Chris McLernon is a new, exciting Irish singer-songwriter, heavily steeped in traditional country music. He started writing songs in his teens and cites such diverse acts as Hank Williams, John Prine, Bob Dylan, Merle Haggard and the Beatles as major influences.

Born in Magherafelt, Northern Ireland he grew up in South Derry in the small rural community of Newbridge, situated half way between Belfast and Derry. It was a family where music played a major role. His grandfather taught the bagpipes and his uncle played anything with keys, and a great uncle was a champion fiddle player. His early musical memories revolve around the music of Merle Haggard, Charley Pride, Jim Reeves and a lot of Hank Williams. While his school friends were outside playing football, Chris would be in his room playing the guitar his mother bought for him when he was 11.

He started writing songs when he was 12, inspired mainly by John Lennon and the Beatles. At 16 he enrolled in a graphic design foundation course at the Rupert Stanley College, Belfast. Through his flatmate he got into Bob Dylan, Neil Young and Bruce Springsteen and realized that art was not the career road he wanted to travel. After 18 months he left college to form his first band, The Ebony Cels (CELS stood for Chris; Eamonn; Lawrence; Seamus), doing covers of songs by the Beatles, Neil Young, John Prine and Springsteen plus a a few country songs and some originals.

Chris left the band, mainly because he felt the vocals were not as strong and distinctive as he would like, and decided to concentrate on his flourishing writing. Alongside songs, he had also branched out into poetry, sending songs and poems to publishers, singers, record labels and radio. His persistence paid off and he had several of his poems published in local newspapers and enjoyed numerous recitations on radio.

He took a keen interest in the work of Kris Kristofferson and realised that his own songs were all 'country'. The next ten years were spent pitching his songs to every corner of the world, but apart from a lot of the usual maybe's, nothing materialised.

Then a few years ago he linked up with Clive Culbertson of No Sweat Studios in Coleraine. Chris turned up at the studios with dozens of tapes, around 60 to 70 songs, mostly recorded on a 4-track home portastudio. Clive was not over excited about receiving the tapes, but promised to listen and Chris returned home unsure if he'd ever hear from Clive or the studio again.

The next day, he did indeed hear from Clive who insisted that Chris should not rely on demo singers, but record them himself. It took almost three years of Clive's continual persistence and several more demo singers, before Chris eventually agreed to record some of the songs himself. Irish singer Joe Moore also became interested in Chris' songs and recorded four songs from those lost sessions on his Catalogue Of Dreams album.

More recently, Chris has signed with The Celtic Connection, a small, independent publishing company, and recorded his first album, Hands Of Time for Dash Records.

Married with three children, Chris is kept busy playing the bar scene and guesting with different bands as he works toward putting together his own band. His album has been gaining extensive radio play all across Ireland, France, Belgium, the Netherlands and even down under in Australia, and is now readily available in the shops through the Country On Broadway distribution. Chris has already started working on a follow up, which he says will be "Kind of an extension of this one, perhaps a little more rocky and bluegrass in places, but still leaning to trad, western swing and steel-and-fiddle waltz - that's my kind of country - honest and simple."