Artist:     JP Jones

Album:     Touch

Label:     Vision Company Records

Release Date:     08/02/2016

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Rhode Island singer/songwriter, JP Jones, has been at his craft for nearly 50 years, and these 11 tracks are just the latest in an enormous body of excellent work. He plays most of the instruments on the record and produced, engineered and mixed it in his home studio. Jones’ rumbling baritone can break your heart on songs like the beautiful title track about the evanescence of connection, “Endless Highway,” on mortality, and the confessional “Yes,” where he lists his sins and woes then pleads “don’t hold it against me.”

But Jones can also be sweetly sardonic as he demonstrates on “Your Problem” and “Helen Back,” preceded and explained by “Helen Front,” in which he tells of finding a name tag in the street for a woman whose parents must have had a sense of humor. Jones has some thoughts about his own name – “synonymous with anonymous” — which he explores at the conclusion of the curiously titled “Jimmy Jones.” But my real favorite is “Cowboy Hat,” a sort of personal mission statement: “I do not play no rock and roll/ I gave it up a long time ago/I do not jam/I do not rap/I do not wear no cowboy hat.”

-Kay Cordtz