Jason McNiff

Born in England, the London-based singer-songwriter McNiff began committing songs to tape in the early 00s, yet his music evokes the folk-rock troubadours who flourished in the late 60s and early 70s. Drawing from American songsmiths such as Tim Hardin, Townes Van Zandt, and Bob Dylan, he crafts thoughtful ballads rich in precise imagery and understated emotion. Those traits already marked his debut, the 2000 album Off The Rails, which Andy Allen of the Hank Dogs produced, and they deepened steadily thereafter. The 2003 release Nobody’s Son followed a comparable path while incorporating contributions from musicians associated with both the Hank Dogs and Grand Drive. Beyond his talent for pairing evocative words with understated yet forceful acoustic guitar, McNiff has also demonstrated flair in reinterpreting existing material, reshaping the Beatles’ psychedelic “Tomorrow Never Knows” into a folk-blues treatment reminiscent of Bert Jansch and reshaping the Italian melody “Bella Ciao” to suit his own approach. In 2008 the anthology In My Time collected tracks from each of his three prior albums and added several newly recorded pieces intended to satisfy completists.