(Ryko)

Heaven Right Here | Perfect Stranger | Hold Me Till I Fall | Kissing Gate | Say Goodbye To Christopher | Room 522 | She Reminded Me | Midnight (All Night Long) | Summer Came | Trying To Get Over | Sadly Sometimes | Double Dose Of You | Heavy Changes

Jeb Loy Nichols' acclaimed album, 'Just What Time It Is', was recorded in the UK and Jamaica. The 13-track album was released in Europe via Ryko in July 2000 and in North America (via Ryko) and Japan (via Video Arts) in January 2001.

Jeb's song-by-song notes on JUST WHAT TIME IT IS :

I wrote this after the bulk of the album was already finished. Lorraine and I were cycling through Wadebridge, in North Cornwall, the lyrics came in a tumble, the whole thing was written in twenty minutes. I was pleased with the day, happy to be out of London, I'd recorded a record I liked and I was counting myself lucky. Things were looking up, I was doing what I wanted to do with people I admired, I was out of one thing and into another.

In his journals, John Cheever feels himself to be ‘…jeopardized by a stranger in a post office, a half-seen face in a train window…’.I was probably thinking of those sentances when I wrote this song. There's nothing so pure as something fleeting.
I love Greg's guitar on this song. When we were mixing it in Jamaica, we had the good fortune to get Al Pancho to come in and toast over the top of it. That was a good time - hanging out in Kariang Studios listening to Steven Stanley mix - coconut juice in the morning, ackee and dumplings for lunch, careening through the hills in the back of Ashanti Roy's pick-up.

In the past couple of years, I've had the pleasure of meeting and seeing quite a few babies grow up. This is a lullaby; not for them, but for their hard-working moms.

This was the first song I wrote with Wayne Nunes. It came quickly; I'd been out walking, Wayne had this melody and the two things fit together. It was a hard song to record, though. The structure proved to be slippery, and we tried a few different versions before we all hit on this one.

In the year before I recorded the record, Ewan Pearson (aka World Of Apples) released a 12 inch called Travis. It was a stone classic track, much admired around my yard. I liked it so much, in fact, I stole it. It formed the basis of Say Goodbye To Christopher.
Christopher was a close friend of mine when I was growing up in Missouri. He was better looking than me, funnier, a better baseball player, an expert shoplifter, an admirer of Little Feet - and a companion that disappeared before I could say goodbye. And so I find myself saying goodbye in unlikely places, at uncertain intersections, in strange towns on strange streets.

My ‘touring all the time and ain't it hell song’. Wrote it with Wayne who does his best to make touring bearable.

Another one I wrote on my bike, cycling home through London, thinking of missed chances and other days.

This is one I wrote on tour, in Chicago, in the van on the way to New York, after a packed show and an evening in the Blue Bird Bar (I think that's what it was called). A song about that rarest of all things - a good, small, uncluttered time.

This is one of my favorites. I'm pleased with just about everything on it: Greg's guitar, Jim's drums, the backing vocals, Nicky's Hammond. I was feeling so proud of it I sent a tape of the whole record to a dear friend in America and he called back and said “Love it! Sounds great - all except that 'Summer Came' track - you gotta lose that one”. Oh well - what the hell does he know? It's my record and I love it…

I wrote this one with Wayne when we were feeling the strain of the music business. It looked like, for a while, that maybe the record wouldn't come out - we might have to start again and rethink things. It's really just a country church song about perseverance.

One I wrote with Lorraine at home one Sunday afternoon. My mom's favorite.

A great one to record, this: everyone playing together, listening, feeling it. A nice winter love song.

I wrote this one after going home to my dad's farm one summer. Southern Missouri was full of everything I'd been missing - gravel roads and walnut trees, pick ups and country music - it was also a long way from where I'd bought a house and built a life. I was feeling a little bit lost and feeling like that wasn't such a bad thing.

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