Gareth Davies-Jones is a folk singer, songwriter and composer from

County Down County Down () is one of the six counties of Northern Ireland, one of the nine counties of Ulster and one of the traditional thirty-two counties of Ireland. It covers an area of and has a population of 531,665. It borders County Antrim to the ...

Northern Ireland Northern Ireland ( ga, Tuaisceart Éireann ; sco, label= Ulster-Scots, Norlin Airlann) is a part of the United Kingdom, situated in the north-east of the island of Ireland, that is variously described as a country, province or region. Nort ...

. After finishing education in Newcastle, becoming based in Northumberland and turning professional in 2004, Davies-Jones has earned a living as a singer-songwriter. More known on the "Christian scene" than the acoustic folk one, he has extensively toured the United Kingdom and Ireland.

Biography

Davies-Jones grew up on the shores of

Belfast Lough Belfast Lough is a large, intertidal sea inlet on the east coast of Northern Ireland. At its head is the city and port of Belfast, which sits at the mouth of the River Lagan. The lough opens into the North Channel and connects Belfast to th ...

, then moved to

Newcastle University Newcastle University (legally the University of Newcastle upon Tyne) is a UK public university, public research university based in Newcastle upon Tyne, North East England. It has overseas campuses in Singapore and Malaysia. The university is ...

to complete his education. After busking and performing in bands Davies-Jones turned professional in 2004. In 2009 Davies-Jones provided the and performed a re-arrangement of the carol ''

In the Bleak Midwinter "In the Bleak Midwinter" is a poem by the English poet Christina Rossetti, commonly performed as a Christmas carol. The poem was published, under the title "A Christmas Carol", in the January 1872 issue of ''Scribner's Monthly,'' and was first c ...

'' for the documentary "The Budgerigar and the Prisoner", an award-winning Internet programme award at the Sony 2009 Awards by Clifton Diocese. In 2015 Davies-Jones undertook an arts-funded residency called "The Seam" at the North of England Institute of Mining and Mechanical Engineers. This enabled him to research books for mining stories, about which he was able to write songs. The manual "Practical Coal Mining," in particular, inspired him to write a song of the same name. Following the residency Davies-Jones conducted a tour called "The Seam." In an interview in 2017 with Tony Cummings, Gareth Jones said being professional had been a hard road but he had made a living out of it. To support the endangered

curlew The curlews () are a group of nine species of birds in the genus ''Numenius'', characterised by their long, slender, downcurved bills and mottled brown plumage. The English name is imitative of the Eurasian curlew's call, but may have been in ...

bird species for World Curlew Day on 21 April 2020, Davies-Jones composed and recorded the song ''More Than Memory''.

References

Footnotes

Sources

* * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Davies-Jones, Gareth Male folk singers from Northern Ireland Male singer-songwriters from Northern Ireland 21st-century singer-songwriters from Northern Ireland Northumberland Year of birth missing (living people) Living people 21st-century folk musicians from Northern Ireland