John Murry
Boss Caine
The Basement, York
Wednesday 20th September, 8pm
Website / Watch / Listen
John Murry was adopted at birth into the family of William Faulkner. Some have speculated that the Faulkner blood might also run in his veins, but that should be left for a Southern Gothic novel yet to be written (or perhaps re-written). Raised in Tupelo, Mississippi, in the shadow of Elvis, his undiagnosed autism led to troubles at an early age which led to prescribed medication, which led to unprescribed medication which led to being institutionalised for addiction and mental health issues at a too young age. Eventually, discarded onto the streets of Memphis, he found music, which became the one constant positive force in his life. Memphis led to San Francisico and San Franciso led to heroin and heroin led to a near fatal overdose on the corner of 16th and Mission, so harrowingly memorialized in his song Little Colored Balloons.
Music again came to his rescue and led him to Tim Mooney (American Music Club) and the group of musicians that helped create his 2012 masterpiece “The Graceless Age”. The album was hailed by MOJO magazine and received a 5 out of 5 rating, UNCUT called it a “masterpiece”, both magazines included it in their Top 10 albums of the year; American Songwriter put it in their Top 5 of the year and The Guardian included it in their best of the year as well. The accolades rolled in and John toured the world. He entranced and devastated audiences with his raw, unfiltered live performances, and it looked like his trajectory was set, that music had won and would have the final word. And then Tim Mooney, John's mentor, his beacon, his bedrock, died suddenly and unexpectedly... and John's world fell back in to chaos.
Over the next few years, John would lose the footing that he had struggled so hard to establish. He would lose his wife, his daughter, temporarily his freedom and ultimately his country.
Somewhere along this journey, John crossed paths with Michael Timmins of Cowboy Junkies. John had opened for the band at a show in Glasgow and Michael watched side-stage transfixed by John's performance. Over the next few years the two of them kept in touch, they talked about the music business, politics, books, but most of all they talked about music. And they talked about making an album together. Michael wanted to capture the rawness of John's songs, capture the vibe that he experienced that night in Glasgow and was even more convinced of this approach when John came through Toronto opening for Chuck Prophet and did a solo set at The Horseshoe Tavern, which was as disarming and emotional as the set of music that he had experienced in Glasgow a couple of years earlier. “On The Graceless Age you can hear John’s affinity to artists such as Mark Linkous and Mark Lanegan, but seeing him on stage, with just his guitar and his songs reminded me of Townes (Van Zandt), that raw-boned, exquisite beauty, so real that it borders on the uncomfortable, you feel you should look away, but it's just too compelling to do so. The pain, the intensity, the honesty just draws you deeper”.
Eventually John completed his descent and landed in Kilkenny, Ireland where he found some solid ground as part of a welcoming arts community. Michael then convinced him to travel to his Toronto studio where Michael put a band together consisting of brother Peter Timmins (Cowboy Junkies) on drums and Josh Finlayson (Skydiggers, Gord Downie, Lee Harvey Osmond) on bass. John brought along Cait O'Riordan (The Pogues, Elvis Costello) whom he had met in Ireland and who wanted to be a part of John's journey. The five of them put aside five days to record all bedtracks and overdubs, with the brief that they would let the songs dictate where the journey took them, spontanaity was the order of the week. Michael Timmins describes the sessions, “I felt that it was important that John got out of his own way and that we set up a situation where he would just play and sing and the rest of us would just react, no second guessing, just react and capture the moment. It was a very inspired and inspiring week of playing and recording. Very intense. And I think we captured the raw essence of John's writing and playing”.
A Short History Of Decay is an intensely personal document of an artist's fall from grace. It contains all the tragic elements of that unwritten Southern Gothic novel: the revelations of a man coming to terms with the personal shortcomings, the flaws and the perverse twists of fate that led him to the end of one journey and the beginning of another.
Tickets for these shows are £13 in advance.
You can get tickets for from the venue in person, Jumbo Records in person or online from here.
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Endless Boogie
Avenging Force
The Crescent, York
Thursday 21st September, 7.30pm
After many years pestering, we're finally able to announce New York rock band Endless Boogie are landing in York in September.
Website / Watch / Listen
Press:
'Endless Boogie superimpose wild guitars on even wilder ones.'
