Jonathan Coulton - Sister Golden Hair

Jonathan William Coulton (born December 1, 1970), often called "JoCo" by fans, is an American folk/comedy singer-songwriter, known for his songs about geek culture and his use of the Internet to draw fans. Among his most popular songs are "Code Monkey", "Re: Your Brains", "Still Alive" and "Want You Gone" (the last three being featured in games developed by Valve: Left 4 Dead 2, Portal, and Portal 2 respectively). He was the house musician for NPR weekly puzzle quiz show Ask Me Another from 2012 until its end in 2021.

His album Artificial Heart was the first to chart, eventually reaching No. 1 on Billboard's Top Heatseekers and No. 125 in the Billboard 200.

Coulton graduated in 1993 from Yale, where he was a member of The Spizzwinks and the Yale Whiffenpoofs. In the 1990s, Coulton was in a short-lived band, named SuperGroup, with television producer Eric Salat and best-selling author Darin Strauss. A former computer programmer employed at Cluen, a New York City software company, and self-described geek, Coulton tended to write quirky, witty lyrics about science fiction and technology: a man who thinks in simian terms ("Code Monkey"), a mad scientist who falls in love with one of his captives ("Skullcrusher Mountain"), and the dangers of bacteria. Most of Coulton's recordings feature his singing over guitar, bass, and drums; some also feature the various other instruments Coulton plays, including accordion, harmonica, mandolin, banjo, ukulele, zendrum and glockenspiel.

Coulton's debut album, Smoking Monkey, was released in November 2003.

Several early podcasters discovered and made regular use of Coulton's music, notably Adam Curry of the Daily Source Code and The Wizards of Technology. In April 2006, he lent his voice to one such podcast, The Spoilers, in which he and hosts Rick Yaeger and Bill Douthett provided a 2-hour fan commentary for Raiders of the Lost Ark.

He was the Contributing Troubadour at Popular Science magazine, whose September 2005 issue was accompanied by a five-song set by Coulton called Our Bodies, Ourselves, Our Cybernetic Arms. He was also the musical director for The Little Gray Book Lectures.

From September 16, 2005, to September 30, 2006, Coulton ran "Thing a Week", during which he recorded 52 musical pieces, one per week, in an effort to push his creative envelope via a "forced-march approach to writing and recording"; to prove to himself that he could produce creative output to a deadline; and to see whether a professional artist could use the Internet and distribution via Creative Commons to support himself. Rare topical songs include 2005's "W's Duty", which samples President George W. Bush, and 2006's "Tom Cruise Crazy." In a September 2006 interview, he said of the experiment, "In some parts of the country, I'd be making a decent living". In a February 25, 2008, interview with This Week in Tech, he said that he made more money in 2007 than he did in his last year of working as a programmer, 40% of it from digital downloads and 40% from merchandise and performances.

In 2006, Coulton began touring with comedy duo Paul and Storm. Coulton initially opened the concerts, but as his popularity grew, he began headlining.

Coulton wrote and performed a song titled "Still Alive" for the ending credits of Valve's 2007 video game Portal, with vocals by Ellen McLain. On April 1, 2008, Harmonix made this track available as free downloadable content for the game Rock Band. A version with Coulton's vocals was also included on the Orange Box Original Soundtrack, in addition to the one heard at the end of the game. "Re: Your Brains" made an appearance as an easter egg in Left 4 Dead 2. "Still Alive" has been called "the most influential game music". In 2011, Coulton followed up the success of "Still Alive" with a new song at the end of Portal 2, "Want You Gone". He also wrote the Portal-themed song "You Wouldn't Know" for Lego Dimensions.

Coulton is also known for original pieces such as "Code Monkey", which was featured on Slashdot on April 23, 2006, and linked from the webcomic Penny Arcade. It was also the theme song for an animated show on G4 called Code Monkeys.

His work has been featured on NPR's All Things Considered. Good Morning Silicon Valley featured a link to a video set to his song "Re: Your Brains".

