Against the backdrop of a vast and gorgeous landscape, JP Harris delivers another brilliantly moody tune. Hang Me features fiddle and harmony vocals from Chance McCoy, the perfect complement to Harris’s banjo. And, it must be said, that banjo is a wonderful instrument, a thing of beauty. Harris’s resonant, low voice is genuinely compelling and well-suited to the darkness of the lyrics: “Hang me, oh hang me, I’ll be dead and gone //It’s not the hanging that I mind, it’s being in jail so long.”
Harris shares: “I’ve no way to be certain where I first heard and learned this tune. Other than it being a ubiquitous late-night classic at fiddler’s conventions and rowdy old time jams. Old-time music has been a baseline for me. And I think in getting a little older, a little more comfortable with myself and trusting my intuitions a little more, I’ve realised that one thing that’s never changed in the tumult of launching and trying to build and maintain a music career all these years, the one consistent love and lover that I’ve had has been the old-time community.”
This is the final single from forthcoming album Shaving A Dead Man, which is due for release on 23rd October 2026. Produced by GRAMMY-winning musician Chance McCoy of Old Crow Medicine Show, the record is a collection of Appalachian old-time songs, traditionals that have been played at spirited gatherings countless times over the years. Harris is a stalwart of the Nashville music scene and has released five albums over the last twelve years, including the critically acclaimed Sometimes Dogs Bark At Nothing, which won the Independent Music Awards’ Country Album Of The Year in 2018. If you like timeless music, masterfully played, then check this out.
