Foy Vance

Though he spent most of his formative years in the grim surroundings of 1980s Belfast, singer/songwriter Foy Vance's musical vision is the product of an entirely different sort of nervous tension -- the cross-racial friction, harmony, and disharmony that gave rise to jazz, blues, and soul in the American South, where Vance, the son of a traveling church minister, spent the pivotal first five years of his life. Vance drew influence from British Folk and Celtic styles, Otis Redding and Nina Simone. He adjusted his guttural singing style accordingly, as his distinctive Northern I...