Occupying his own unique space in American music somewhere between the throaty junkyard stomp of Tom Waits and the wild mercurial ramblings of Dylan, James Keyes is a musician who's own sound is just gritty and earthy enough to scare away casual listeners in these times of manufactured pop and just easy enough to make the adventurous a listener for life. It's the cumulative sound of all the folk music that's come before it. Gut-bucket blues, honky-tonk tear jerkers, songs of the road and its endless freedom, dark nights in smoky roadhouses and that long black ache of the broken American dream. Yeah it's dark. And it's hard and unforgiving but it's also human and warm, you just have to give it a listen to get it. Or maybe not. Keyes travels solo with only a guitar and his right foot beating out the time on a home made pedal board. His songs run the gamut from the profane to the sublime and never stop long enough for you to figure out which.