Uncut
Full bio:
Thoughts on Endless Boogie ‘Vibe Killer’
Aaron Burr's attempt to seize the Texas Territory for his own dominion has beguiled composers 'n bands for ages. Allegedly Aaron Copeland's 'Appalachian Spring' was originally entitled 'Blennerhassett Spring' til Martha Graham had a snit & threatened to tell his socialist pals he was active in the Lavender Mafia, the fuckin’ witch. But hey, it went on to win a Pulitzer Prize. Lowell George supposedly had a concept album in the can (aka, 'Carolina Parakeet') what was all about it, then Neon Park said he refused to draw a bird sportin Burr's noggin, so George ended up makin 'Thanks I'll Eat It Here' instead. Then died not long after. Now that's just a damn shame! And so this fascinatin’ tale of (alleged) treasonous expansion would end up in limbo until Endless Boogie took up the quill & recorded this new, inspired masterpiece entitled, 'Vibe Killer'. It's like a history lesson plundered deep outta the archives of Straight/Bizarre.
Our story opens w/a jowly narrative enunciated by Top Dollar (as Aaron Burr) callin’ out all them sissy Dem-Rep blaggards, letting 'em know he's on his own path. Naturally what follows is some tasty sun zoom riffage a’tween TD 'n The Governor and the wiley Sweenhound, backed solidly by the Razo/Druzd rhythm union. In fact, through the whole of this opus, Druzd effortlessly marshals through the sonic undertow while Razo rudders his bass like a brilliant pulse in a spasmodic vortex. Top Dollar, the aforementioned Herr Sween & The Governor gnash, morph, crystallize while the jams flow; it's 'Mirror Man' bum-rushin’ 'Pretties For You'. Before ya know it, we're at track 5 ('Back In '74') where the plot ostensibly takes us to a memory've Burr enterin’ college, but is surreptitiously more about the year Top Dollar gave up on Grand Funk in favor of Josefus. You're followin’ all of this, right? So as we amble into the ether of this brilliant opus, we can surmise by title 6 ('Jefferson County') the end is near. Burr (aka, Top Dollar) reflects on everything from Wilkinson's betrayal to the excellent meals while in captivity at Fort Stodden, then suddenly, NO, it's him, Top Dollar-with full Endless Boogie heft-soarin’ high above the hobo fires that flicker along the bank've the Ouachita River, drownin’ out forever the simperin’ harmonica bleats’ve tyranny. It’s almost enough to make you wanna smoke a ham. Friends & collectors, Endless Boogie have never not occupied the Catbird Seat. Winners gonna win, yo. They, like Aaron Burr himself, understand manifest destiny & no amount of port nor Madeira will take them down. Shit, might as well bring the sherry too. Who knows, maybe your mom's a fan.
Roland Seward Woodbe Burr, Texas (Wharton County) 2017
Tickets for these shows are £12 in advance.
You can get tickets for from the venue in person, Jumbo Records in person or online from here.
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The Surfing Magazines
(The Wave Pictures / Slow Club)
Fur Blend
Brudenell Social Club, Leeds
Friday 22nd September, 7.30pm
The Surfing Magazines are a garage rock supergroup. The band contains one half of Slow Club and two thirds of The Wave Pictures. Dominic Brider, who has played with many local bands and is an extremely groovy dude, completes the line-up on drums. The principle influences of the band are Bob Dylan, The Velvet Underground and all the great surf guitar music of the 1960s. The Surfing Magazines intend to rock out and blow your mind, and then to mellow out and soothe your mind, and then to rock out again. Listening to their music is like riding a rock and roll rollercoaster. They are at war with today's pretentious prog-indie-rock millionaires and bongo pop demigods. The Surfing Magazines are the real deal. The Surfing Magazines have got soul. They hope that their music will get you to dance.
Website / Watch / Listen
Not content with their already ferocious work rate, with three album releases in 2016 alone and over twenty in total between them; members of The Wave Pictures and Slow Club’s 11-track debut as Surfing Magazines is an intriguing and exciting mishmash of musical styles – soundtrack surf, weird pop and Americana.
Speaking on ‘Lines and Shadows’, the first track revealed from the record, the band incorporate a quote from writer Dashiel Hammett whilst speaking on the track:
“The problem with putting two and two together is that sometimes you get four, and sometimes you get twenty-two [Hammett]. This is definitely the type of song that puts two and two together and gets twenty-two.”
