John Wesley Harding

John Wesley Harding may take his name from a Bob Dylan album and he's a modern-day folksinger, but with the biting, cynical observations in his songs and sharp sense of humor combined with winning melodies, he shows his true forefathers are Elvis Costello and Nick Lowe with a hint of Billy Bragg. Far from being a follower or strict revivalist, however, Wes draws on a wide assortment of musical influences, pushing the boundaries of the all-too-often formulaic singer/songwriter tag to create something all his own.



Wesley Harding Stace was born in Hastings, East Sussex, England in 1965. He taught himself guitar, picking out songs by John Prine, Loudon Wainwright and Bob Dylan and eventually began writing on his own as a teenager. In 1988, he cut short his Ph.D. studies at Cambridge University in favor of a career in music. An opening slot for John Hiatt attracted the attention of Demon Records who signed him and released the live It Happened One Night the same year.

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