Howard Eliott Payne - Bright Light Ballads

Tracklist:
1. Dangling Threads
2. Come Down Easy
3. Seven Years
4. Until Morning
5. When Summer Has Passed
6. I Just Want To Spend Some Time With You
7. You Can't Hurt Me Anymore
8. Walk By My Side
9.Underneath The Sun Rising
10.Lay Down Your Tune For Me

Howard Eliott Payne is an English singer-songwriter.

Born in Liverpool, England, Payne left school at 14 and moved with his family to Queens, New York City. Out of school and too young to work, Payne spent his time hanging out with the older kids in his new neighbourhood, riding the trains to Manhattan to explore the metropolis, or down at Astoria Park, where on the hot summer nights crowds would gather to hang out, drink, and listen to music.

The family moved apartments quite often, and after moving into one place Payne found a small transistor radio in the kitchen, left behind by the previous tenant, which quickly became a source of entertainment, distraction and wonder. Being exposed to the blues, soul, folk, and rock and roll music pumping out from the New York radio stations, mixed with the Latin sounds, punk and hip hop out on the streets of his new stomping ground made a profound impression on him, and provided a Technicolor soundtrack to a new life in one tough neighbourhood after another.

One humid afternoon, while trying to tune the now broken dial on the radio, Payne heard The Velvet Underground song “Rock and Roll”. Something clicked, from that moment on playing guitar was the only thing on his mind. "It was the sound that slayed me, the momentum, like a tense urgent rush to salvation - I could identify with that. I and most everyone I knew were very focused on survival, and on how to fix up whatever situation we were in, and despite it all, to be alright with it. I was just a kid but I was already on a bad track, it was pretty hard not to be, the way things were. The effect of hearing that sound, it felt like it shook a part of me that had been asleep - pretty much in an instant I was suddenly desperate to have a guitar and to play music", says Payne. A friend’s mother, insightful of his new desire to obtain a guitar, offered one in payment for painting her house. Guitar acquired, Payne took to playing most hours of the day, sitting up on the roof or on the steps in the corridor of his Jackson Heights, Queens apartment building.

Greenwich Village has always been the place to cut your teeth as a guitar playing singer in New York, and it was here in pre-Giuliani New York, in the last years of the Village still being a somewhat edgy, unpredictable place that Payne spent his time, and gained an education of sorts, at Washington Square Park during the afternoons, learning songs off the folk, country and blues musicians who were there most days, busking outside of a record/bookstore where the owner would let him take shelter, drink coffee, listen to records and read books inside when it was to cold or wet to be out of doors. Nights were mostly spent sneaking into the small clubs that offered open spots on the mic to play and sing, at parties, or watching some of the old Greenwich Village characters who would still hold court in some of the smaller hangouts.

After hitchhiking around the East coast, Payne returned to Liverpool, spending the next few years moving between NYC and England, picking up work as a roofer, a picture frame maker, a driver, a painter, a gardener, in demolitions, painting silos on an air base in the South, delivering groceries, or playing songs on the streets, in subway stations or cafes.

Groups were joined and dissolved until Payne formed The Stands in 2003. During their two and a half years together The Stands signed to Echo Records and had a succession of 5 top 40 UK singles, toured throughout the world and released two critically acclaimed albums, All Years Leaving and Horse Fabulous. Despite this succsess, Payne grew frustrated by the artistic constraints of being in The Stands, quit the group and returned to the USA, spending time in Texas and LA before returning once more to England and teaming up with producer Ethan Johns (Ryan Adams/Kings of Leon/Ray Lamontagne) to record his debut solo album Bright Light Ballads.

Reportedly financed by the sale of "a really nice electric guitar" Bright Light Ballads was recorded and mixed in just 7 days using a vintage 8 track tape machine. Other musicians on the record include singer Candie Payne (Payne's sister), Dean Ravera (formerly of The Stands) and Ethan Johns, among others.

Bright Light Ballads is due to be released on Payne’s own label Move City Records April 2009.