Music by Chris Marksberry
ABOUT
Chris Marksberry is a singer-songwriter living in Blackheath, South-East London. He has been songwriting for many years and will be releasing his first album on May 30th. Chris is inspired by the Laurel Canyon scene of folk and counter-culture luminaries such as Neil Young, Bob Dylan, Lowell George and Joni Mitchell and he has a love of popular music from the 1950’s through to the 1980’s.
Chris’ love of music extends into his working life, his company Sound Performance Ltd manufactures Vinyl Records, CDs and packaging for the music industry with offices based in London and New York. Sound Performance have manufactured for many of the best indie bands including Arctic Monkeys, The 1975, Idles as well as music legends including David Bowie, Adele and Ed Sheeran.
Chris’ first album is being released through Sound Performance and is distributed by Right Track / Universal
The album, titled ‘End of The American Dream’, draws influence from American music styles from the 1950’s to the 1970’s and features 11 brand new songs written by Chris. The first single ‘Crawling out the Door’ takes us back to 50’s rock ‘n’ roll and is inspired by bands such as Bill Haley and the Comets. The track was recorded by legendary Punk and Indie producer Pat Collier at Perry Vale Studios. The song features some great rock ‘n’ roll piano from Nashville based Phil Madeira who is a long term fixture in the ‘Emmylou Harris’ band.
The singles ‘Crawling out the Door’, ‘Mother Nature’ and ‘Little Susie’ are available to listen to NOW on all the leading streaming services with the album to follow in May this year.
Reviews
Recent Reviews
Rock N Reel
Chris Marksberry’s album is titled End Of The American Dream. Welcome back to the age of jive. With songs so diverse they raise questions not easily answered, even the title has multiple levels of meaning. First and most obviously, it’s his love letter to the golden age of American pop. His ‘Oh My Darling’ rips your heart out from your chest, then smoothly slips it back in again. His ‘A Train Called Destiny’ dances on a razor’s edge of Eagles-style slide guitar. But the album’s also an autobiographical trip into personal histories.
Chris was born in Columbus, Ohio but, following his Anglo-American parents’ divorce, his mother brought him back to England where he grew up wondering what his life would have been like if it had continued in America. “My mum really thought she was going to a better life with my dad; she thought she was going to something magical,” he says as he sits in his kitchen, glasses pushed back onto the top of his smoothly shaven head. “And it just imploded very quickly. For whatever reason, I don’t fully know. But that was the end of the American dream for our family, really; more hers than mine, but that’s where the title really resonates.”
There’s another interpretation. “America has always peddled the idea that there’s an American Dream, that it’s the land of the free, yet there’s always been a contradiction in that there’s the good bit of it, and the more conflicted part. Obviously, the timing with Trump and everything was not lost on me; it makes the album title quite poignant in some ways.” But more than anything, it’s the romance of American music. “Yeah, when I started writing the album it was, Okay, let’s make this a tribute to styles of American music that I grew up listening to, and that I really found inspirational throughout my life! It was quite natural for me to want to do that because | grew up listening to Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan… while my mum was very into Bill Haley & The Comets and stuff like that, so in my head ‘Crawling Out The Door’ was actually a Bill Haley-style rock’n’roll song. I literally went, Okay, let’s get a rock’n’roll song on there, let’s get an Eagles-style song on there.’ Without being too cheesy about it, I tried to channel a feeling of American 50s, 60s and 70s music.
“The song ‘Round Hill Drive’ was inspired by a 2023 trip to Nashville where I had a meeting at Round Hill Records. During the discussion I was told we were sitting in the old ‘live room’ of Quadrophonic recording studio where Neil Young recorded much of Harvest. They pointed out the corner where Neil had sat while recording ‘Old Man’ and ‘Heart Of Gold’; where James Taylor and Linda Ronstadt sat singing their backing vocals.
“On the flight home I wrote the lyrics to this song which tells the story of the trip and the story of Harvest, an album I grew up with and that inspired my playing and songwriting I looked to emulate the arrangements of Harvest on the song. I played acoustic with a harmonica lead, even taking the first bar riff of The Needle And The Damage Done’ at the very start of the song. Seattle-based Hamilton McKay Belk plays pedal steel, and I had drums and backing vocals tracked in Nashville by local session musicians Tony Morra [drums] and Brittany Hadley [backing vocals].”
