A venue promoter described this track as "Talking Heads meets Nashville….. love it. It feels like Once in a Lifetime (which is a good thing) and attempts to answer the same questions… decades later, as nothing changes." 

It's eclectic, humourous, sarcastic, fun, pessimistic, optimistic, danceable, Americana, spoken word, R&B, Disco, jazzy and kinda chaotic.

Wow! Oh Yeah!

Inspired by the Netflix series, 'Lucifer', as he deals with betrayal in his life. His mother, his father, his brother, almost everyone it seems. Can you relate?

Why Should I Try

Written By: Jon Eborn, Rick Amburgey, Carey Latham, Jennifer Ferguson
Production: Pearlsnap Studio
Vocals: Mason Douglas

RICH LIKE THAT

Laid back, contemplative, investigative instrumental cue.

On The Run

With his band String Bone, Americana/Canadiana singer-songwriter Barry James Payne kicks off 2021 with a positive approach looking to the future.  The song harkens back to easier times and continuing efforts toward better days ahead.  'A Lot More Better' has an upbeat country feel with a nod to early rock and roll and blues as listeners dance into a new and better year. With a 'Tulsa Time', 'Mercury Blues', Rodney Crowell vibe going on, this is Payne's ode to what he hopes will be a much better year ahead. 

The inspiration for “A Lot More Better” was sparked in 2017 at a favourite, local drinking hole, Foster’s Inn, a small pub in small-town Stratford, Ontario, Canada where Payne was having a drink with friends.  The conversation turned to the National Hockey League playoffs. Knowing his friend's favourite team had fallen behind, Payne in true friend-form, goaded him by asking how his Penguins were doing - to which his friend blurted out “they gotta do a lot more better!”. Friends laughed and Payne snickered knowingly, sneaking the lyrical nugget into his list of ideas.  A few weeks later he wrote the main lyrics to the song, but never finished it until a writing session with Stratford, Ontario musician Jay Riehl in early November 2020.  

Payne flipped through his notebook of lyrics at the session and laughed discovering the almost-finished lyrics from three years earlier.  Riehl and Payne were in hysterics while crafting the song, which took shape in less than three hours. Guitarist Carey Blackwell joined in the fun, adding the classic rock and roll/blues sounds, and then it was off to Utopia Parkway Studios in Las Vegas and engineer George Leger III for mastering.

A Lot More Better

Southern Ontario songwriter Barry James Payne is the architect of String Bone, the artistic vehicle for his solo songwriting. In the new release ‘Wow! Oh Yeah!’, Payne explodes into electric grunge & funk guitars, screaming Wow! Oh Yeahs, while a female chorus urges hope, amidst his nonchalant testimony of the times we are living in with a sarcastic Bukowski-like narrative going for the jugular of the world’s leaders who continue to do little despite the seeming urgency of our approaching doom. 

The song culminates in a frenzied chaotic finish in a heaping hot mess, before which Payne wonders what could happen if we looked at the world a little differently, claiming that things probably won’t change, but they could. They have to. There is hope. There is always hope. With backing vocals by Ariel Ryder of Chicago, IL, USA, Lea Keeley of Montreal, QC and Anaïs Ysabel of Waterloo, ON.

Folk-Americana artist String Bone, has been stepping into the fray beyond the edges of his genre envelope as of late. Whether it be exploring Drum & Bass with collaborator Nathan McKay on 2020’s ‘Two Stars Collide’s’ series of mixes, or getting stomping dark and electric in his more recent collaboration with Las Vegas Producer, George Leger III on the mercurial ‘Waitin’ For My Dyin’ Day’, he has kept the reins still somewhat close to that Folk-Americana bucket. Until now. Wow! Oh Yeah! is a mash-up of grunge, funk, Americana, Folk, rock, disco, spoken word, R&B/soul and gospel coherently woven together by Payne & Leger to create a bombastic, uptempo, fun, sarcastic, yet reflective anthem for the ages. If it doesn’t make you chuckle, it’ll make you cry. Or at least think about the planet's future.

Wow! Oh Yeah!

StringBone

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