Search - Dennis Jay :: WHAT YOU SEE

What you get with Dennis Jay is a troubadour of quiet conviction and a clear vision from years traveling in the American west. Memories pour out of the bottle and wanderlust sends him on the road in the song Tupelo Flash, where he is "blinded by west Texas sand, Jett Rink?s ghost walking this land [and hears] the Tupelo Flash raising hell." Absorbing the influences of classic honky tonk, cowboy ballads, folk and flamenco, Dennis Jay has a driving rhythm guitar style to power his songs and a rich voice to sing them, which can swing from plaintive to joyful with a hint of a yodel. His songs offer reflections on travel and love, going from a lament of lost romance and time (Letters from Mexico), to a bar stool where "Yesterday's dreams, a home, and a wife, are moving out with the cold, hard facts of life" (What You See). Out of drifting and reflection, Dennis Jay?s characters seem to find empathy and courage - "courage to love, courage to fear," where "each kiss is the magic of this"(Betrayal). Through the dozen masterful songs on What You See, Dennis Jay grabs your attention from the first listen. And he holds it with that hard guitar strum, and the accompanying single-string Telecaster and Precision Bass lines of his band. Their sound recalls the rhythmic syncopation of Johnny Cash?s Tennessee Two, while fiddles, castanets, and marimba flavor the mix.