Pulling in influence from all of the great surf music of the 60s and the band’s musical inspirations of Bob Dylan and Lou Reed, the band are professedly ‘at war’ with today’s pretentious prog-indie-rock millionaires and bongo pop demigods. They intend to ‘rock out and blow your mind, and then mellow out and soothe your mind, then rock out again’.
Tickets for this show are £8 in advance.
You can get tickets in person from Crash Records and Jumbo Records in Leeds or online from here.
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Micah P Hinson
L.A. Salami + Luke Saxton
The Crescent, York
Sunday 24th September, 7.30pm
Website / Watch / Listen
Micah P. Hinson’s new album “Presents The Holy Strangers” is described by the artist as being a “modern folk opera.” Telling the story of a war time family, going from birth to love, to marriage and children, to war and betrayal, murder to suicide – spanning all of the strange and glorious places life can lead. We follow their story, we see their decisions, we see their faults and their beauty. We live with them, we die with them.
Two years in the making, Micah wrote and recorded The Holy Strangers in Denison, Texas, incorporating ancient reel to reels, analogue keyboards, old Tascam and Yamaha desks. The recording only entered the digital realm once pre-mastering took place.
Split across two pieces of the vinyl, the 14 tracks which make up The Holy Strangers are at times sparse and haunting; at other times luscious, maybe even euphoric. From the Johnny Cash-style country single “Lover’s Lane,” to the album’s broad, spoken-word centrepiece “Micah Book One”,
The Holy Strangers covers a lot of ground over the course of its hour long running time, appealing to both long-time fans and new ones alike.
Micah P. Hinson Presents The Holy Strangers is released 8th September 2017 on Full Time Hobby. Micah will be touring Europe throughout September and October.
Tickets for these shows are £15 in advance.
You can get tickets for from the venue in person, Jumbo Records in person or online from here.
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Jolie Holland & Samantha Parton
Brudenell Social Club, Leeds
Tuesday 3rd October, 7.30pm
Fifteen years ago, Jolie Holland and Samantha Parton - two founders of the wildly popular group The Be Good Tanyas - first joined forces. Now they come together once again, with a worldwide touring schedule and new studio album coming in 2017. Their new project, as always, is a page from the big book of North Americana and outsider folk.
Website / Watch
Holland grew up in Texas, and by her teens was performing as a traveling musician. In the late ’90s, she called San Francisco home before making her way to Canada where she co-founded the Tanyas with Vancouver singer-songwriter Samantha Parton. Parton had spent her post-high school years traveling with her guitar, and drawing strong musical inspiration from visits to the southern US; she spent time living in New Orleans, Holland's ancestral home.
After contributing to the Tanyas’ acclaimed Blue Horse LP, Holland moved back to San Francisco while Parton continued to tour and record with the group until a serious car accident took her off the road in 2012. With this new creative incarnation, expect to hear newly written originals, fresh arrangements of The Be Good Tanyas material, and songs from their individual catalogs.
Tickets for this show are £15 in advance.
You can get tickets in person from Crash Records and Jumbo Records in Leeds or online from here.
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Pega Monstro
Fat Spatula + Sherbet Flies
The Crescent, York
Wednesday 11th October, 7.30pm
Pega Monstro are sisters Julia Reis (drums) and Maria Reis (guitar), both sing! The duo's name translates as 'catch the monster', perfectly countering the band's striving dream-punk sound.
The name 'Pega Monstro' also references a novelty toy in the shape of a jelly hand on a string, which children have been throwing at each other in delight for many generations in their native country.
Born and raised in Lisbon, Portugal, Maria and Julia have been playing music together since they were 15 and 17 respectively, in other groups first before resolving on becoming a duo.
Back in 2010, both sisters started a record label, along with some of their musician friends, called Cafetra Records to document Portugal's garage punk scene. Cafetra represents a community of like-minded musicians who all help each other, making music that they'd want to hear, powered by enthusiasm.
Pega Monstro released their self-titled debut album on their own Cafetra imprint in 2012, with national critical acclaim meeting the raucous garage-rock inflected record. Whilst, 2015 saw Pega Monstro team up with Upset The Rhythm for their impressive and more sonically developed 'Alfarroba' album that led to international attention. Now Pega Monstro return with their third album entitled 'Casa de Cima', which translates as "Upper House". The album shares its name with the Villa in which the album was recorded, nestled amongst the pine-scattered terrain of the Sintra mountains. 'Casa de Cima' was recorded through September 2016 by Leonardo Bindilatti, who also produced their last record.
