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No Oil Paintings
John Hardy
John Hardy tells the story of a gambling railroad worker who killed another man during a drunken brawl in West Virginia. He was tried, found guilty and sentenced to death for his crime.
Apparently the huge crowd that gathered to witness his hanging in January 1894 were dumbfounded at his relaxed manner as he approached the scaffold – he’d made his peace with the Lord the previous day and had been baptised in a nearby river.
A very considerable number of Ulster and Scots emigrants ended up in and around West Virginia and over years their indigenous music both influenced and subsumed elements of other folk music, resulting in the unique genres of bluegrass and hill-billy.
Biography
No Oil Paintings is a vivacious, dynamic alternative-folk band from Belfast that includes the musical synergy of Chris Kelly (lead vocals, guitar), twin brothers Sean (vocals, guitar, 5-string banjo), James Doone (vocals, bass guitar), and George Sloan (vocals, drums).
With a variety of influences from rock to outlaw country, they have grown together and developed the No Oil Paintings sound – raucous alternative guitar & banjo-driven folk, with an edge of darkness. The band strive to use typical folk instrumentation accompanied with strong four-part male harmonies to create something a little more wild than the music often associated with the genre today. You can expect to hear everything from swampy blues rock to straight-up country waltzes.
The band’s powerful original set have seen them headlining festivals such as Open House, Stendhal, Sunflower, Campfire, Ards Guitar Festival and Atlantic Sessions, and they are part of Hannah Peel’s Mix the City Belfast. They have also collaborated with Grammy award winner Joss Stone during her world tour, with their song ‘God Only Knows’. Their most recent album, ‘Too Close to the Sun’, received critical acclaim across the UK and Ireland.
They have a rare intuition for bluegrass, folk and country, are musically tight as a whiskey barrel and may as well come with a warning: incites hollering and foot stomping.