** PLEASE NOTE: This show will take place at our alternative home for the evening: THE SLAUGHTERED LAMB, 34-35 Great Sutton St., Clerkenwell, London EC1V 0DX. Doors open 7.30pm. Music starts 8.15pm. **
Green Note presents… DIANA JONES – The Better Times Will Come Tour…
Widely acclaimed US singer-songwriter Diana Jones has announced the re-issue of her critically lauded 2009 album Better Times Will Come – Reimagined & Remastered on April 7, to mark the 15th anniversary of its recording.
Diana enlisted studio engineer Steve Addabbo, fresh from his work on Bob Dylan’s Bootleg Series, to help her cast a retrospective eye over the tracks. Together they reimagined the mixes and the running order and added a previously unreleased song ‘Call Me Daddy’, to reflect changes she has envisaged since the original release.
The new version of the title track “Better Times Will Come”, featuring harmony vocals by Diana’s friend the late Nanci Griffith and a newly found additional chorus, is out now. Its abiding message remains so timely, given the hardships of recent years and those still being felt today.
Hailed variously in the press as the “Emily Dickinson of song,” “The lost daughter of the Carter Family” as well as a “Hillbilly Feminist”, Diana will embark on the Better Times Will Come – Reimag-ined & Remastered UK/IE tour in April and May, when she will perform the complete album along-side gems from her catalogue.
The re-release of Better Times Will Come – Reimagined & Remastered follows Diana’s widely praised 2020 studio album Songs To A Refugee which gave voice to the stories of asylum seekers worldwide; a testament to Diana’s commitment to social justice through her gifts as a consummate songwriter and performer.
“Diana Jones has a riveting delivery, unadorned and direct – and so true, her stories are so believable, they hang tangible in the air….. the reality of events, of emotions, of what was seen, what was said and what went unsaid is vibrant” – Americana UK. January 2023
“She sings of the hard times, murderous urges and chilling loneliness that haunt the old Anglo-Celtic ballads … She approaches the mountain-ballad tradition not as a curiosity or antique but as a renewable vernacular that’s just as capable of speaking to the human condition now as it was 80 years ago” – Bill Friskics, New York Times
Diana Jones
Adopted as an infant and raised in Long Island, NY, the fact that Diana Jones couldn’t get enough of her brother’s Johnny Cash records finally made sense when she found her birth family and musical roots in the Smoky Mountains of Eastern Tennessee “Whenever I heard anyone country…. like Johnny Cash or Dolly Parton, I wanted more but I just didn’t know where to find it.” Diana’s maternal grandfather, who had formed his first teenage band with a young Chet Atkins, was happy to pass on the culture and music that he loved to his granddaughter. Gradually Jones discovered an uncanny affinity for the Appalachian music of her ancestors and began claiming it as her own combining traditional mountain and old-time sounds with a literate, character-driven brand of storytelling that has become both her life’s work and the essence of her live show.
Diana’s breakout album ‘My Remembrance Of You’ (Proper Records) in 2006 garnered rave reviews internationally and set her on a path which would see her release five further critically acclaimed albums: Better Times Will Come (2009), High Atmosphere (2011), Museum Of Appalachia Recordings (2013), Live In Concert (2016) and Song To A Refugee (2020). She has toured the globe, including performances at prestigious events such as Cambridge Folk Festival, Galway Arts Festival, Levon Helm’s Ramble in Woodstock, NY, and Bimhuis in Amsterdam, and shared stages with the likes of Richard Thompson, Janis Ian and Mary Gauthier. She has also appeared on world-renowned TV and radio shows Later With Jools Holland, BBC4 Folk America, BBC4’s Songwriters Circle and BBC Radio 2 Country with Bob Harris. Diana’s progressive, yet historically rich, songs have been recorded by artists including Joan Baez and Gretchen Peters and have won her awards from Kerrville Folk Festival, New Song Festival and nominations from International Folk Alliance.
