By John Cleary

Quintessential urban cowboy Jack
Grace and his country/jazz band
saunter into Kilkenney this weekend
for a performance in Cleere's
Theatre on Saturday, August 30.
     A New Yorker with a Johnny
Cash attitude, Grace's gritty style of
country music translates urban
street stories from the Big Apple
onto the country twanged canvass
of the wild west.
     The bearded bard and his
formidable quintet will take to the
Kilkenney stage for the final
performance of a whirlwind Irish
tour which sees them play six
shows in nine days.
     The band made the trip across
the Atlantic to take part in the
annual Bluegrass Festival which
took place in Dunmore East last
weekend, and after three
performances there they moved
onto Galway for an appearance in
Rosin Dub and on Friday night they
will play their penultimate Irish
date of the tour in McCarthy's in
Dingle before winding it up in
Cleere's.
     In the past, Grace has opened for
big-name country stars including
Merle Haggard, Doc Watson, Junior
Brown, Dan Hicks and the Oak
Ridge Boys, one of his greatest
honours to date being the chance
to open for the legendary Haggard at
the Mountain Winery in sunny
California.
     According to Grace, Haggard autographed his 1947 Gibson
acoustic, lifting it into the air and
saying, "I think I feel a few more

songs in this one."
     A music fan since an early age, a
childhood fascination with the
Beatles led Jack Grace to a jumbled
set of influences that included Neil
Young, Led Zeppelin, Johnny Cash
and Waylon Jennings.
     And that mixed, melting-pot of
influences is reflected in one of
Grace's side-projects, a the drolly
named Van Hayride, in which he
and pianist Jon Dryden share the
spotlight in a David Lee Roth-era
Van Halen tribute band with an old
time country and western twist.
     Grace's first album effort,
'Introducing the Sounds of Jack
Grace', was a solo trip on which he
took responsibility for vocals,
guitar, banjo, accordion and
harmonica.
     Those introductory country-rock
sounds proved surprisingly popular
in New York and opened the way to
a three-year, Friday night residency
at NY's Knitting Factory, where he experimented with different band
formats as a precursor to the Jack
Grace Band.
      In 2002 he gathered his players in
the studio to record 'Stayin' Out All
Night', a collection of hard-rocking
songs and signature odes to
optimisim mixed with regret, and
that was followed in 2004 by 'I Like
It Wrong', which hit the top 100 in
the AMA charts and was described
as the country music party album of
the year.
     And most recently the band
released 'The Martini Cowboy', a
confident, swinging country album
that benefits from the wide-ranging
repertoires of the band's various

components.
     Sadly one of the key ingredients
of that country swagger, lap-steel
wizard Drew Glackin passed away
unexpectedly at the start of this
year and recent months have seen
Grace and the rest of the band
trying to deal with the loss of a
close friend and talented musician.
     But the band's musical
eclecticism is a key point of their
chemistry, which Grace's wife Daria a
bassist and vocalist with a rock
background while pianist Jon
Dryden has played with Jesse
Harris and Norah Jones and
drummer Russ Meisner adds his
jazz sensibilities.
     If his New York city background
throws up any doubts about Grace's credentials as a bona fide country
rock originator, then abrasive song
titles such as 'What I Drink And
Who I Meet At The Track', 'Broken
Man', 'Ice Cold Beer', 'When I
Drink Whiskey', and 'The Grass Is
Always Greener (But I Can't
Remember Just Which Grass Is
Mine)' should put the mind at ease.
     "You can practically taste the
whiskey dripping off the songs,"
according to the Village Voice.
     The band have already caused a
bit of a stir on their Irish tour with
their performances in the Dunmore
East Bluegrass Festival and an
appearance on TV3's 'Ireland AM'.
     The Jack Grace Band will
perform live in Cleere's Theatre on
Saturday, August 30. For further
information on the band, visit www.jackgrace.com.