Album Notes

If you can imagine Bob Dylan inviting Glenn Phillips, Steve Earle, Chris Isaak, Dave Matthews and the Wallflowers over for enchiladas, imported beer and social debate then you have a good grasp on the direction Jim Halfpenny is taking with his music. Folk/Roots meets Alternate Adult/Pop/Rock. Sometimes gritty. Sometimes sweet. At times humorous. Other times stingingly close to the heart. The emphasis is always on good, solid songwriting and generating an original atmosphere around a familiar sound. The result is earthy, yet polished.

Jim Halfpenny is a multi-published BMI songwriter and a successful film composer with over 20 feature films to his credit. Jim "escaped" Los Angeles in 2002 and relocated to the Hill Country just southwest of Austin, Texas. After taking some time to check out the Austin music scene Jim teamed up with drummer, Brandon Storms and bassist, Mark Kellogg to form the Jim Halfpenny Band. Brandon and Jim got the project going in July of 2005 when they first got together to work out some arrangements for some of the songs Jim had been performing as a solo artist and in other bands around Austin and Central Texas. Mark and Jim are childhood friends who have played and recorded in various bands together since their days in high school. When performing live the trio is often joined on stage by a tasteful variety of talented musicians from the prodigious Austin area talent pool, most noteably, guitarist, Hunter Dryden.

Jim, Brandon and Mark spent the first three months of 2006 putting the final touches to their first CD. All the recording was tracked in Jim's facility, Back Forty Studios, in the Austin Hill Country. The mix was done at Wire Recording in Austin by Stuart Sullivan who has worked for such artists as Shawn Colvin, James McMurtry, Robert Earl Keen, Eric Johnson and Sublime. A number of his mixes have earned platinum records. While working with Jim and the band on their project Sullivan made this comment about their sound, “The music is like a nice warm towel…you just want to wrap yourself all up in it.”

The resulting CD, First Things First, was released in May of '06 and has already garnered excellent reviews. Maria Mesa, of Austin Daze Magazine, wrote in her column for the June '06 issue, "Halfpenny writes deep thought provoking lyrics...one of the better singer/songwriter albums to come my way."

Currently The Jim Halfpenny Band is playing locally and regionally to promote the CD which is getting substantial airplay on such prominent Texas radio stations as KGSR - Austin, KPFT - Houston, KEOS - College Station/Bryan, KTEX - Brenham and KFAN - Fredericksburg.