John Barlow Jarvis

The release of the new John Barlow Jarvis CD “View From a Southern Porch” marks the latest step in a musical journey TIME magazine describes approvingly as, “traveling without a map.”

In “Southern Porch”, John’s 6th solo recording, his piano technique blurs the lines between stride, celtic, jazz, country, classical, and even bluegrass music, all the while showcased inside original musical compositions reminiscent of Randy Newman, Floyd Cramer, and Fats Waller.

John Barlow Jarvis’s musical journey began in 1968 in Southern California at the age of 14, when, after winning numerous classical competition awards, he was signed as a staff songwriter and studio musician at Edwin H. Morris Music. By the age of 18 John was already playing piano on hits by such artists as Ringo Starr, Diana Ross, Leo Sayer, John Mellancamp, The Miracles, Art Garfunkel, Stephen Bishop (a fellow E.H. Morris writer) and many others.

In 1974, at the age of 20, John joined the Rod Stewart Band, where his honky tonk licks can still be heard on such classics as “Hot Legs”, “Tonight’s the Night” and “You’re in My Heart”. In addition to touring with Stewart, John continued to be one of the most in demand recording musicians in Hollywood up until 1982, when he decided to move his family to Nashville, Tennessee.

In Nashville John simply picked up where he left off. For the last 20 years, he has continued to hold his place at the very pinnacle of studio musicians, playing with virtually all the artists who led the country music explosion of the late 1980’s and early 1990’s. His studio credits range from Vince Gill to Brooks and Dunn, from Faith Hill to Shania Twain, and from George Strait to Reba MacEntire. That’s John’s wild honky tonk piano intro on the Hank Williams Jr. Monday Night Football show, and it’s also John’s heartbreakingly minimalist piano on the Mary Chapin Carpenter classic “I Am a Town.”

John is also a two time Grammy winning songwriter, receiving both awards for song of the year, for his compositions “I Still Believe in You”, recorded by Vince Gill, and “Love Can Build a Bridge”, recorded by the Judds. His composition “The Flame” was sung by Trisha Yearwood at the closing ceremonies of the 1996 Summer Olympics. John’s songs have been recorded by an incredibly wide spectrum of artists, including Conway Twitty, John Denver, Waylon Jennings, Stevie Nicks, Delbert McClinton, Art Garfunkel, Brenda Lee, Steve Wariner, Amy Grant, Ricky Skaggs, Alabama, and Taj Mahal, among many others. He has won both the CMA and ACM awards for his writing, and has been nominated for an Emmy.


In 1985, John was approached by MCA, along with Larry Carlton, to be a flagship artist on the new “Master Series” label. His first 5 Cds, from 1985-1993, were universally acclaimed and all of them reached the top 10 in the new jazz category. PEOPLE magazine has called “So Fa So Good” “the best solo piano since Keith Jarrett”. TIME magazine picked “Whatever Works” as one of the 10 best record releases in ANY category for 1989. CBS news spotlighted John on their New Year’s Eve broadcast of 1989, and Jane Pauley interviewed him for the TODAY show in 1990.

John's new CD, "View From a Southern Porch", with special guests Aubrey Haynie, Brian Sutton, Eddie Bayers, Mike Henderson, and David Hungate, has a warmth, an organic energy, and a joy that can only come from people who love to play music for music’s sake, friends who, like John Barlow Jarvis”, lead with the heart and continue to “travel without a map” as they join him along his musical journey.