Dynablob 2: John Wesley Harding as you always wanted to hear him - fifteen otherwise unreleased songs live, recorded at various venues across America!
Wesley Stace was born in Hastings, Sussex in 1965, and educated at The King's School, Canterbury, and Jesus College, Cambridge. Under the name, John Wesley Harding, he has released 15 albums, ranging from traditional folk to full on pop music. His most recent pop release Adam's Apple (2004) was called "the finest album of his career" (All Music Guide), "one of his best, a sharp collection of pop that cleverly weds sunny melodies to dark matters" (The New Yorker) and "a dazzling piece of popcraft that shows wide range and real heart" (No Depression.)
John Wesley Harding has been joined onstage by Lou Reed, Iggy Pop, John Prine, Bruce Springsteen (with whom he recorded a duet on his album Awake), Joan Baez, Peter Buck, Evan Dando, David Baddiel, Rick Moody, Scott MacCaughey and Robyn Hitchcock amongst others. He has appeared on Late Night with Conan O'Brien, The Late Show with David Letterman, and The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. His songs have been featured in films (including High Fidelity) and covered by other artists. His most recent record was "Songs of Misfortune", a (mostly) a capella recording by The Love Hall Tryst, featuring the ballads from his first novel, Misfortune. The recently released DVD "A Bloody Show" documents an epic show filmed at Bumbershoot in Seattle, featuring songs from Misfortune, on which JWH is accompanied by a rock band, a string quartet and The Love Hall Tryst, and readings from the novel, with Robyn Hitchcock as the narrator. His next record is to be recorded later this year with The Minus Five.
Misfortune, under his real name Wesley Stace, was published to great acclaim in 2004 by Little, Brown (USA) and Jonathan Cape (UK) - translations followed in Italy, France (where it has become a bestseller), Holland, Taiwan, Japan, Israel etc. It was nominated for The Guardian First Book Award, The Commonwealth Writers' Prize, The James Tiptree, Jr. Award, listed as one of the books of the year in The Washington Post and The Boston Phoenix, and was one of Amazon's Top Ten Novels of the Year. His second novel, BY GEORGE, will be published in August 2007.
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