Coulton accompanied John Hodgman on his "700 Hobo Names" promotional track for Hodgman's book The Areas of My Expertise as the guitarist (he was credited as "Jonathan William Coulton, the Colchester Kid"). Coulton also can be heard throughout the audiobook version of the same book, playing the theme song to the book, playing incidental music, and bantering with Hodgman, who reads the audio version of his work. Hodgman has also mentioned Coulton on The Daily Show: a Jonathan Coulton of Colchester, Connecticut, was Hodgman's pick to win an essay contest on overpowering Iraqi resistance to American invasion. Coulton wrote and performed "the winning entry", a song about dropping snakes from airplanes. Coulton appeared on the tour for Hodgman's second book, More Information Than You Require.

Coulton composed the title music for the show Mystery Diagnosis, and also has contributed other songs under "The Little Gray Book Lectures", a series of audio releases from John Hodgman.

Coulton had been working on his follow-up to the Thing a Week albums, tentatively titled The Aftermath. He said the title was an umbrella term for unreleased tracks recorded after Thing a Week. "The Aftermath" was then released in 2009.

A DVD & CD of a concert performed February 22, 2008, at the Great American Music Hall in San Francisco, entitled Best. Concert. Ever. was released in 2009. At the concert, Coulton played "Still Alive" along with guest "musicians" and geek/celebrities Leo Laporte, Merlin Mann and Veronica Belmont.^[21] Coulton also opened for They Might Be Giants for a few shows of their March 2010 tour.^[22] He toured with them again in February 2012.

On May 25, 2010, Coulton said on his official site that he would work on a new album, to be produced by John Flansburgh of They Might Be Giants, and for the first time ever with a full band, including Marty Beller of They Might Be Giants, in a professional recording studio. The resulting album, Artificial Heart, was released on November 8, 2011. It contains 18 songs, including his two songs from Portal.

In May 2012, Coulton became the house musician for the NPR game show Ask Me Another. Coulton performs some of his own songs on the show, as well as covers of other songs related to the trivia and puzzle challenges.

Since 2011, Coulton has hosted his own annual week-long affinity cruise, the JoCo Cruise.

On April 15, 2013, Coulton announced that he was working with comic book writer Greg Pak on a graphic novel based on the characters in his songs, called Code Monkey Save World. The project was funded on Kickstarter, and reached its goal within 12 hours.

On August 31, 2013, it was announced that Coulton would be contributing lyrics to The SpongeBob Musical, which premiered in Chicago in June 2016. Coulton composed the opening number "Bikini Bottom Day", which is reprised multiple times throughout the show as SpongeBob's main theme. Coulton also contributed to additional lyrics for other musical numbers featured in the show. Along with other musical contributors to the show, Coulton won the Outer Critics Circle Award for Outstanding New Score, and was nominated for Best Original Score for the 72nd Tony Awards.

In June 2016, Coulton started doing a one-minute "Previously On" song at the beginning of the CBS TV series BrainDead, a summer series with a planned run of 13 episodes.

On April 28, 2017, Coulton released a new album Solid State which is for sale through his website and iTunes as well as being available for streaming on SoundCloud

Coulton co-wrote the songs "Good for Me", "Patient Zero" and "Rollercoaster" with Aimee Mann for her 2017 album "Mental Illness", for which he also contributed acoustic guitar and backing vocals. He joined Mann as opening support act on the European and North American tour of "Mental Illness", contributing additional guitar and vocals to her main set.

On April 15, 2018, The Good Fight episode "Day 450" featured a song by Coulton, set to a short Schoolhouse Rock-style animation. The song echoed the episode's plotline around efforts to impeach Donald Trump and was later shared by the show's YouTube channel.

On March 29, 2019, Coulton released Some Guys, a cover album of songs from the 1970s.

Coulton releases his songs under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial license, allowing others to use them in their own noncommercial works. As a result, a number of music videos have been created using his songs, including such machinima as the ILL Clan's video for "Code Monkey" and a kinetic typography video for the song "Shop Vac".

In May 2011, Coulton was interviewed on NPR's popular economics-related program Planet Money. He disclosed that he makes about $500,000 a year from his music despite lacking a record label contract. He expressed gratitude towards his fans for his surprise success, the degree of which he called "absurd". In a broader discussion of whether or not the internet is good for musicians, Coulton answered in the affirmative, while journalist Frannie Kelley described his success as a "fluke," comparing it to the unexpected popularity of the Snuggie. Coulton posted a tongue-in-cheek response on his blog about the comparison, saying "to which I say: snarkity snark snark!"

