Jason LaRoy

Acoustic guitar driven rock that’s not afraid of a generous serving of distortion, but only when it’s called for. Think Dave Matthews speeding down a highway with Kaki King in the passenger seat and slamming into the John Butler Trio, what comes out of the mayhem may just be the closest thing to the music of the Jason LaRoy Band.
A Beautiful Tomorrow is the first full length effort from the Jason LaRoy Band which hails from the Denver, Colorado area and is fronted by Jason LaRoy. Originally influenced by more typical styles such as hard rock and metal, his interests have expanded over the years and he now plays music from a myriad of genres. During the late 1990's he achieved a significant level of success in the music industry with a band called The Quiet Room, who were signed to Metal Blade Records and sold thousands of discs world wide, touring internationally. Though much of his creative effort has been devoted to rock and metal, he has always had a fascination with acoustic music and its more natural, intimate feel. Jason is joined on this release by John Jeffers on drums and Josh Luebbers on electric and upright bass, making this a very powerful trio.
The vocals are also delivered by Jason. The vocal style is fairly straight forward and accessible, yet occasionally dark and subtly sarcastic. The lyrics can be best described as introspective, personal and on some tracks even political, for the most part firmly footed in reality, yet not afraid to wonder what if… His playing of acoustic guitar is somewhat unorthodox in that he plays many of his songs using both hands on the fret board. He calls it his slap/tap technique but has also referred to it as the anything goes technique. Of this technique he says, "I don't believe that there is one right way to approach playing the guitar." This is not to say that Jason hasn't studied traditional playing. In fact he has spent many years studying various styles of playing, including jazz, classical, blues, and rock. He also teaches guitar to students of all ages and abilities. While grounded in traditional theory and technique, Jason's approach to the guitar is more direct and intuitive. "There are just too many guitarists that are hindered by what they perceive as the correct way to play." This theory is put into practice when he plays live. It is just as likely that he'll be thumping the guitar like a drum, or slapping and popping the strings like a bass as strumming a chord.
Of his influences he says "I have drawn from many different styles to create my own style. I love music in general and refuse to neglect any piece of music based on the genre in which it falls.” I once heard a prominent producer say that people spend too much time waiting around for inspiration to find them, instead I make inspiration happen. I adhere to that type of thinking wholeheartedly!"
Listeners attempting to categorize Jason's music according to genre or style will likely be confounded. But then genre and style labels have never been much more than marketing tools created by music industry magnates to increase sales and target audiences. Music, after all, should be about blurring and deconstructing boundaries rather than creating and reinforcing them.