Michael Weston King , is widely acknowledged as one of Britain's finest singer songwriters, Admired by the likes of Chris Hillman, Ron Sexsmith, and the legendary Townes van Zandt (who recorded one of Michael's songs), he draws his influence from a wide range of styles, from Pop to Folk, from Country music to Soul. He is the former leader of U.K. Alt Country pioneers The Good Sons, with whom he made 4 critically acclaimed albums in a seven year career, which was recently celebrated by the double album, Cosmic Fireworks-The Best of The Good Sons (1994-2001). For the past seven years he has been a solo troubadour, touring all over the world, performing with the likes of Nick Cave, John Cale, Roger McGuinn, Steve Earle, Guy Clark , Chris Hillman, Ron Sexsmith, Steve Forbert, Son Volt, and many more, and releasing six beautiful, articulate albums along the way. Many different artists have recorded his songs, while a number of his songs have also been used in TV shows in America and Germany. Beautiful Lies, a songbook of his work, was published in 2005, Happy Infidels, a play by the Irish writer Brian Richmond, was based around 12 of Michael's songs, and he is currently working on a book about some of the greatest 'lost' songs of the past 40 years. A solo retrospective collection, The Tender Place, was released in November 2006, while his latest album, A New Kind of Loneliness, including contributions from Chris Hillman, Ron Sexsmith and Jackie Leven, was released in May 2007 to critical acclaim, and has been widely hailed as his best album to date. A new live album Crawling Through The USA, recording during his most recent tour of N America has just been released,on Valve Records, while work on a pure country duets album, with the acclaimed singer Lou Dalgleish , and featuring the talents of Geraint Watkins, Martin Belmont, and others, is about to be completed and will be released in Spring 09. Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.