Most of Coulton's songs are published on his website as MP3 and FLAC downloads. Some of them are free, and none of them are subject to digital rights management. All of his original songs fall under the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial 3.0 License. "Still Alive", "Want You Gone" and "Wikipedia Chanukah" are the only exceptions to this, as Coulton assigned all rights for the former two songs to Valve and "Wikipedia Chanukah" is under a BY-SA license to comply with Wikipedia's similar license. Along with "Still Alive," Coulton's song "Re: Your Brains" appears in jukeboxes in Left 4 Dead 2. "Want You Gone" also features in the end credits of Portal 2. All three of these games were designed by Valve.

One of Coulton's best-known works is his 2005 light-acoustic cover of the Sir Mix-a-Lot hit song "Baby Got Back". Coulton wrote a new melody for his cover version of the song. Coulton's altered cover version was itself covered, but without permission (including his original line "Johnny C's in trouble"), by the American TV series Glee in 2013. Like Coulton's other work, he released his cover version of the song under a Creative Commons 3.0 license, which requires users to attribute the work to him, and forbids all commercial use of it. The show's lawyers contended that they were within their legal rights, and that Coulton should be happy for the exposure,^{[citation needed]} though Coulton received no acknowledgement or credit. Coulton's own lawyers told him that as he only used a compulsory license to make the cover, it would be difficult to sue for damages using the argument that he retained copyright over his own version.

Instead, Coulton released the single "Baby Got Back (In the Style of Glee)", a "cover of Glee's cover of my cover of Sir Mix-a-Lot's song, which is to say it's EXACTLY THE SAME as my original version." Coulton said he would donate the proceeds from all sales until the end of February 2013 to two Glee-related charities: The VH1 Save the Music Foundation, and The It Gets Better Project.

In January 2014, the CBS drama The Good Wife based its fifth season episode "Goliath and David" on the incident.

Cannons - Dancing In the Dark

Cannons is an American indie pop band formed in 2013 in Los Angeles. The band consists of lead vocalist Michelle Joy [Lewis], guitarist Ryan Clapham, and keyboardist and bassist Paul Davis.

Ryan Clapham and Paul Davis, who have been friends since childhood, began composing music together in their teenage years. In 2013, Joy posted an advertisement on Craigslist seeking a band looking for a singer. Clapham and Davis connected with Joy, and she was recruited as Cannons' frontwoman.

Cannons issued their first EP Up All Night in 2014. The band then released their debut album Night Drive in 2017, as well as a second EP, In a Heartbeat, the following year. Shadows, Cannons' second album, was released in 2019 by AntiFragile Music.^[7] "Fire for You", the first single from Shadows, gained significant commercial traction after being featured in a 2020 episode of the comedy-drama TV series Never Have I Ever. The band subsequently signed to Columbia Records. In early 2021, "Fire for You" reached number one on the Billboard Alternative Airplay chart. Fever Dream, the band's third album, was released in March 2022.

Joe Bonamassa - Oh, Pretty Woman

 Joe Bonamassa (New Hartford, Nueva York, 8 de mayo de 1977) es un guitarrista y cantante de blues y rock estadounidense.

comenzó a tocar la guitarra a la edad de 4 años y con siete ya tocaba blues como un veterano. Según Bonamassa: "mi padre fue, además de guitarrista, comerciante de guitarras, así que las guitarras estaban siempre alrededor de la casa como parte de mi vida. Estaban por ahí como sillas o mesas, así que cada día las sentía como algo cotidiano en mi vida."

A los diez años, Joe comenzó a dar conciertos a nivel local y a los doce, se convirtió en el telonero de B.B. King. La leyenda del blues declaró después de escuchar a Joe tocar; "El potencial de este chico es increíble". Después de esto Joe comenzó a ser conocido en el mundo del blues, llegando a tocar con gente de la talla de Buddy Guy, Danny Gatton, Robert Cray o Stephen Stills.

Todavía en su etapa de adolescente, Joe conoció a Berry Oakley Jr y juntos formaron una banda que se llamó Bloodline. En 1994 grabaron para EMI Records su homónimo álbum debut que contó con dos canciones propicias para las listas de éxitos "Stone Cold Hearted" y "Dixie Peach", temas que mezclaban Blues, Boogie, Funk y el Southern Roadhouse Rock. Tras este inicial éxito, Bloodline desapareció. Joe sentía la necesidad de hacer algo más que tocar la guitarra, así que comenzó a mejorar sus dotes como cantante.

