The James Hunter Six – Off The Fence (Easy Eye Sound – 2026)
One of the best voices and best-kept secrets of British R&B and soul, James Hunter is back with a new album, Off The Fence. After thirteen years of collaboration with Daptone Records—the Brooklyn label that brought soul back to the forefront in the early 2000s with artists like the late Sharon Jones and Charles Bradley—James Hunter moves on to a new chapter. This time, under the guidance of Gabriel Roth (co-founder of Daptone), he teams up with Dan Auerbach of The Black Keys, who mixed the album in Nashville and released it on his Easy Eye Sound label.
The love story between the Colchester native and Daptone is not entirely over, however. Gabriel Roth is still behind these twelve tracks, with the help of sound engineer Anthony Masino, recorded in Riverside, California.
Off The Fence also marks the return of the collaboration with Van Morrison, which began after their encounter in the early nineties—Morrison would later become one of Hunter’s supporters and have him collaborate on the album Days Like This in 1996.
James Hunter is a true musical aesthete. At the age of 17, bored by school, he went to work as a railway technician for British Rail, partly to earn a certain “blues credibility,” dreaming of himself as an old bluesman figure, while honing his skills on the guitar and busking in the streets of London.
Since his first album on Ace Records under the pseudonym Howlin’ Wilf and The Veejays in 1986, Hunter fits squarely into the lineage of British “mod” artists of the 1960s Swinging London era, such as Georgie Fame and Alexis Korner—musicians obsessed with Black American music.
The opening track, “Two Birds One Stone,” built on a rumba-like rhythm and a bouncing piano, immediately brings to mind the early Fame Records hits from Muscle Shoals—think The Tams or Arthur Alexander. But don’t get me wrong: James Hunter sings with sincerity and emotion, never slipping into pastiche or imitation.
Throughout the album, The James Hunter Six—Myles Weeks (double bass), Rudy Albin Petschauer (drums), Andrew Kingslow (keyboards, percussion), Michael Buckley (baritone saxophone), and Drew Vanderwinckel (tenor saxophone)—serve admirably the sharp songwriting and gritty voice of their bandleader, all wrapped in a particular sense of British humour.
“Even when I write love songs, I tend to put an element of British sardonicism in there,” he admits. “I don’t want to get too sort of chocolate-boxy with my material. Even if you’re saying sweet stuff, I always have to put a joke in there or something that makes a point or twists things a bit.”
The song “Particular” reflects this frame of mind: “saying ‘it’s a lovely day if you’re not particular’ is a typical dour North East Essex turn of phrase.”
As a visceral music lover, Hunter amalgamates all these influences: doo-wop or early R&B (“Let Me Out Of This Love,” “Trouble Comes Calling,” and “Gun Shy,” co-written with bass player Myles Weeks); the exciting jump blues of “Ain’t That A Trip,” where Van Morrison sounds almost like Benny Spellman, and where James shows he is also a virtuoso harmonica player; and the influence of Brill Building songwriters of the 1950s and ’60s—of whom James is a huge fan, felt on the title track Off The Fence and “One for Ripley.”
The beautiful “Here and Now” draws its inspiration from guitar hero Hank Marvin of The Shadows. “Well, it’s the first time I’ve had a guitar with a Bigsby [tremolo], so I had to put it to good use,” says James, explaining his haunting guitar part. “Hank Marvin described his playing rather modestly by saying, ‘When I run out of ideas, I give the tremolo a little shake.’ I tried to use the same technique—to use something subtle on what is quite a delicate song. That said, it was one of the easiest songs to write on the album. It practically wrote itself.”
Still rooted in his UK music culture, James ventures into Northern Soul—a movement that originated in Northern England in the 1970s, where enthusiasts dug deep for rare American soul cuts that often went under the radar upon release—with “A Sure Thing.”
Ultimately, Off The Fence is the perfect album to start 2026, and as Van Morrison puts it simply: “check him out.”
https://www.jameshuntermusic.com/
