Layton James

"Empty bottle of whiskey and another sad song"

Layton's family is originally from the Knoxville Tennesse area and moved to Indiana where he was born. Numerous return visits to the kinfolks , and the old time gospel sung by an uncle and his family(The Simmons Family) at churches around the south ensured that he would remain a true blue country boy at heart. Straying away from his roots, Layton got his start in music with the hair-metal phase in junior high. Moving more toward JamBand and Folk in high school, these styles were most promanent through his early twenties. He then found his roots again with a short lived Bluesgrass Ensamble called the Gentry Remedy Company. After going between old country and jam band rock for the next few years, he realized that his heart and soul belonged with country. So with a soft spot for steel pedal guitar and the sounds of the lonesome fiddle in his ears, Layton has been composing and playing original songs that sound too old to be new country and too new to be old. He hits everthing from the swooner style of George Jones to the Honky Tonk heroes like Cash, Willie, Merle, Lefty Frizzle, Buck Owens and Dwight Yoakam. Still, with all his musical experimentatation, the heart of Layton's music is the wails and hollars he heard in those one-room mountain top churches as a child.