Tickets for this show are £5 in advance.
You can get tickets from the venue in person, in Jumbo Records in Leeds or online from here.
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Martha Hill Young Team
(Holy Moly & The Crackers)
Robbie Thompson
(Buffalo Skinners)
Tilly Moses
The Basement, York
Wednesday 11th October, 8pm
More info to follow.
Tickets for this show are £5 in advance.
You can get tickets from the venue in person, in Jumbo Records in Leeds or online from here.
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Matthew E. White
(solo)
'An intimate evening previewing works in progress and older classics.'
Andy C Jenkins
The Crescent, York
Friday 20th October, 7.30pm.
Matthew E. White is in the middle of work on his new album and would like to share and try out some of his works in progress and older classics. With the UK and Ireland so close to his heart, a tour of smaller clubs seemed the only logical place to give such an intimate and open performance that shows some of his songwriting process.
Website / Watch / Watch
Joining Matthew will be fellow Spacebomb Recordings artist Andy C Jenkins who's recent track Lazy Coast is up on Stereogum for your listening pleasure here.
Tickets for this show are £14 in advance.
You can get tickets for from the venue in person, Jumbo Records in person or online from here.
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Acid Mothers Temple
& The Melting Paraiso UFO
The Crescent, York
Tuesday 24th October, 7.30pm
The legendary Japanese psychedelic rock five piece led by Kawabata Makoto return to York in October.
Website / Watch / Listen
In 1995 the quartet of Kawabata Makoto (Musica Transonic, Mainliner, Toho Sara), Koizumi Hajime (ex. Mainliner, ex. Seventh Seal), Suhara Keizo (Arijigoku, Rashinban), and Cotton Casino (Mady Gura Blue Heaven) formed a new group and started to record their improvised jam sessions.
A group of social dropouts of every description – musicians, dancers, artists, farmers, channellers, ex-yakuza, mermaid researchers and professional vagrants – known as the Acid Mothers Temple Soul Collective, had already begun to coalesce around Kawabata. Then Higashi Hiroshi (ex.Yumejin) joined.
In January 1996, some local residents got the wrong end of the stick and assumed that their house was a hideout for members of the Aum Shinrikyo cult that had committed the gas attack on the Tokyo subway. In the end, they were forced to move out of the original Acid Mothers Temple Soul Collective house and their group began to transform from a hippie commune into a true collective of souls. “Acid Mother’s Temple & The Melting Paraiso U.F.O.” was released on cassette tape by Acid Mother’s Temple label.
The group released their self-titled debut album on PSF Records (Japan) in November 1997. The album was selected as one of the 50 best albums of the year by the British music magazine, The Wire. Since then Acid Mothers Temple have toured the world over, performing and recording in many guises, reaching every possible audience. They've released literally hundreds of singles, albums and CD-Rs and played every psychedelic happening worth it's salt worldwide.
Tickets for these shows are £10 in advance.
You can get tickets for from the venue in person, Jumbo Records in person or online from here.
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Bad Breeding
The Fulford Arms, York
Wednesday 25th October, 7.30pm
Bad Breeding formed in the winter of 2013 in Stevenage - a commuter-belt town north of London. Drawn together by an enthusiasm for old anarcho and a complete disdain for the misrepresentation of Britain's working-class identity, Bad Breeding is an attempt to call out the rank injustices and political distortion peddled to people existing on the fringes. Made up of friends who muddled together through state school, the band serves as an outlet from the monotony of labouring work and humiliating temp jobs.
Website / Watch / Listen
The band say of the record, "Divide was put together a couple of months after the EU referendum and particular parts of the record sought to make sense of the confusion and misdirection that was so prevalent last summer. In some ways it’s an attempt to resist the impulse to collapse under the weight of perpetual distortion packaged by certain sections of the British media, but at times we simply found ourselves instinctively lashing out in bewilderment at what was unravelling around us: the division and derision of certain sections of society, the enablement of xenophobia and the continued manipulation of working-class identity by politicians and press organisations alike.
"There are obviously some overtly political points being discussed on the record, although last year presented moments of pretty difficult personal trauma for us too and there are a few songs on the record that try to deal with those things."
