Josh Harty - Monday, November 12 2012

http://www.joshharty.com/

Josh Harty plays BAG at Mick Murphy's, Ballymore Eustace, Monday, November 12, 9pm.

Josh Harty is a messenger, a North Dakota songsmith whose lyrics fill the dark spots between the lines of our lives. ‘Nowhere’ is his latest album and if the disc's reception and his performance of the new material in the Europe are signs, Harty is poised to go a long, long way.

It doesn't get more Americana than Josh Harty. His father, both a preacher and the Police Chief of his boyhood small town, was also Harty's music mentor. "I was either going to jail, or to hell," Harty muses. That kind of humor, that hell-bound hope, is in the center of Harty's music. Music captured on the new disc, polished in performance in America, and now ready for another European tour in support of Nowhere.

Together with his father, Harty says he "sang in just about every church, Lions Club, Elks Club, and senior citizen center within 200 miles of Fargo." When his parents moved out of the area when Harty was a Senior in high school, his devotion to the school's music program and its director led him to relocate to an apartment with his older brother, 5 years his senior. They lived near the Empire Tavern in downtown Fargo, and for the impressionable young musician, watching the cast of characters come and go was like going to songwriting college. The hard life, lies and perseverance in the face of both, surface to the top of Harty's music like a beer mug ring left behind on a wooden bar top.

Those in the upper Midwest who have watched Harty grow since his move to Madison, Wisconsin in 2005 know what he can make happen live. His warm, woeful voice is buoyed by charismatic guitar playing. He can hush a bar room. When he lets his guitar do the talking audiences are carried all the way in.

“...something more like quiet contemplation and a refreshing restraint that lets his voice and lyrics claim the spotlight they deserve.”-Missoula Independent, Missoula Montanta

"An honest voice and fingers that seem to catch fire."-The Atlanta Music Guide, Atlanta GA

"A work of extreme intensity" reports the Lonestar Times of Italy, "with beautiful voice, warm and strong."

“The new songs are brave, and alarming. ‘Whiskey and Morphine’ is both a caution and a taunt of temptations. The album’s title track, “Nowhere,” makes that word a destination to be feared, a place only hope will keep away.”-Fearless Radio

Harty will capture your radio or television audience the same way he commands a bar room. And his live shows prove that good story telling combined with journeyman musicianship is as American as music gets. Meet the heart of Americana. Meet Josh Harty.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=xjgFVkhnglo