Jez Lowe at The Mainstay, October 24

The fine English songwriter and singer, Jez Lowe, will appear at The Mainstay in Rock Hall, Maryland on Saturday October 24 at 8:00 p.m. Admission is $15.

For information and reservations call 410-639-9133. Information is also available at the Mainstay’s website https://www.mainstayrockhall.org.

Jez Lowe

Over the past 30 years, Jez Lowe has built a durable reputation as a prolific songwriter and performer in the world of acoustic, folk and roots music. His wonderful voice does great justice to his beautifully melodic songs, songs with strong narratives that tell the stories of ordinary people. Many of his songs reflect the social, political and historical heritage of his native County Durham and the surrounding area but they are universal in their appeal. Between songs, he is an eloquent and whimsical raconteur.

Not only is he one of the busiest live performers around appearing at festivals and clubs around the world, but his songs are among the most widely sung and recorded by other performers from folk rock legends like Fairport Convention to the Irish traditional musicians, The Dubliners, to the youthful Canadian roots rockers, the Duhks.

His songs are so appealing that they are also sung and passed around by amateur folksingers around the world to the point where people don’t even realize that he is the composer. “Someone reviewed a concert I did at a folk festival”, Lowe recalls, “and they said I just got up and did a set of folk standards and there was nothing much original there. What they didn’t realize was the ‘standards’ were the ones I’d actually written. That’s happened all along. People have picked up on the songs as part of the folk tradition and they don’t realize where they come from. I found very, very often in Canada, the States and Australia even, I get there but the songs are there long before I am.”

A double nomination in the 2015 BBC Folk Awards – for best singer and best new song – was a timely reminder of Lowe’s standing in the UK folk and acoustic music scene. He continues to write songs (more than 60 so far) for the award-winning BBC series “The Radio Ballads” a series fashioned after the original created by Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger in 1958. His song “The Wrong Bus” was singled out for inclusion on Britain’s Radio 4 Pick of the Year last December. The song is also featured on his latest recording, “The Ballad Beyond,” the success of which prompted a feature in fRoots magazine and glowing reviews the world over.

Lowe was born and raised in County Durham, in a family with Irish roots. He is best known for his compositions dealing with daily life in North-East England, particularly in his hometown of Easington Colliery and the nearby region. He grew up witnessing the decline of the coal-mining industry that was for generations the basis for the region’s economy.

He has performed at some of the most prestigious venues in the world, both solo and with his band, the Bad Pennies, including the main stages at Edmonton Festival (Canada), Tonder Festival (Denmark), The Kennedy Center and the Smithsonian (US), Port Fairy and Byron Bay Festivals (Australia) and at concerts and festivals in New Zealand, Hong Kong, Ireland, Holland, Germany and Spain.

While his festival appearances with the Bad Pennies are always rousing and uplifting, a solo set in an intimate space like The Mainstay is a great way experience the music of Jez Lowe.

The Mainstay (Home of Musical Magic) is the friendly informal storefront performing arts center on Rock Hall’s old time Main Street. It is committed to presenting local, regional and national level talent, at a reasonable price, in an almost perfect acoustic setting.