From the Newsbury Weekly News, Kingsclere, 28 September 2006
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Kingsclere's Fieldgate Centre may seem an unlikely venue for a solo set by a highly-regarded American singer-songwriter.   But for over an hour Jeff Finlin - accompanying himself on guitar - performed songs ranging from gritty soul-searchers, through tales of love and loss to humour and home cooking.

Finlin, who has been touring the UK with his band, stopped off in Kingsclere to fulfil a promise made last year in a Dublin bar to play at an event in aid of South African charity Thatu

Originally from Ohio, Finlin spent 20 years in Nashville before moving to Colorado.   His music draws on a heady mix of blues, folk, country and rock, and an Irish ancestry that encompasses railroad labourers and boxcar jumpers.

Finlin's full-bodied smoke and gravel voice, which he softens and sharpens to good effect, is capable of a wide range of emotion and musical styles.  

Complementing his singing, Finlin's guitar playing coaxes a full and varied sound from an instrument that he strokes, twangs and thumps, as you might expect from a man who is equally at home on the drums, accordion and piano.

Finlin is an American original, whose admirers include the likes of Bruce Springsteen and Steve Earle and the UK's own Mr Music, 'Whispering' Bob Harris.   He's been making records ('mainly in my basement', although the production suggests otherwise) since 1991, and his soulful ballad Sugar Blue from the Somewhere South of Wonder album can be heard on the soundtrack to Cameron Crowe's 2005 film, Elizabethtown.

If you weren't in Kingsclere, or don't listen to Radio 2, try Finlin's Angels in Disguise, on Bent Wheel Records.

Peter Coombes
Newbury Weekly News
28 September 2006<>