BALLARD

Darren Riley aka Ballard, has been a musician for around 25 years. In that time he has been in countless bands, from playing bass for one of the Drifters to fronting his own Mexican band, Pancho Ballard and the Banditos. He has also worked with American artist, Tokyo Rosenthal, writing and recording brass tracks for his fourth album, Who Was That Man? This resulted in an email exchange with the album’s producer, Chris Stamey of the db’s. This is the closest he has ever got to working with power-pop royalty. Throughout that time the recording project of Ballard has always been lurking in the background but it’s taken years for him to finally get a sound he can call his own and put an album out.

A bass player by trade, he plays all of the instruments on his recordings, writes all of the songs and produces them. Your usual one-man bedroom pop group with an ego problem.

His music is heavily influenced by British music of the Sixties – aside from his obvious love of The Beatles he is mildly obsessed with The Kinks and even more obsessed with The Move and The Small Faces. If you can’t hear at least one of those bands in his music he’s doing something wrong. He also loves the more obscure British Mod sounds of the Sixties and is delighted whenever he hears a Four Tops song on the radio.

He hopes you like his music enough to give him some money in return for the pleasure of owning it. But it’s all streaming for free just in case you don’t.

BALLARD – Linkage Fun

http://www.ballardpop.com/

http://ballardpop.bandcamp.com/