En el año 2000, Joe acabó de trabajar en su debut como artista en solitario, "A New Day Yesterday", donde despliega todo su potencial vocal y cuyas aptitudes no pasan desapercibidas para artistas como Gregg Allman, Rick Derringer o Leslie West. El productor del álbum fue el legendario Tom Dowd, el cual, durante más de los 25 años de carrera que llevaba en ese momento dentro del mundo de la música, había formado parte de trabajos de artistas tan importantes como Aretha Franklin, Ray Charles, Eric Clapton, Rod Stewart, John Coltrane y Ornette Coleman entre otros. Dowd rápidamente se convirtió en fan y amigo de Joe.

Las memorables melodías y potente trabajo de guitarra de "A New Day Yesterday" trajo a la mente el blues clásico basado en bandas como Cream, Lynyrd Skynyrd, The Jeff Beck Group o The Allman Brothers Band. El CD incluye temas tan originales como "Miss You, Hate You", "Cradle Rock" cover de Rory Gallagher y una poderosa versión del tema "A New Day Yesterday", hecho famoso en 1969 por los mismísimos Jethro Tull. Una vez que regresó de la carretera en el 2002, Bonamassa unió fuerzas con Clif Magness (Avril Lavigne) para grabar el musculoso y radical disco de estudio "It´s Like That" con un hit que copó en varias ocasiones el número #1 en los Billboard Blues Charts, gracias a la inspiración de blues y mezcla de pop, en cuanto a la producción del disco. Esto ayudó enormemente a Bonamassa a la hora de contar con una impresionante legión de fanes.

Para celebrar el 2003 "Year of the Blues" Bonamassa publicó "Blues Deluxe" que contenía nueve versiones de blues clásico junto a tres originales. Esto se debió a que durante años, los fanes le pidieron a Joe un álbum de blues clásico, así que cuando acabó la gira, este se metió en estudio junto a Gary Tole (David Bowie, Jimmy Vaughan, Bon Jovi) y grabó varias de sus canciones favoritas de todos los tiempos. El resultado fue que su discográfica decidió acabar el disco y lanzarlo como "Blues Deluxe".

A estas alturas, Joe comenzó a involucrarse en un programa denominado "Blues in the Schools", un proyecto orientado a perpetuar el magnífico legado de este estilo musical y poder hacérselo llegar a las nuevas generaciones de fanes. Mediante la lectura, los jóvenes estudiantes se veían envueltos en un viaje que muestra la evolución de la música blues, desde el cumpleaños entre los trabajadores del Delta durante los últimos 1800, hasta el día actual. Las lecturas iban acompañadas de una actuación del propio Bonamassa.

El siguiente CD de Bonamassa "Had To Cry Today" continúa donde quedó "Blues Deluxe". Mezclando blues original y clásico, el CD incorporaba influencias de Chicago, Delta y blues británico, creando un estilo único.

Desde la música de los 40´o 50´de B.B. King, Muddy Waters y Buddy Guy, hasta la invasión británica de los Yardbirds, Clapton o Cream, "Had To Cry", muestra todas las caras de la música de antes, con grandes influencias modernas.

En el verano del 2005, Bonamassa fue personalmente requerido por B.B. King para abrir el Tour de celebración de su 80 cumpleaños. Unos meses después (enero de 2006), Bonamassa en reconocimiento a sus esfuerzos por la promoción del la música blues en Norte América y Europa, así como sus esfuerzos por llevar el blues a las escuelas, fue nominado como el miembro más joven de The Blues Foundation.

Uno de sus últimos CD, "You and Me", puesto a la venta el 27 de marzo de 2006, muestra la colaboración de este artista con el productor Kevin Shirley (Led Zeppelin, The Black Crowes, Aerosmith, Joe Satriani). El productor sudafricano Shirley comentaba; "Cuando comencé a trabajar con Joe, enseguida me di cuenta de que tenía un increíble talento, pero también sabía que debía hacer algo diferente para que lo que estábamos creando no fuera un simple álbum de blues. Hay infinidad de grandísimos artistas de blues que en el fondo solo son copias de los clásicos de siempre. Yo quise dotar al blues de Joe, un poco de Rock y busqué en su interior para sacar toda su versatilidad a la guitarra y sus habilidades vocales".