The song flicks a switch in your mind, with drumbeats to make the heart beat. Assume the brace position, because this is an album of break-in-case-of-emergency tracks.
Andrew Darlington
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Although Ohio-born Chris now lives in London, his musical rock’n’roll tales take rich memory snapshots, drawing in different eras of America which also happen to soundtrack our own lives. ‘Little Susie’ is jumpin’ jive, because if that’s not a big stand-up slap-bass, then it sounds as though it should be. And if it’s not Boots Randolph taking the honking sax solo on ‘Crawling Out The Door’, it could be. There’s harmonica on his plea to ‘Mother Nature, but is it a yellow Sun record from Memphis? No, but it might be. ‘A Train Called Destiny’ has pedal-steel that ghosts ‘Hotel California. ‘Oh My Darling’ is a widescreen romance that takes its spark from ‘Unchained Melody’ and ‘Round Hill Drive’ directly tributes Neil Young.
Debut LP End Of The American Dream was recorded in the London Perry Vale studios while taking digital advantage of Nashville session players such as drummer Tony Morra. Autobiographical ‘The Generation Game’ is pure Chris all the way, while the Irish fiddles of ‘To Killarney’ take a genealogical trip further into his family roots. This album is a towering achievement.
Andrew Darlington
Indie Dock Music Blog
Southeast London has always been rock and roll’s unfashionable younger sibling — not the mythologised Notting Hill of Joe Strummer, not the Brixton of Bowie, but something quieter, more stubborn, more honest. It is fitting, then, that *The Perry Vale Sessions* feels less like a carefully curated artistic statement and more like a document — eleven songs pulled, blinking, from the light of a recording room where something real was happening, even if nobody was quite sure what it was yet.
Marksberry himself admits as much. The songs were captured across multiple sessions without a fixed concept, the kind of creative sprawl that has produced some of the finest records in the folk-rock canon. Think Dylan during the Basement Tapes period — not the imperial version of Dylan, but the human one, messing about with musicians he trusted, finding shapes in the dark. That Marksberry lists Young, Dylan and Richard Thompson as touchstones is not mere name-dropping; it’s a statement of intent. He is interested in songs that last. He is interested in truth over polish.
The production, handled by the estimable Pat Collier — a man who has wrestled sonic chaos from The Jesus and Mary Chain and The Wonder Stuff — is deliberately raw. This is not the rawness of incompetence; it is the rawness of restraint, of someone knowing when to put the faders down and let the room breathe. Recorded partly at Perry Vale Studios and partly with David Holmes at the legendary Lightship 95, the album has a physical quality, a sense of bodies in a room, of amplifiers humming with something to say.
Side A opens with *Bolt of Lightning* and moves through the cinematic *Noon Day Gun Salute* — where Grammy-nominated drummer Tonny Morra provides a backbone of genuine rhythmic authority — before settling into the bluesy warmth of *Moonshine*, where Phil Madiera’s Hammond playing curls through the arrangement like smoke. It is on *Let’s Ride* and *Hippy World* that Marksberry’s electric guitar voice begins to fully emerge; these are songs with grit under their fingernails, story-songs in the Thompson tradition, where the narrative and the melody are inseparable.
Side B is where the record catches fire. *Razor Love* is the standout — propelled by Ramon Yslas’s percussion (a veteran of Chicago, no less) and anchored by Madiera’s piano, it is a song that sounds like it was always there, waiting to be written. *Pretty Little Irish Belle* has the lightness of early Fairport Convention, while *Gun In My Hand*, the lead single, earns its prominence: direct, urgent, built on a riff that lodges immediately and refuses to leave.
The album’s emotional centrepiece, however, is *Mama (What’s Become of Me)* — a song that brings in saxophonist Frank Walden, whose credits with Amy Winehouse and Mark Ronson speak for themselves. Here, the biographical quality of Marksberry’s writing reaches its most tender and exposed, a son’s lament rendered without sentimentality but with considerable grace. The closing *Slow Down Time* does precisely what its title promises — it drops the tempo, broadens the frame, and sends the listener out into the world feeling, improbably, slightly more at peace with it.
