Tom Jenkins
Tom Jenkins
Tom Jenkins doesn’t just write songs, he carries them back from places most of us will never see. Before the tours, the support slots, and the label deals, the Pontypridd-born songwriter was cutting a living in the New Zealand backcountry, working as a travelling shepherd, rancher, and sheep shearer with Māori shearing gangs. It was there, miles from home and deep in the solitude of open land, that the songs for his debut album Misery In Comfort took shape.
Self-released at the tail end of 2019, the record was tracked in Fort Worth, Texas, and quickly caught the ear of Grammy and Oscar-winning songwriter Ryan Bingham, who invited Jenkins out on his first solo tour across Ireland. It was an early sign that the lad from the South Wales Valleys had something in his voice and pen that travelled well beyond his own patch of earth.
When lockdown hit, Jenkins turned inward again, working on what would become It Comes In The Morning, It Hangs In The Evening Sky. The album saw him collaborating with an unlikely but inspired mix of musicians, including Marc Ford of The Black Crowes, Phil Campbell of Motörhead, and Paul Mullen. The result was a broader, more expansive sound, indie, alternative folk with a muscular, road-worn edge, and it led to a deal with Xtra Mile Recordings.
Since then, Jenkins has clocked up support tours with Frank Turner, Cardinal Black, Skinny Lister, Bastille, and American country star Megan Moroney, quietly building a reputation as one of those artists who feels just as comfortable in a stripped-back folk setting as he does on a big stage.
His latest release, the 2025 album When The Coal Dust Settled, runs just over half an hour, but it’s packed with deeply personal stories. These are songs shaped by landscape and labour, the Valleys, the pits, the fields, and the people who held them together. Jenkins turns poetry into melody, delivering narratives that feel both intimate and communal. Tracks like In The Valley, When The Coal Dust Settled, and Stay and Work The Land carry a sense of place so strong you can almost taste the coal dust in the air.
There’s heart, anger, nostalgia, and defiance running through the record, but above all there’s craft, the kind that comes from someone who’s lived a few lives before settling into the role of songwriter. And if you’ve ever come from a place shaped by hard work and harder weather, chances are this one will hit you right in the chest.
Give it a spin.