Al final, el resultado fue una poderosa fusión del "Big rock sound" y swampy blues, además de apreciarse las influencias de maestros como Peter Green, Jeff Beck, Eric Clapton y John Lee Hooker. Bonamassa entrega todo el excitante poder y electrizantes apariciones en directo mezclado con la esencia de su música y manejándose desde la suavidad, hasta la dureza, desde la electricidad, hasta la suavidad más clarividente, convirtiéndose en un artista increíble a fecha de hoy, mientras continúa ampliado su colección de guitarras vintage que Bonamassa tiene en su casa de Los Ángeles.

Glenn Hughes - Roxanne

Glenn Hughes (Cannock, Staffordshire, 21 de agosto de 1951) es un músico de rock británico de amplia trayectoria, mayormente conocido por haber sido bajista y cantante de Deep Purple en los años 1970. En la década de 1980 fue vocalista de Black Sabbath y realizó colaboraciones para Tony Iommi. Según ha contado el propio Hughes en numerosas entrevistas, sus padres le pusieron dicho nombre debido al fanatismo de ellos por el músico estadounidense Glenn Miller.

Hughes posee además una vasta carrera como solista, la cual se reactivó luego de superar con éxito años de abuso de drogas y problemas de salud. Ha participado en numerosas bandas y proyectos, y colaborado con variados artistas de diferentes géneros.

Luego de haber grabado tres álbumes junto a Black Country Communion, formó California Breed junto a Jason Bonham y Andrew Watt. Tras de una serie de presentaciones en vivo, y la prematura salida de Jason Bonham (siendo reemplazado por el baterista Joey Castillo), la banda se disolvió, dando lugar a la grabación de un nuevo disco solista de Hughes, llamado "Resonate", que vio la luz en noviembre de 2016.

Se anunció en septiembre de 2017 la salida de un nuevo álbum de estudio de Black Country Communion, con todos sus miembros originales, llamado simplemente "BCC IV" (dado que fue el cuarto disco de la banda).

El 8 de abril de 2016, fue inducido al Salón de la Fama del Rock & Roll como miembro de Deep Purple.

Tras sus inicios en la banda Finders Keepers, en los años 60, Hughes se une a Trapeze a fines de esa década, grupo pionero en el hard rock con tintes psicodélicos y funk. Con Trapeze realiza tres álbumes de estudio, "Trapeze" y "Medusa" (1970), y "You Are the Music... We're Just the Band (1972), abandonando esta formación a continuación, al ser llamado para tocar en Deep Purple. Grabó 3 discos memorables con Deep Purple entre 1973 y 1975 ("Burn", "Stormbringer" y "Come Taste the Band") tras la marcha de Ian Gillan, en la formaciones que se conocen como "Mark III" (junto a Ian Paice, Ritchie Blackmore, Jon Lord y David Coverdale), y "Mark IV" (junto a Paice, Bolin, Lord y Coverdale). Su paso por la banda inglesa se caracterizó por una marcada influencia Soul, una influencia que compartía con David Coverdale y que no complacía sin embargo a Ritchie Blackmore.

Tras la desintegración de Deep Purple, grabó su primer disco solista en 1977, titulado "Play Me Out".

En 1982 graba el único disco junto con el guitarrista Pat Thrall, llamado simplemente "Hughes/Thrall". En 1985 participa en el disco conceptual titulado Phenomena, super grupo conceptual creado por el productor Tom Galley junto a Cozy Powell. Tras ello, cabe destacar su recordada colaboración con Tony Iommi, en el disco de 1986 "Seventh Star", un disco que fue editado bajo el nombre de "Black Sabbath featuring Tony Iommi", pero que se enfocó desde un primer momento como un álbum en solitario del guitarrista, y que tuvo continuidad con un Bootleg, que circulaba de manera clandestina bajo el nombre de "Eight Star", y que finalmente se editó en el 2004 bajo el nombre "The 1996 DEP Sessions", y que supuso la recuperación del tándem Iommi-Hughes, en un proyecto que recibió el nombre de Iommi.

