8:00 PM
All Ages
Tickets are will call only, transferable but non-refundable.
J.P. Harris and The Tough Choices play Country Music. Period. No “pop‐,” “alt‐,” “rock‐,” “folk‐,” etc. prefixes. Sick and tired of the modern Pop‐Country filth broadcast shamelessly and persistently across our beautiful countrysides, The Tough Choices set out to right the wrongs done to a music so classically and quintessentially American. As we speak, Hank Williams, BuckOwens, Carl Smith, and countless other champions of Honky Tonk are rolling in their graves, groaning with disgust over the watered‐down contemporary excuse that the “Country” music industry presents us for music. Save a few Randy Travis gems and Alan Jackson hits, this flim‐flam is pathetic, at best.
When The Tough Choices began, there were only two rules: keep it country, and keep it simple. They have done both, yet still weave burning pedal steel leads and painfully genuine guitar solos with the cool calm of a Spaghetti‐Western Clint Eastwood. The Tough Choices have been described as such: “…imagine that somehow, defying the laws of nature, Hank Williams and Lemmy Kilmister hatched an egg…this egg was incubated under a neon light for twelve years (which is approximately the time Wild Turkey ages in the bottle), and were hatched in a juke joint…” These ruffians draw on influences ranging from early Western Swing to rough‐edged Truck Driving ballads; Bob Wills all the way to Merle Haggard 15 or so years after that funny album cover with the Chihuahua in his arms. Think of them as the perfect gentlemen to bring home for Christmas, if only you could get the stains off their Wranglers and the cheap whiskey off their breath.
Having hit the road at the young age of 14, J.P. Harris has been living the songs he writes for well over a decade. With a guitar always in his hands, he began playing and singing early country standards around sheep‐herding camps in the southwest, and later in hobo jungles and on freight trains across the country. Living and working the past ten years as carpenter, logger, apple‐picker, banjo‐builder, busker, and a slew of other low‐paid, dirty‐handed trades in rural Vermont, J.P. decided to take to the road once again as the neon and stage lights beckoned relentlessly. Relocating closer to his home‐city of Montgomery, AL in September of 2011, J.P. now calls Music City (Nashville, TN) home.
With no more than a few months at age twelve of music instruction, J.P. Harris is truly a self‐taught player and songwriter…his songs are simple recollections of the many paths he’s trod; heartbroken & heart‐breaker, gentleman & lowlife, home‐bound working man & listless
wanderer. With a rare ear for authenticity, J.P. pens Honky Tonk ballads ranging from destitute pleas of the drunkard to upbeat barroom anthems, always maintaining a simplicity and sharp wit only found in a road‐worn author.
Christopher Paul Stelling
After releasing his debut album Songs of Praise and Scorn in February of 2012, Christopher Paul Stelling has toured the US relentlessly, averaging nearly 200 shows per year. Singing his songs with a pure uninhibited delivery, Stelling has become known for the intensity and passion put into his live performances. Owing as much to the bards and troubadours of times long since past as to his contemporaries, Stelling’s ever developing commitment to his craft is obvious. His second album False Cities was released on May 21st, 2013 on the heels of his first european tour. False Cities is a record that brings Stelling’s gothic folk mix of howling fingerpicked stomps and crooning laments to an even further realization. 2014 saw him touring Europe four times while preparing his third record, Labor Against Waste, which is set for release in early 2015.
