Wirral's Jimmy releases debut album (From Wirral Globe)

Wirral's Jimmy releases debut album

10:21am Friday 19th June 2009

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WIRRAL musician Jimmy Rae releases his debut album this week.

The West Kirby-based singer/songrwiter's debut CD Deliverance is out today (Monday), with the opening track 'Aint So Sorry' as its first single.

In order to promote the album, Jimmy will be performing at Slinky's in West Kirby on tonight.

On Friday, July 3 he will be at Southport Arts Centre as part of a country music festival with members of his band, Firewalkers.

On Wednesday July 15 he will be at the Floral Pavilion Theatre, New Brighton for a solo acoustic show in the Plaza Lounge which starts at 12.30pm.

On Sat July 18 he is at Hilbre Court, West Kirby with The Firewalkers.

On Sunday August 16 he will be at Chester bandstand for an open-air afternoon gig on the bandstand by the River Dee from around midday till 4pm.

There can't be many artists who sign a major record deal and then walk away from it, only to casually wander back twenty years later, like a drifter whistling his own tune.

But Jimmy Rae's story is more than the usual crash and burn scenario.

Signed to the iconic RCA label in the mid 80s, Jimmy's band The Reverb Brothers were highly rated by Radio One's Janice Long among others, being described by one critic as "the Everly Brothers with the lyrical bite of Elvis Costello!"

After slugging it out in the drum machine Armageddon of eighties pop and a couple of financially draining European treks with the likes of Joe Jackson and former Merseyside schoolmates OMD, Jimmy bailed out in 1987.

Disillusioned and broke, and feeling like a man out of time, he returned home to lick his wounds, his dreams of chart success locked away with his guitar.

But the songwriter within him never died. Some 15 years later, the buzz of creativity and the lure of live performance came calling once again, only this time the odds felt distinctly better.

From his perspective in the wilderness, the musical horizon had changed unrecognisably. The homespun honesty of roots music had returned and digital distribution had broken the stranglehold of the major mogul mafia.

A songwriting sabbatical on the remote Irish island of Innisheer with a commune of like-minded musical lost souls resulted in a clutch of new songs, which against the corporate pre-programmed past releases, shone like diamonds in the dust.

Five years after that creative re-awakening, the album is finally complete and Jimmy is once again establishing his position in the scheme of things.

Local radio on Merseyside is already supporting one of its prodigal gun-shy sons, most notably with the poignant 'Eddie's Guitar', a song about the death of Jimmy’s rock’n’roll hero Eddie Cochran.

Interestingly it’s the songwriting traditions of vintage rock’n’roll, country, soul and blues that form Jimmy’s key musical reference points, helping to distinguish Deliverance as an honest autobiographical album. Rootsy but easy on the ear, Jimmy’s songs cover subjects from lost loves to dead end jobs, blending sepia country grooves with a panhandlers eye for a hook.

The album and single will be available to buy or download from 22.6.09 from matchboxrecordings.co.uk and all major online and retail outlets.

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