Durante el resto de los años ochenta se sumió en una larga década de decadencia y excesos que no le permitieron continuar una línea artística estable y definida.

Ya en el nuevo milenio, es de destacar su proyecto Hughes Turner Project, con el que fuera vocalista de Rainbow y Deep Purple, Joe Lynn Turner. A lo largo de más de una década desde ese entonces hasta hoy, grabó numerosos y notables discos como los recientes "Songs In The Key Of Rock" (2003), "Soul Mover" (2005), y "Music for the divine" (2006); este último, un rotundo éxito de crítica en el que colaborarían el batería Chad Smith (Red Hot Chili Peppers) y el guitarrista de Jane's Addiction Dave Navarro, una muestra más de su eclecticismo e inclinaciones por los sonidos funk. Tras la grabación de este disco, Glenn y el baterista Chad Smith iniciarían una gira que recalaría en Europa. Tras ello Glenn graba el disco "Fused", continuación de su colaboración con el legendario Tony Iommi, guitarrista de Black Sabbath.

El 9 de mayo de 2008 ve la luz el disco "First Underground Nuclear Kitchen" (conocido también como FUNK) y vuelve a encontrar a Glenn trabajando junto a Chad Smith. Luego de varios años de gira, bandas paralelas y varios proyectos musicales, Hughes se embarca en un nuevo disco solista recién en el año 2016, publicando el álbum "Resonate". La banda que lo acompaña es la misma que salió de gira con él durante casi 10 años, siendo Soren Andersen su guitarrista y Pontus Engborg su baterista. Nuevamente Chad Smith toma la posta en dos temas del disco: "Heavy", canción que abre la placa, y "Long time gone", tema que lo cierra. Tal como lo venía haciendo en cada disco nuevo, la edición japonesa de "Resonate" incluye dos bonus track. En este caso se trata de "Nothing's the same" (cover de la canción interpretada, originalmente, por Gary Moore) y una versión acústica de "When I fall).

El 20 de noviembre de 1998 estuvo como invitado en un recital de Walter Giardino Temple en el Teatro Coliseo tocando temas como "Burn" y otros clásicos de Deep Purple. También fue invitado por Rata Blanca a participar en dos conciertos, el 11 y 12 de diciembre de 2003, en el teatro Gran Rex. Este evento fue plasmado en el DVD Rata Blanca & Glenn Hughes, dejando registro de las interpretaciones de los temas "Stormbringer", "Mistreated", "You keep on moving" y "Burn", de Deep Purple. En la edición brasilera del DVD, se puede apreciar "No stranger to love", el quinto tema interpretado por la banda y Hughes, perteneciente al disco Seventh Star de Black Sabbath. Dicho tema se encuentra disponible en Youtube.

En 2003 participó en la ópera metal titulada Aina: Days of Rising Doom.

Durante el año 2012, se unió a la banda "Rock n roll All Stars", que incluía nombres como Matt Sorum, Gene Simmons, Duff McKagan, Billy Duffy, Ed Roland, Sebastian Bach, entre otros, realizando una mini gira por Sudamérica. La agrupación luego cambió su nombre a Kings of chaos. Actualmente los miembros son rotativos, de acuerdo a la disponibilidad en la agenda de cada uno.

El 12 de enero de 2018 fue publicado el disco "What happens next", del guitarrista Joe Satriani, en el cual Hughes aportó su bajo, completando el trío el baterista Chad Smith. El álbum fue grabado en las ciudades de Los Ángeles y San Francisco.

En septiembre de 2019 se anunció que Glenn colaboraría con la banda The Dead Daisies aportando su voz y su bajo, ante la salida de John Corabi y Marco Mendoza.

Laurence Jones - Can't Get Enough

Laurence Jones (born 13 February 1992) is an English blues rock guitarist, and singer-songwriter. He has released four solo albums to date and is signed to Ruf Records. Jones has won four British Blues Awards, including 'Young Artist of the Year' for three consecutive years.

