Unless you’re familiar with folk music, then you probably won’t have heard of John Craigie, but he is the type of artist that music desperately needs.
His new album,’ No Rain, No Rose’, offers a throwback to a time gone by and is reminiscent of folk artists such as Bob Dylan, Todd Snider and Robert Keen.
Recorded in his house within a week, the highly acclaimed album features two standout tracks ‘I am California’ and ‘Broken’.
John, 37, said: “I recorded the whole album in five days back in Portland and just had musicians coming in and out of my house; it was really cool.”
The California native is currently on his first UK tour, and will play the Sound Lounge in Tooting on Tuesday October 17.
The tour is also the first time he has been to many British cities, with his favourite places so far listed as Brighton and Cirencester; the latter he struggles to pronounce but thought that the crowd was awesome.
Although Craigie is playing 18 venues across the UK in just 19 days, he claims the travelling does not affect him.
John said: “I don’t mind the travelling at all. My shows aren’t exactly exhausting for me and it’s really chilled out; so it’s cool.”
The singer has just finished touring with Jack Johnson, and boasts the legendary Chuck Norris as one of his fans.
Norris sent him a huge signed poster of himself, greased up and holding two machine guns.
“How it came about was that I wrote a song about him. I have twenty songs about my feelings so I thought I’d put one really funny song in about Chuck,” said John.
“Anyway, one of his people was at my gig and sent it to Chuck which he saw as an ode to him,”
If ‘No Rain, No Rose’ as an album isn’t proof enough of John’s talents, then a recommendation from Chuck Norris certainly should be. Everyone knows that you do not disagree with him.
