Diana Jones - The 'Better Times Will Come' Tour

Support Greg Hancock

Presented by: Full House

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0	TOPSHAM: The Bridge Inn
P	Friday 14th April, 2023
N	7:00pm

Event information

Full House Promotions are thrilled to bring acclaimed U.S. singer/songwriter Diana Jones to The Bridge Inn in Topsham, Exeter. This is a rare opportunity to experience the artistry of Diana in such an intimate and historic setting

Diana's first album My Remembrance Of You (2006) garnered rave reviews internationally and set her on a path which would see her release four further critically acclaimed albums: Better Times Will Come (2008), High Atmosphere (2011), Museum Of Appalachia Recordings (2013) and Live In Concert (2016). She has toured the globe, including performances at prestigious events such as Cambridge Folk Festival, Galway Arts Festival, Levon Helm's Ramble in Woodstock, NY, and Bimhuis in Amsterdam, and shared stages with the likes of Richard Thompson, Janis Ian and Mary Gauthier. She has also appeared on world-renowned TV and radio shows Later With Jools Holland, BBC4 Folk America, BBC4's Songwriters Circle and BBC Radio 2 Country with Bob Harris. Diana's progressive, yet historically rich, songs have been recorded by artists including Joan Baez and Gretchen Peters and have won her awards from Kerrville Folk Festival, New Song Festival and nominations from International Folk Alliance.

Award winning, US singer/songwriter Diana Jones is known for her gritty, literary, Appalachian influenced songs. Adopted as an infant and raised in Long Island, NY, the fact that Diana couldn't get enough of her brother's Johnny Cash records finally made sense when she found her birth family and musical roots in the Smoky Mountains of Eastern Tennessee. Her maternal grandfather, who had formed his first teenage band with a young Chet Atkins, was happy to pass on the culture and the music that he loved to his granddaughter.

This tour celebrates the reissue of her critically lauded 2008 album Better Times Will Come – reimagined and remastered for release on April 7th, to mark the 15th anniversary of the original recording. Diana enlisted studio engineer Steve Addabbo, fresh from his work on Bob Dylan’s Bootleg Series, to help her cast a retrospective eye over the tracks. Together they reimagined the mixes and the running order and added a previously unreleased song ‘Call Me Daddy’, to reflect changes she has envisaged since the original release. The new version of the title track “Better Times Will Come”, featuring harmony vocals by Diana’s friend the late Nanci Griffith and a newly found additional chorus, is out now. Its abiding message remains so timely, given the hardships of recent years and those still being felt today.

"Diana Jones has a riveting delivery, unadorned and direct – and so true, her stories are so believable, they hang tangible in the air..... the reality of events, of emotions, of what was seen, what was said and what went unsaid is vibrant" - Americana UK. January 2023

"She sings of the hard times, murderous urges and chilling loneliness that haunt the old Anglo-Celtic ballads ... She approaches the mountain-ballad tradition not as a curiosity or antique but as a renewable vernacular that’s just as capable of speaking to the human condition now as it was 80 years ago" - Bill Friskics, New York Times

'Diana Jones is one of the best songwriters I've heard in a long, long time' - Steve Earle

'There's some kind of channelling from some other lifetime going on ….. it must come from some mysterious part of her soul' - Joan Baez

'Her voice, both as a singer and a songwriter, is completely her own - a rarity in today's world' - Janis Ian