Jones was born just outside Liverpool, England, and relocated with his family at the age of eight to Shipston-on-Stour, Warwickshire. He learned classical guitar from the age of seven, although he became inspired towards the blues by listening to his father's collection of vinyl records. His particular favourite was The Groundhogs, Split, which was released in March 1971. He acquired a Gibson Les Paul, practised for two hours each day, and by his mid-teens fronted his own cover band, Free Beer, which employed a female singer. He formed his own blues trio at the age of seventeen, and enrolled at University of Birmingham, but his final exams came around, Jones chose to go on tour with Johnny Winter and Walter Trout. In 2012, Jones signed a recording contract with Promise Records and they released his debut album, Thunder in the Sky. In the same year Jones was diagnosed with Crohn's disease. All bar one of the songs on Thunder in the Sky were written by Jones, except for his cover of "The Thrill Is Gone". He toured promoting the album and ultimately provided support for the Royal Southern Brotherhood, Wishbone Ash and another of his boyhood heroes, Tony McPhee of The Groundhogs.

In 2014, Jones signed with Ruf Records, and they released his second album, Temptation. It was recorded in Lafayette, Louisiana, United States. The album included contributions from Mike Zito on guitar and production work, plus the drummer Yonrico Scott and bassist Charlie Wooton (all three members of the Southern Brotherhood). Guest appearances included Johnny Sansone, Aynsley Lister and Walter Trout. The critical praise saw him pick up the 'Young Artist of the Year' title at the 2014 British Blues Awards. That summer, Jones toured as part of the Blues Caravan tour performing in ten European countries. Part of the tour was recorded and led to the release of Blues Caravan 2014, jointly credited to Laurence Jones, Albert Castiglia and Christina Skjolberg.

What's It Gonna Be (2015) was Jones next album released by Ruf Records. The songs were written about his touring experiences and travelling around the world.A British tour with King King followed. Among other venues, Jones appeared at New York City's Carnegie Hall. By 2016, Jones had secured four British Blues Awards, including 'Young Artist of the Year' for three consecutive years.

Take Me High (2016) was produced by Mike Vernon. It was launched at the Townsend Hall in Shipston-on-Stour, and preceded a tour across the UK plus an appearance at the Nidaros Blues Festival in Trondheim, Norway. In 2017, Jones supported Vintage Trouble on their UK tour, and later the same year toured with Kenny Wayne Shepherd in the UK and around mainland Europe.

Do It Again - Paul Hardcastle

Paul Louis Hardcastle (born 10 December 1957) is a British composer, musician, producer, songwriter, radio presenter and multi-instrumentalist. He is best known for his song "19", which went to number 1 in the UK Singles Chart in 1985.

Hardcastle began his career in 1981 when he became the keyboard player for British soul band Direct Drive. In 1982, Hardcastle and lead vocalist Derek Green left the band to form a duo under the name First Light. They achieved some minor success in the UK charts, but the project was abandoned after two years and Hardcastle pursued a solo career.

He achieved some success with his early singles, including the 1984 electro-funk/freestyle/instrumental track, "Rain Forest", which along with the track "Sound Chaser", reached number two on the dance chart. "Rain Forest" also hit number five on the soul chart and number fifty-seven on the Billboard Hot 100.

Hardcastle is best known for the 1985 single "19", which went to No. 1 in the UK (for five weeks), as well as several other countries worldwide. It also reached number 15 in the U.S. Pop chart and number 1 in the U.S. Dance charts. The song received the Ivor Novello Award for Best-selling single of 1985. The follow-up single to "19" was "Just for Money", which reached No. 19 in the UK. It also charted in several other European countries.

In 1986, Hardcastle released a remix to "One Wish" by Hiroshima. In the same year, Hardcastle's "The Wizard" was adopted as the theme tune for the BBC's Top of the Pops weekly chart show. The theme tune was used from 3 April 1986 to 26 September 1991.

The song "Don't Waste My Time", became Hardcastle's second UK top ten in March 1986. It featured singer Carol Kenyon, a backing vocalist of Heaven 17. In late 1986, Hardcastle collaborated with the supergroup Disco Aid (later rebranded as Dance Aid in 1987) co-producing the charity single "Give Give Give".

In 1989, Hardcastle resumed working on First Light, collaborating with vocalist Kevin Henry, whom he had worked with on previous recordings.

Since the 1990s, Hardcastle has recorded several synth jazz albums, alternating releases under the pseudonyms Kiss the Sky (with Jaki Graham) and the Jazzmasters, as well as under his real name Paul Hardcastle.