Once again the relentless rhythm section drives the sound with guitar work that is squealing and immense alongside vocals that spit bile and razor-sharp lyrics. Standouts include "The More the Merrier" - which sounds like prime Icons of Filth from 1985 whilst last track "Endless Impossibility" is a five-minute-plus dirge that hits hard like Killing Joke but with more noise and chaos. On Divide, Bad Breeding have upped the intensity and made an even stronger album. Rather than being self-released, they have now joined La Vida Es un Mus in Europe and Iron Lung in the States.
Divide comes in a heavyweight reverse board sleeve with artwork and inners by Nicky Rat and Carlos Casotti, alongside the "An End To Silence" essay, written by collaborator and friend Jake Farrell. Read in full here: www.badbreeding.com.
Press:
'The Stevenage noisemongers have begun to cement themselves as one of the most exhilarating live bands in the country'
The Quietus
Airless, brutally simple and efficient monochrome noise, intense and compacted.. The best punk band in Britain.'
The Guardian
'A wall of noise that has never sounded so necessary. There's nothing retro about these punks, just a purity of intent that lacks bitterness and shines with defiant pride. Self released and financed by their day jobs, they're getting their hands dirty and keeping things just about as hardcore DIY as possible.'
i-D
'With a sound owing as much to the agnostic rage of 1980s punk bands like Discharge and Crass as it does the experimental noise tendencies of Killing Joke, not to mention overtly politicised lyrics to boot, Bad Breeding are a welcome breath of fresh air.'
Drowned in Sound.
Tickets for this show are £6 in advance.
You can get tickets for from the venue in person, Jumbo Records in person or online from here.
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Happy Meals
Hyde Park Book Club, Leeds
Saturday 28th October, 7.30pm
We're delighted to welcome Glasgow based duo Happy Meals to the Hyde Park Book Club for an intimate headline show in October. They have recently toured with Flaming Lips and are about to shoot off opening for Liars. As recent releases on Night School and Optimo/So Low promise, you're in for a great dance party. Very few tickets available.
Website / Watch / Watch / Watch
'A Glasgow-based duo in thrall to minimalist Euro disco, who sing in French and are huge in the Russian underground scene, sounds like some sort of hideous hipster fantasy. But Happy Meals are very much real, and very good. Having met at high school, it was eight years before Suzanne Rodden and Lewis Cook started formulating ideas that would become Happy Meals—ice cold synths and smooth grooves, all built around abstract ideas rather than pre-determined structures. Since then, acclaim has come quickly—they’ve not only found themselves playing to delighted Moscow clubbers, but debut mini-album Apéro was nominated for Scottish Album of the Year. Their sultry synthpop and cosmic take on Italo is sure to bring them wider recognition in 2017 though, so watch out for one of electronic music’s best-kept secrets tearing up a dance floor or a party near you soon.'
Drowned In Sound 2017
'Full Ashram Devotional Ceremony Volumes IV-VI'
Glasgow's much loved Happy Meals are back, dropping the inaugural release on Optimo Music's new So Low offshoot. The follow up to the excellent "Apero" LP on Night School, "Full Ashram Devotional Ceremony" finds hardware fanatics Suzanne Rodden and Lewis Cook turning their attention both upwards and inwards, exploring the healing frequencies and cosmic energy within us all. Bookended by a pair of mind-expanding, vision weaving synth drones, the LP drifts through the echo drenched drum machines, pastoral synth riffs and digital flute loops of "May You Be...", the comforting ambience of "Full Ashram Emerging Theme" and intergalactic exotica of "Every Moment Is A Birth". Though each of these pieces offer distinct moods and melodies, the album is sequenced for seamless listening, so light your incense, turn off the lights and take the journey.
“…from the nine minute celestial sashay of ‘Crystal Salutation’ thru the off-kilter Maria Minerva-isms of ‘Electronic Disco’ or the chiming boogie of 'Altered Images’ to blown-out dub-pop sweetnuss in 'The Age Of Love’, and the Balearic acid of 'Le Voyage’. Top notch.'
BOOMKAT
Tickets for this show are £6 in advance.
You can buy them via this link (only).
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Wire
The Crescent, York
Sunday 29th October, 7.30pm
39 years since they played The Pop Club in York, post-punk legends Wire are finally back in our city. Tickets on sale now!
Having hit a peak of inventiveness and productivity, Wire have been playing strings of sold out shows and achieving career best album sales, as well as being cited as a strong influence by yet another generation of bands, including Parquet Courts and Savages.
