Needless Alley
Needless Alley cover art by Alex Merry
Needless Alley, as the name suggests, began life in Birmingham. The title comes from a nondescript street passing between New Street and Cathedral Square – the kind of place you’d pass without thinking twice if it weren’t for the name. It’s a street I used to walk as a teenager in the mid-90s, a shortcut between places I needed to be. I’d occasionally busk nearby, and Swordfish Records – a beacon for the hip and dissolute – was down there then. There was something about the passageway’s name – part throwaway joke, part Brummie poetry – that lodged in my mind. In time, it became a thoroughfare to distant recollections.
Needless Alley is my fifth solo album, and in many ways the most personal thing I’ve made. Where earlier records dug into Birmingham’s folk heritage, this one turns inward. It’s a patchwork of memories, half-remembered stories, and the little fragments you carry around without quite realising it. If you spent an afternoon rummaging around in my head, this is more or less what you’d find.
The songs shift between the autobiographical and the imagined, but they’re all rooted in the same sense of place and memory. There are nods to the city streets where I grew up, as well as to the people and moments that have shaped me. It’s still an English folk record at heart, but less about history and more about the messy business of living.
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Read why my music is no longer on Spotify, and about other musicians in the Spotify exodus.
Needless Reviews
“A Brum trad expert and Pentangle-ish fingerpicker, Jon Wilks’s follow-up to 2023’s moody Before I Knew What Had Begun I Had Already Lost veers deeper into Gen X Al Stewart terrain. His Montagu Whaler swings, and Wilks explores his thing for knotty romances (You’ll Do Right By Me) and ’70s pop melody (Mine Is The Sun). Barely folk, but classy.” - ★★★★☆ Jim Worth, Mojo Magazine
“Wilks fully deserves his place alongside names such as Jansch, Carthy and Simpson. Songs from his mental attic, he says, the album is what you’d find if you rummaged around in his head for an afternoon. It’s definitely somewhere well worth exploring.” - Mike Davies, KLOF Magazine
“There is a gentle quality throughout and a sense of peace, even when the lyrics suggest sadness, loss or strife… Mine Is The Sun is pure art. Creativity abounds.” Pal Carter, Folk London (‘Must Listen’ section)
“Jon Wilks’ Needless Alley (Grizzly Folk) comprises 10 folk-rock-brightened, ambitious originals with moments that recall Pentangle (Montagu Whaler), the Mamas & the Papas (Could You Be the One?), and psych-pop (Mine Is the Sun).” - Jude Rodgers, The Guardian
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Why is Needless Alley called Needless Alley?
The origin of Needless Alley’s name is uncertain. Some suggest it was once Needlers’ Alley, reflecting Birmingham’s many needleworkers, with the name later corrupted over time. Others believe it referred to “needless people”, a slang term for sex workers, hinting at a history of ill repute. With little evidence either way, both explanations continue to circulate as part of the alley’s ongoing folklore.
