Jeb`s new record, Days Are Mighty, is an intimate portrayal of a simple life lived on the margins.

'My last record', he says, 'was all about being away from home. I went to Nashville and wrote a record about my relationship with America. This record is about my relationship with home.'
Days Are Mighty, like most home life, is deceptive. On first listen it feels warm, comfortable, and safe. But like most home life, scratch the surface and you find a whole world of contradictions. Songs of loss, of separateness, of fear.
'Sure', says Jeb Loy, 'it's all there. But it's beautiful too. It's simple. Direct. It's like the bluegrass records I grew up with. All those beautiful harmonies singing songs about death. I wanted to make a beautiful record. A warm record. But I wanted it to be about the stuff I deal with everyday. I deal with regret, with age, with disappointment, with the failure of society to be decent.'
The record steers away tricky production and fancy arrangements. It's a record that sounds like what it is: songs about life outside fashion. 'I could have made a bigger record', Jeb Loy says. 'Brought in horns and strings and everything, but I wanted it to fit in my kitchen. I wanted to feel like we were sitting at my kitchen table talking. Just you and me. I wanted to talk about the see everyday. Old barns falling down, the winter months, old girlfriends, the lack of political resistance. I wanted to say: the only true revolution is to fall in love. That's permanent revolution. That's real upheaval.'
 

To keep the record simple, Jeb Loy chose to work with old friends. Jennifer Carr, a long time collaborator, is on keyboards. Andy Hamill, one of Jeb's closest friends, is on bass. Jonathan Lee is on drums. 'Mates, Jeb Loy says, 'one and all. A good time. Just us, talking. Just family.'

"Days are Mighty" is a limited 2 disc edition including 10 demo songs!
 

Part One: SWEET, TOUGH, AND TERRIBLE
 

Talking to Jeb Loy Nichols about his life is like watching a road movie. The restless pursuit of an unnamed goal, the constant search for something just out of reach. "It's true", he says, walking through the fields of his Welsh farm, "I've done some moving". It's all there in his music. The country, bluegrass and pop of his early years, the rebel music of punk and reggae, the deep grooves of the south. "It's all a road", Nichols says, "one connecting to the other, all of them intersecting and crossing over".

Born in Wyoming and raised in Missouri, Nichols absorbed the sounds of both rural America and the records played around his house. "We got it all", he says, "my mom played jazz records, Don Shirley and Ella Fitzgerald, while my dad played bluegrass and Hank Williams." But it was from the radio that Jeb received his most lasting education. Through the day and late into the night Jeb would listen and take to heart the disparate sounds of the airwaves. "The main station I listened to was out of Kansas City and played country music all day, then at nine o-clock at night they'd switch and become a soul station. It was magic, all this great music; Bobby Womack, Al Green, Curtis Mayfield, The Staples Singers, all of right there, in my bedroom, for free."

When Jeb was fourteen the family moved to Austin, Texas. "The best thing I learned in Austin", Jeb says, "was how great live music could be. I saw everything from Funkadelic to Bob Marley to George Jones to The Ramones." It was in Austin that he first heard, and was knocked out by, The Sex Pistols. "That was all new, the sound, the fury, the politics, all of it." And it led straight to the road again, this time to New York. "I was seventeen", recalls Jeb, "and New York was like nothing I'd ever seen. I'd always felt like an outsider and then there I was, in a town of outsiders. I thought I'd died and gone to heaven." In New York he was awarded a full scholarship to study painting at Parsons School of Design. He also started hanging out at clubs like Tier 3, The Loft and the Mudd Club where he became friends with members of the Slits and Neneh Cherry. "It was a great time to be in New York, the whole scene was so wide open." It was the emerging hip hop scene that was most fasinating for him. "It was 1979 - and nothing in the world was more exciting that rap. The Treacherous Three, Funky Four Plus One, Grandmaster Flash - that stuff was so great! And then you had DJ` s like Larry Levan, it was fantastic."

After three years in New York, Jeb hit the road again, this time to London. He shared a house with Ari Up from the Slits, Neneh Cherry and producer Adrian Sherwood, and, as he had in NYC, dove into London's artistic community. "I formed a country band with some friends and we played every kind of show you can think of. We did some bluegrass, some country, a lot of old protest songs." In 1990 a tape of songs ended up at OKra Records, a small label in Columbus, Ohio. OKra offered Jeb a deal, and Jeb put together a band that included his wife Loraine Morley, On-U Sound man Martin Harrison, and jazz trombonist John Harbourne. The Fellow Travellers merged country-tinged, acoustic-based songs with a dub bottom. "It was fun", says Jeb "it just worked. We all played what we wanted and stayed out of each others way, and it sounded great. I"ve never had more fun." The Fellow Travellers released three more albums and were described in Spin as "the lonesome children of Merle, Marley and Marx"

The Fellow Travellers stayed on the road for most of the first half of the nineties. "We had a hellava time - did well in Germany where they understood what we were doing. We never rehearsed, just did what we felt, it was a real fluid thing, real casual. I think it was probably the easiest music I ever made."

In 1996 Jeb released a solo record in America, the critically acclaimed Lovers Knot. "We got great reveiws and had a great record, but the label never really knew what to do with us - we kinda got lost." His next release, Just What Time It Is, included the hit Heaven Right Here, a track The Philidelphia Enquirer called "the ultimate summer record, brilliant, the sound of the summer." His next release, Easy Now, was called "a groove filled, rural, soulfull record, an uncompromising slice of slow burning melancholia" by Time Out.

For now, Jeb is content to stay put on his Welsh small holding. He moved there in 2000 and, with his wife, has slowly reclaimed ten acres of neglected scrub land, renovated a barn and put in a large garden. "I'm sure I'll move again", he says, "but not just yet. This feels good, feels like something close to home."
 

PART TWO: NOW THEN
 

"It's all about give and take," says Jeb Loy Nichols. "All about tension, about restraint." We're talking about his new CD NOW THEN, a collection of songs recorded in Nashville. "The way the country pulls at the city, the way the old plays with the new."

It's a remarkable record, a masterpiece of distilled soul. "This is the record I've been leaning towards," Jeb says, "all these years, all this moving around, all this listening and watching." Hard bargains and divided families, absconders and runaways, holy dread and love, it's all here. The record pulses with seductive stories that talk of shifting fidelities and damage limitation.

"I knew I wanted to make this record in Nashville", Jeb says, "because Nashville is nowhere I'd ever want to live. I love Nashville, but it's definitely not home. And I wanted that feeling of being unfixed. And I wanted to work with Mark Nevers." Mark Nevers, member and producer of Lampchop, producer of Will Oldham, seems at first an odd choice to work with. But "Mark's great," says Jeb, "the best in the world. I've known him for awhile and he brought the exact right feeling. Dirty and perfect and warm and unexpected."

The record was recorded in five days in Never's studio in Nashville. The band was a mix of young and old; Mark brought some members of Lambchop while Jeb brought Muscle Shoals veteran Clayton Ivey and soul legend Dan Penn. They then brought the tapes back to London where they recorded bassist Wayne Nunes (Tricky, African Head Charge) and backing vocals by reggae legends Roy Cousins (The Royals) and Struggle. Then it was back to Nashville to record the strings and horns. "More travelling," says Jeb. "But worth every minute. It had to be done that way - had to get that mish-mash of people, that gumbo."

It was risky, but it works. The record brims over with conversations between players, between generations, between countries and cultures. The same give and take that Jeb first heard on southern soul records is updated here. "It was great to be a part of it, to watch it. To listen to everyone playing off each other. That's the point - to tell stories, to listen, to be a part of something bigger and better than yourself."