Wire’s latest album is ‘Silver/Lead’, a set of songs which encompasses the optimistic dazzle of ‘Diamonds In Cups’, the menacing widescreen grandeur of ‘Playing Harp For The Fishes’ and the breakneck paced guitar pop of ‘Short Elevated Period’.
Although their 15th studio album is being released on the 40th anniversary of Wire’s debut, ‘Silver/Lead’ has nothing to do with the past and everything to do with the future.
Website / Watch / Listen
Tickets for this show are £14.50 in advance.
You can get tickets for from the venue in person, Jumbo Records in person or online from here.
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The Proper Ornaments
The Fulford Arms, York
Sunday 29th October, 7.30pm
The Proper Ornaments formed in London around songwriters James Hoare (Veronica Falls/Ultimate Painting) and Max Oscarnold (TOY).
Website / Watch / Listen
The two in met at a women’s clothing store in Nothing Hill, where Max’s girlfriend was trying to steal boots from. The two bonded over a mutual love of The Velvet Underground and released their first single, “Recalling”, in 2010 through San Francisco label Make a Mess. They followed it up with an eponymous five-song EP for No Pain in Pop in 2011 and in 2013, a single (“Waiting for the Summer”) for Lo Recordings, which then released all their output to date on a collection (also titled Waiting for the Summer) later that year. After signing up with Fortuna Pop in the UK and Slumberland in the US, and revamping the line up with the addition of drummer Robert Syme and Daniel Nellis on bass, the group toured with Metronomy, TOY, The Horrors, Crystal Stilts, Woods and returned with their debut album, Wooden Head, in the summer of 2014, when after a promotional tour of UK and Europe they packed the 100 Club in a memorable night.
Their sound gathers elements of classic UK indie pop with shimmering jangling guitars that blend with rich harmonies reminiscent of the west coast 60’s groups, and in their live shows they take these sounds to a more motorik and heavier realms.
Tickets for these shows are £8 in advance.
You can get tickets for from the venue in person, Jumbo Records in person or online from here.
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The Dream Syndicate
Brudenell Social Club, Leeds
Wednesday 1st November, 7.30pm
With a brand new album ready to go for Tom Waits Anti- Records, The Dream Syndicate have finally decided to extend their reformation to the UK. They will play two shows in London and this one in Leeds. Steve Wynn, Mark Walton, Dennis Duck and The Miracle 3's Jason Victor. We've been in Steve's ear for years and needless to say we're absolutely delighted to be hosting.
Website / Watch / Listen
Full beautiful story:
Like a lot of bands and other incendiary devices, the Dream Syndicate began in a basement.
In the final days of 1981, Dennis Duck, known in the LA scene as the drummer of post-punk stalwarts Human Hands, met up in Los Angeles for a subterranean rehearsal with Steve Wynn (guitar, vocals), Karl Precoda (guitar) and Kendra Smith (bass), three scruffy and noisy kids of no particular renown. Despite mostly consisting of long jams on CCR’s version of “Susie Q” and a few embryonic Wynn compositions, the rehearsal left the quartet feeling they were on to something that, if nothing else, was the sound they had been seeking and most certainly not finding on the local scene.
That sound was long songs of feedback and drone and psychedelic rave ups centered around cheap guitars plugged into broken amps. Guitars! Long Songs! Psychedelic garage music (well, basement, technically)—not things that were in fashion at that moment of time.
“We fully expected to be hated,” said Wynn. “But we also figured that if we liked this music as much as we did that somebody else would have to feel the same. We set out to be a band that could be somebody’s favorite band—even if for only a handful of people. Love us or hate us—that was our gauntlet at first.”
But that gauntlet was met by more people and more quickly than expected. Within 3 weeks the band recorded a four-song demo tape for $100 that ended up being their first record, a self-released EP on Wynn’s Down There Records label. The record immediately got press locally and nationwide, airplay on Rodney Bingenheimer’s “Rodney On The Roq” program and other similarly outlier stations across the country, hitting various indie charts along the way. It was only a matter of months before they were offered a record deal by Slash Records to make a debut album for the label’s Ruby imprint. Nine months after that basement jam session, the band was label mates with the likes of X, The Blasters and The Germs.
That debut record, “The Days of Wine and Roses” was recorded in three consecutive midnight-to-8am sessions—“because the rates were cheaper during the graveyard shift,” Wynn states. “We would finish in the morning and go straight to our day jobs and then go right back to the studio.” Fueled by adrenaline, junk food and the knowledge that they were making the record they’d always wanted to make, The Dream Syndicate made an album that continues to make all-time Best Album lists and influence bands to this day.
