Jim Newsom is an award-winning singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist who is well known and highly regarded throughout southeastern Virginia. His current band, Jim Newsom and the Cloudless Sky, includes Gail Keller Smith on piano, keyboards and steel drum, and Rick Jebavy on the drums.

Their concert repertoire draws primarily from Jim’s catalog of original songs, particularly material from the four CDs he released over the last six years, with a sprinkling of classy, classic songs from the likes of Stevie Wonder, Paul Simon and Elton John.

The band’s latest album, Peace Love Happiness, is Jim’s ninth album overall. Released in February, 2021, the recording features fourteen new originals written during the two years since his 2018 release, New Set of Dreams. Unlike that recording, on which Jim played all the instruments himself, Peace Love Happiness is a group effort recorded with social distancing measures in place during the depths of the pandemic.

Jim’s original songs cover a wide range of styles and touch on a diverse range of subject matter: His reflection on a lifetime of musicmaking in “I Am Not a Jukebox;” the environmental anthem “Open Spaces;”  the journey up “460 West to Blacksburg;” the singalong folk song “Colors of the Rainbow;” the lyrical potency of “Growing Guns on Trees;” teenage memories from 1969 in “A Mighty Cry;” remembrances of growing up tuned into the classic hits of the ’60s mixed with the “sassy, brassy big band” music of the past on “My Daddy’s Records.”

He has received recognition through the years as a performer and as a songwriter. His “Last Anti-War Song” received local and national notice, including honors at the 2018 Woody Guthrie Folk Festival Songwriting Contest.