What Marksberry has made here is a record that improves with each listen, revealing new textures and small emotional details that were invisible on first encounter. His debut received five stars from *Rock n Reel* and was largely a piano-led affair rooted in American mythology. This follow-up is something more personal and, ultimately, more interesting — an artist locating himself not in borrowed Americana but in the particular streets, studios and relationships of his own life.
The Perry Vale Sessions will not trouble the algorithmically optimised playlists of the streaming era. It was not designed to. It was designed to be played loud on decent speakers, ideally with a drink in hand and the evening stretching pleasantly ahead. On those terms, it is a considerable success — the work of a songwriter who is, as he says, finding his own voice. On the evidence here, it’s worth listening to.
https://indiedockmusicblog.co.uk/?p=36520
At The Barrier
SE London singer-songwriter Chris Marksberry rocks out and channels those who’ve inspired him most on his second album – The Perry Vale Sessions.
Our writers John and Howard do a double take…
JOHN’S TAKE
STORY-DRIVEN AND BIOGRAPHICAL
The Perry Vale Sessions is the second album from SE London singer-songwriter Chris Marksberry and it follows hot on the heels of his 2025 debut offering, End of the American Dream.
Chris takes his inspiration from the Laurel Canyon folk community and from counterculture icons such as Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Lowell George and Joni Mitchell. But, if those influences pervade the Perry Vale Sessions like the cherries in a fruit cake, the cake is still, most definitely, of Chris’s own making. And, like those who have been an influence, Chris Marsberry reflects his own life experiences in his songs – his lyrics are story driven and biographical.
The Perry Vale Sessions is an energetic, exhilarating album that incorporates and blends varying musical styles. Rock & roll, folk rock, country, rockabilly, jazz and blues – they’re all here and Chris and his guests have the knack of serving them up, laced with an authenticity that is breath taking. And a list of those guests makes impressive reading: Phil Madeira (piano and Hammond organ), Frank Walden (sax), Ramon Ylas (congas and percussion), Tony Morra (drums and percussion) have all proved their worth, supporting artists as diverse as Emmylou Harris, Amy Winehouse, Chicago and others.
A FAST, GRITTY STATEMENT OF INTENT
The ominous sound of a breaking thunderstorm gets opening track, A Bolt of Lightening, off the ground, and we’re up – and we’re running. Chris plays guitar and organ on a dose of clean, punchy rock & roll. David Holmes’ bass and Johnny Bucci’s drums provide a solid foundation – it’s fast, it’s gritty and it’s an unmistakable statement of intent.
Noon Day Gun Salute has a slower-pace but is equally powerful. There’s a pulsing rhythm to the song and the music packs a real sense of openness and freedom, especially when Chris breaks into the bright “We’re a long, long way from home” chorus. Influences are begging to be picked out – Lowell George is there in the big sound and Chris’s harmonica solo sounds like it’s sprung directly from Dylan’s lips.
Paul Riley’s soft-yet-solid bassline sets the pace for the twangy country rock of Restitution. Chris’s vocal style is Dylan-goes-to-Nashville, with a dash of humour tossed in. There’s a metallic tone to his guitar and the harmonica harks right back to the days of the Orange Blossom Special.
NAME-DROPPING AND SPIRIT-CHANNELING
Things take a bluesy turn for the lush Let’s Ride, an album highlight. Jeremy Clark’s strings and organ add a rich, velvety coating and Chris punctuates the gaps with bursts of bluesy guitar. It’s exactly the type of song that David Crosby would come with – it’s cut from the same cloth as Almost Cut My Hair or Wooden Ships – and, in Chris’s hands, it’s a mini-epic.
It would be easy to convince an uninitiated listener that Let’s Ride is an undiscovered track from a 1970 album, and the same could be said for Hippy World. Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, Jimi Hendrix, John Lennon, Mick Jagger and others are all name-dropped in a delightful burst of conga-driven soft rock. And the payoff line: “I wanna live in a hippy world” – will bring happiness to old hippies everywhere. I speak with experience and feeling.
Chris Marksberry is, very clearly, a specialist in finding the vocal style to suit a particular song and that talent is particularly evident for the delta blues of Razor Love. The song is bluesy, swampy and heavy and Chris channels the spirits of Captain Beefheart and Dr John to help him get the message over. Al Richardson’s harmonica is equally authentic and there’s a definite undercurrent of voodoo at work in Phil’s Hammond organ licks and in Ramon Yslas’ crazed percussion.