A lengthy US tour followed in early 1983, the band finding themselves welcomed as outsider heroes by fans who had also been looking for something else, that something that the Dream Syndicate had imagined in that first basement session. It felt somehow gratifying, startling and inevitable all at the same time. The band came home, wide-eyed conquering heroes but only a few weeks later, Kendra Smith left the band to concentrate on a new project, Opal (which later became Mazzy Star) that she started with David Roback.
Smith was replaced by Dave Provost on bass just before the band left for a three-week cross-country tour with U2 who were exploding with their breakout “War” album. The chance to play much larger venues to many more people put the band in the spotlight and a bidding war ensued with the band signing to A&M Records in the summer of 1983 and going into San Francisco’s Automat Studios with Sandy Pearlman (Blue Oyster Cult, The Clash) a few months later to record their second album, “Medicine Show.” This one took a little longer— five months to be exact. There are enough stories to fill a few books on that session but the album that came out in May of 1984 showed the band in a new, expansive light and got great reviews on both sides of the Atlantic.
Dave Provost left the band and was replaced by Mark Walton, a local bass guitarist and acquaintance of Precoda’s. An eight-week tour with REM followed, forging a friendship and collaboration with the Athens band that continues to this day for Wynn in The Baseball Project. Following a triumphant European tour, the
band came home and, once again, the burn and grind of the road took a toll on the lineup. In the final days of 1984, only three years after that first rehearsal, Wynn broke up the band only to reform a few months later with Paul B. Cutler, of 45 Grave, on guitar. It was a fresh start and began four solid years of constant touring in the US and Europe as well as two more albums—“Out of The Grey” and “Ghost Stories,” the latter produced by Elliot Mazer of Neil Young fame—that showed the band’s sound and Wynn’s songwriting evolving and picking up new fans along the way.
Despite playing more shows to larger and larger audiences, the band split up at the end of 1988. “It just felt like we had done everything we had set out to do. It was starting to feel a little rote, a little redundant and even a little perfunctory,” says Wynn. “Maybe we were just tired and worn out but it felt like a good time to stop.”
In the years that followed, Wynn made many well-received solo albums and also performed as part of Gutterball and the aforementioned Baseball Project while Walton founded the Continental Drifters, a band that built quite the groundswell of love and cult following of their own over a ten year career. Duck reformed Human Hands and also kept active on the Los Angeles avant-garde Los Angeles Free Music Association scene which he had been part of before the Dream Syndicate. In the meantime, the three remained friends, occasionally joining each other on stage.
In 2012, Wynn was asked to perform at the prominent Walk On Project Festival in Bilbao, Spain by a good friend who annually organizes the charity event. “I tried to get my band or the Baseball Project to do it but they were both busy. I really wanted to play the festival so I said, ‘hey, how about the Dream Syndicate?’ He thought I was joking but I wasn’t. It felt like time to give see what the Dream Syndicate meant and would sound like in a whole new era and setting.”
Neither Karl Precoda nor Paul B. Cutler were up for the reunion and Wynn immediately thought of Jason Victor, who had played in his solo band since 2001 and had played most of the Dream Syndicate catalog on stage at one time or another. “Jason not only knew the material—and was actually quite the student and expert of the band—but he also had that perfect mix of freakout noise and dissonance mixed with a whole lot of talent and ability. He was like everything I loved about both Karl and Paul’s playing but with a whole new twist. He was the perfect ingredient to bridge us from the past to the present.”
The reunited band took everything in baby steps. A few shows here and there—a couple of European tours, sporadic US dates (the first being a still talked-about set at Wilco’s Solid Sound Festival)— “We were playing just enough to become a band but not enough to spook the giddy reality that it was actually happening.” The shows were exciting---for both the band and the eagerly awaiting fans, many of whom weren’t even alive when the band were around the first time. The next step was to see if the excitement and newfound chemistry would extend to the studio.
“It just felt like a good idea to see how it would work in the studio,” says Wynn. “From the start we said we had to love what we recorded or else we would make sure that nobody ever heard it. Nothing in between.”
Steve, Jason, Mark and Dennis retreated to Montrose Studios in Richmond, Virginia with old pal and Green On Red founder Chris Cacavas on keyboards and acting as co-producer with the band. From the first day of recording it was apparent that the band was making an album that would live up its history and take their
story into the present.
