Chris Jones is a San Francisco-based retro-revival songwriter who grew up in the South. The influences of both coasts colliding in his brain have led him on a journey to find the bridge between tradition and innovation. Chris has a deep love and respect for the classic songwriting styles of Hank Williams, Willie Nelson, and Townes Van Zandt, and doesn’t ignore the modern artists like Ryan Adams, Jeff Tweedy and Elliot Smith. He effortlessly writes in the styles of classic Country, insatiable Pop, bloody Rockn’Roll and progressive Experimentalism without boundaries. It’s all just music to him.

For his first commercial release with a label Chris had definite ideas about how he wanted Underneath the Sun to sound. “I reached back into the rhythms and lyrics of my Southern beginnings and mixed them with the experiences I’ve had being a performer in the San Francisco music scene,” says Chris. “I wanted to write songs with classic honky-tonk themes and bring the energy of Southern Rock to innovate on the sound and make it my own.”

For the full-on rock songs, he chose to lay down live performances with a minimal amount of dubbing and mixing. These sessions were performed at San Francisco’s Different Fur studios along with seasoned bandmates Bill Cramer and Chris Guthridge from Ride the Blinds. The more country rock sounding songs on Underneath the Sun were done in the remote, wind-and-fog-swept seaside town of Caspar, Calif., just north of Mendocino. Here, at Old School Studios, he collaborated with Calvin Turnbull -- who has worked with Sheryl Crowe, Leon Russell and Eric McFadden among others -- to create a tavern-like intimacy and give each tune a striking personality. By overdubbing tracks with his own guitar, organ, steel guitar and harmonica playing, Chris uniquely delivers personal songs that will strike a chord with just about any listener.

“My hope is that people will hear and feel something familiar about the songs on Underneath the Sun and they will experience something fresh and moving,” says Chris.

Chris currently performs solo and with his band, and also plays guitar with Kidd Cook, bass with Charles Gonzalez and the Stereo Glitter, pedal steel with TV Mike and the Scarecrowes and lead guitar in Stonar. He is an originating member of the Mission Festives Artistic Collective, a group of musicians, artists, promoters, and friends who produce the finest events in and around San Francisco. He has also served as a sideman with Ride the Blinds, Jenni Alpert, and Dawn Thomas in the past.

"I really, really like that. I was afraid when I heard it a first that it was rockabilly and it was going to be just that. But I’m glad that he’s breaking it up and doing traditional country and bluegrass sound in there as well."

- Jenni Finlay, Promotions Director, Compadre Records, Houston

"I think these songs are a good illustration that not every song has to change the world. I mean these are great groove songs, they’re not particularly lyrically fantastic or deep but they’re wonderful to listen to. I really, really enjoyed the sound. The picking is outstanding... I think he’s got real talent... I think he has a future as a player and as a writer. And the vocal was not bad either, for that matter."

- Robert K. Oermann, author and journalist, bi-weekly columnist for Music Row Magazine, author of seven books and written liner notes for more than 90 albums and boxed sets.

"Particularly that first song, with his picking and just the soufulness of it; the bridge there went in a little interesting direction. Unique."

- David Rivers, National Workshops Director for the Nashville Songwriters Association International