INSTRUMENTAL POWER
The rockabilly Pretty Little Irish Belle is a song that opens up like the petals of a blooming tulip. Chris has got the instrumentation spot on with this one – a throbbing rhythm from a pared-down drumkit, Electric bass eschewed for its stand-up cousin and electric guitars cast aside in favour of acoustics. And all accomplished without the slightest loss of intensity.
Chris half-speaks, half-sings his lyrics to Gun in My Hand, a straight-ahead, clangy rocker. There’s a forceful confidence about him as he delivers lines like: “I put my heart in your hands and in my hand they put a gun,” and the overall impact recalls Dylan in one of his raucous ‘Tombstone Blues’ moods.
There’s no cutting back on instrumental power for the joyous Mama What’s Become of Me, a fast-paced jazz-rock shuffle, complete with horns and chunky piano. Indeed, the sound is like something that Little Feat and The Band would come up with if they pooled their resources. Chris spits out his lyrics, just like Dylan would, and there’s a party mood happening. Without doubt, it’s a song destined to become a live show high point, if it hasn’t already achieved that status.
THE PERFECT ANTIDOTE…
And – to close an exhilarating album – Chris has taken the wise decision to slow things right back down. Closing track, Slow Down Time does exactly what the song’s title suggests. Chris sings his lyrics to an accompaniment of piano and there’s a sweet, reassuring, tone to his voice. Jeremy Clark overlays a rich orchestration and the result is the perfect antidote to the foregoing excitement.
“These songs were recorded across multiple sessions when the concept for the second album was still unclear and we were trying out new styles and instruments,” says Chris. “These songs mark a time and place, when I hear them they transport me back to the live room at Perry Vale Studios and the many wonderful days spent with producers Pat Collier and Jess Corcoran. I was excited by this period of songwriting and these sessions, along with the musicians that worked with me on these songs, made this a very enjoyable time.”
You know what, Chris? It was well worth the effort!
HOWARD’S TAKE
WELL CRAFTED MUSIC
The excitement and joy in his efforts to create something new shines through each track and as Chris says, ‘These songs mark a time and place…….many wonderful days spent with Pat and Jess……….a very special and enjoyable time.”
Not only have we got the rollocking pure rock’n’roll of Bolt of Lightning and but also the moody orchestration of Let’s Ride, which is a sheer delight. There is even a touch of Dylan-esque electric rock in Restitution.
GROOVES, MOODS AND BRASS
Memories of a groovy period in Hippy World are encapsulated musically and vocally with reference to the groups, events and sounds of the time. Driving percussion and Rickenbacker guitar tones accentuate the sound.
A wild, bluesier mode runs through the stomping Razor Love and the rapid rock of Gun In my Hand. The brass of Mama (What’s Become Of Me) emphasises the versatility of these eclectic songs.
Respite eventually comes as we are allowed to cool down in Slow Down Time with its swirling melodic grand piano led orchestral backing.
HIGH CALIBRE MUSICIANSHIP
Much of this album may link to old time rock n roll but with high calibre musicians like David Holmes, Jess Corcaran and Pat Collier, with a reputable list of guests and the orchestral arrangements of Jeremy Clark there is no sign of any datedness.
Clearly a lot of love, passion and care has gone not only into the composition but also in the production of this excellent piece of work.
discography
Releases and upcoming projects
The Perry Vale Sessions
April 2026
My second album, The Perry Vale Sessions is now available for purchase: https://talkingelephantrecords.bandcamp.com/album/the-perry-vales-sessions and on streaming: https://open.spotify.com/album/3qTlTgW3XVrJmoHaMw23W4
End of The American Dream
May 2025
My Debut album released on 30th May and is now available for order here: https://lnk.to/EndOfTheAmericanDream
You can also order it via The Flood Gallery, the first 50 orders will receive a 12" print: https://www.thefloodgallery.com/collections/new-music-albums/products/end-of-the-american-dream
Latest News
- My new album “The Perry Vale Sessions” is now available for purchase and streaming
- A big thank you to Breakfast with Piers for playing Oh My Darling this week – you can listen back here: https://breakfastradio.co.uk/
- My new single “To Killarney” now has a lyric video up on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eUDc6aADprY
Contact
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