Born in Wyoming and raised in Missouri on the sounds of bluegrass and Kansas City late-night R&B radio, singer-songwriter, painter and writer Jeb Loy Nichols left home for New York at eighteen with a Parsons School Of Design scholarship under his arm. As serendipity would have it, he ended up in London instead, where he immersed himself in reggae, shared digs and swapped ideas with Neneh Cherry and Adrian Sherwood, worked with Sherwood's On-U Sound, designed sleeves for Pressure Sounds, made records with Dave Schramm for Okra and led dub/roots/anarcho-Americana band the Fellow Travellers, one of the last decade's better kept musical secrets and an outfit Spin aptly dubbed "the lonesome children of Merle, Marley and Marx." Jeb Loy Nichols' Rykodisc/Rough Trade release "JUST WHAT TIME IT IS" - is one of the most soulful records of recent memory, one with a peerless post-Bob Marley pedigree and echoes of Muscle Shoals' slow-southern burn and Stax/Volt's sweet surrender. It's supple, subtle, and seductive.

When asked to sum up the appeal of Jeb Loy Nichols, the dean of American rock writers Robert Christgau replies, "The Bellamy Brothers thought a reggae-country interface would be cute, and they were right. Jeb Loy Nichols thinks it gets to the heart of the mysterious sexiness of everyday life, and he's righter."
Aided and abetted by his bandmates and co-producers-bassist and Tricky sideman Wayne Nunes and young house DJ and co-producer Ewan Pearson (aka Maas)-and two brief but intensely productive sessions in studios in Kent and Jamaica, Jeb Loy Nichols album is warm, sensual and elegantly laid-back. If you thought that reggae and country make for odd bedfellows, you'd better make room for a few more under the covers, because the last time Jeb Loy Nichols released an album, 1997's North American grass-roots and radio success Lovers Knot, the Philadelphia Weekly proclaimed it "the best soul album of the year".