Paul James Berry isn't your average singer songwriter. In concert, prepare to strap in and experience his incendiary delivery of stories from a life well endured/lived.  His delivery style is a curious mix of humour, and can quite happily talk and debate with the audience for ages, and then he just plays a beautiful original song.

His songs are about the real world and not just fictitious dribbling of a fake songwriter. Accompanied with his faithful Gibson Hummingbird acoustic guitar, harmonica, ukulele or piano he sits or stands centre stage and entertains…

Julie Hamill - Boogaloo Radio, UK: "wooo hold on there a minute Berry - are you the love child of Johnny Cash and Neil Diamond? I think so. Great voice!"

Bubblegum Slut/ UK: "A paradoxical mix of a Yorkshire man’s Northern bluntness that tells it like it is and a “continental poetic tongue which educates and stirs…! "

Stylus mag/ Canada: "Berry has a keen intellect, a disdain for those buffered from reality, and an internalised anger that fuels the vitriol in every adjective. It is real life undecorated, and smoulders like the everyday pressures. Clean glass please, and leave the bottle!"

In the 80s he was guitarist and a founding member of Rock/Goth band, The Rose of Avalanche.  Eventually, enough was enough and broke-up the band in the 90s to embark on a solo career under his own name. He played in every possible venue in the UK, Europe and even made a few trips across to North America.

Memorable support slots: Townes Van Zandt, Frank Black, David Bowie, Kevin Coyne, Calexico, Vic Chestnutt, The Cranberries, Charlie Harper, Nico, Theatre of Hate, Nikki Sudden, Mike Peters, etc blah blah(bloody)blah…

2009 PJB had serious road accident in Brighton/ UK when a 32 tonne lorry ran him down.  37 units of blood transfusion, resuscitated twice in ICU, months on the trauma ward, wheel chair/ crutches/ walking stick that lasted over eight years to the present day foot brace to compensate his foot drop.  The song, The Seven Dials, on the album Spitfire Jukebox 1 is about this experience.

"When I arrived at the studio in Berlin, there was this colossal old hall that just had ‘something’ that moved me.  So, I said to the man, "get me a chair, put it in the middle of the hall and record me bleeding…" The whole point of this album was to be in control and do everything myself - for good or bad - just me and my demons".

Late 2019 (yeah COVID), he reformed The Rose of Avalanche as a side project and eventually went on to play several shows and festivals. However, again it was time to move on and do his solo thing and broke with the band in 2022.

Facts:

Four solo albums (PJB, Ginnel, Nations and Spitfire Jukebox 1)

What does he sound like?  Damien Rice, Neil Young, Nick Cave, Neil Diamond - PAUL JAMES BERRY

Born and raised in Leeds/Yorkshire, but over the years PJB has lived in London/ Brighton/ Berlin/ Paris/ back to Brighton/ middle of France (you wouldn’t have heard of)/ then full circle in 2021 to Leeds.  AND now coming up to his third winter can be found somewhere in the UK traveling around on a narrowboat he calls home...

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