Foy Vance

Though he spent most of his formative years in the grim surroundings of 1980s Belfast, singer/songwriter Foy Vance's musical vision is the product of an entirely different sort of nervous tension -- the cross-racial friction, harmony, and disharmony that gave rise to jazz, blues, and soul in the American South, where Vance, the son of a traveling church minister, spent the pivotal first five years of his life. Drawn particularly to the spiritual aspect of those music forms, Vance took his cues from the likes of Otis Redding and Nina Simone, adjusting his own guttural singing style accordingly, and his distinctive Northern Irish lilt finds an obvious point of comparison in similarly styled compatriot Van Morrison. Musically, Vance draws as much from the British folk tradition as he does American music; this influence manifests itself in the rhythmic, invariably alternately tuned, acoustic guitar style that is almost as prominent a melodic voice on much of his work as piano or vocals. Vance was born in Bangor, Northern Ireland, in 1974, but his preacher father packed the family up and moved to Oklahoma, deep in the U.S. Bible Belt, shortly after the birth of the family's youngest son. Traveling around the poor churches of the South, Vance developed a keen interest in music from a very early age; he observed soul, gospel, and blues up close, and this interest was facilitated by his musical father, who taught his son to play some basic acoustic guitar patterns. By age five, the family had returned to Northern Ireland, settling in Belfast, but Vance retained his interest in American music, and expanded his scope to include folk, rock, and pop styles. During the '90s, he spent time as lead singer with Belfast soul troupe Soul Truth, but eventually returned to the acoustic...