Artists:James Austin

From the early '60s Folk music scene, with a jaunt through Southern California's surf-rock music, and eventually landing in Austin, Texas, "outlaw country," James Austin has been working to perfect his songwriting skills. He has performed from the Canadian Southeast down the Eastern U.S. seaboard, across the Gulf States, and up to Northern California, where he has opened for and performed with the likes of Jackson Browne, Hoyt Axton, Ray Price, Floyd Tillman, Pure Prairie League, Waylon & Willie, and even Muddy Waters, along with many others. Around 1990 James decided to take a break from music to, as he puts it, "make a real living and raise my family."

Then recently a friend in Florida contacted him and told him that he remembered that James had been "a pretty damned good songwriter, so why not write a song about people who are shooting all the road signs down here." That resulted in James' Road Sign Shooter, followed by Mailbox Bashers Came By, and several more that will be released on the upcoming Rounders And Rogues to be released in 2008. James Austin has settled down in the hills of East Tennessee and is at work on the upcoming project. His current release, Love, Hate And Other Nonsense, is getting airplay in England, Australia, New Zealand, Europe and the U.S.

James Austin is a singer/songwriter who drifted out of the '60s folk scene in New York into Southern California surf-rock music in the early '70s and later fell into the "outlaw Country movement" in Austin, Texas. This seemed to be where he felt he belonged, and his music has had a country flavor ever since, but he still throws a little spice of folk in the stew every now and then.

Playing solo and in bands, he has opened shows for Jackson Browne, Hoyt Axton, Ray Price, Asleep At The Wheel, Pure Prairie League, Waylon, Willie, Hank Thompson and even Muddy Waters.

In 2007, he released his first solo album: Love, Hate And Other Nonsense, a collection of songs that had mostly sat in the can after being recorded in New York, Texas and most recently in Tennessee where he now calls a small Smokey Mountain community home. His next project, Rounders And Rogues, featuring the single "Seems Like AMERICAN Is Gone," will be released in the Spring of 2008.

His songs from Love, Hate And Other Nonsense are currently getting air play on several Tennessee radio stations as well European and Australian stations.

Source: http://www.digitalrodeo.com/JamesAustin.