Wynn says, “In a way it feels like if "The Days of Wine and Roses" would have been made in 2017. Which is to say that it's true to what we did before but it's also a whole new thing. There's no doubt it's a Dream Syndicate record and yet it's not quite exactly like anything we did before. I guess a lot of that has to do with the "new guy," Jason Victor who joined the band on guitar in 2012. He's just incredible and really shapes the sound much in the way that Karl Precoda and Paul Cutler did in the previous lineups. It makes for a good push-and-pull, jousting 2-guitar adventure like our old records and also like many of our favorite bands--I guess you could compare it to other Dream Syndicate lineups but I'd just as soon compare it to Ornette Coleman and Don Cherry.”
And to continue the thread from the past to the present, the closing track “Kendra’s Dream” was co-written by none other than original bassist Kendra Smith who also sings the lead vocal on the track. “I felt that she was exactly the element that the song needed and I just felt so good about her being with us on the record. I’m so glad she said yes.”
And is there a concept? Is there a story line to the record?
“I tried to imagine the characters and personalities and narratives on "The Days of Wine and Roses" and then wondered, "well, what ever DID happen to those people? What are they up to now? Did things work out for them?" I just took where I was at and where the band was at back then and turned the hands of the clock
forward about 35 years. You know, just like real life.”
Real life that began in a basement in 1981 and now feels very much above ground and ready to continue the tale in 2017. And the circle never ends.
Tickets for this show are £17.50 in advance.
You can get tickets in person from Crash Records and Jumbo Records in Leeds or online from here.
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Katie Von Schleicher
The Basement, York
Tuesday 7th November, 8pm
We're delighted to be promoting a tiny York headline show for this wonderful Maryland singer-songwriter. Katie has recently been on tour with Surfer Blood and is soon to be in the UK opening for Big Thief; her new album on Ba Da Bing, 'Shitty Hits', is a winner.
'Katie Von Schleicher’s debut tackles feelings of mediocrity and turns them into something grand instead.'
Loud & Quiet 8/10
'Brilliant debut from wry US writer.'
Uncut 8/10
Website / Watch / Listen
Katie Von Schleicher’s Bleaksploitation was an accident, years in the making. While interning at Ba Da Bing Records, owner Ben Goldberg offered that she make a cassette for the label to release. It could be anything, demos or a live performance, but she took it a bit more seriously than Goldberg intended. The result was her first self-produced and engineered effort, a strange, hazy, pop-laden tape. Doing her own press under a pseudonym and referring to it as an “album,” Von Schleicher garnered enough attention for Bleaksploitation to see it released on vinyl in Spring 2016.
On her debut full-length, Von Schleicher strikes again on the magic that comes from her warped and uncompromising sound. Shitty Hits channels the bright, sunny radio burners of the 1970’s, songs you drive to, carefree, and songs you can cry to.
From start to finish, Shitty Hits confronts feelings of isolation and powerlessness. Opener ‘The Image’ (named for Daniel Boorstein’s The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-events in America) finds Von Schleicher at bottom, struggling for perspective: “The image runs and runs together / I’m glancing at it on a screen / I can’t tell you how I feel / It runs and runs together / I’m standing beneath it.” Overheated vocals, distorted drums and unwieldy guitars push back, unrelenting. Von Schleicher fights to get out of her head the way Springsteen tries beating it out of town. Shitty Hits doesn’t tackle grandiosity, but mediocrity; the struggle of being deeply flawed and unmistakably human.
Conjuring the home recorded sound of Paul McCartney’s McCartney or Jeff Buckley’s Sketches For My Sweetheart The Drunk, Shitty Hits was created on a tape machine at Von Schleicher’s childhood home in Maryland. Where Bleaksploitation courted a kind of sonic nihilism, Shitty Hits shows confidence and growth. It ends in unflinching self-realization, as Von Schleicher sings “Where is everything I hold to be true? / When you feel like you’re a door they’re knocking on / Or worse, that no one passes through / Do I hold my life? / No one’s gonna sell it back / Over my head.” Words form the questions, answers are given in sound.
Tickets for this show are £6.50 in advance.
You can get tickets for from the venue in person, Jumbo Records in person or online from here.
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Psychic TV
Band On The Wall, Manchester
Tuesday 7th November, 7.30pm
We're teaming up with DV8 Festival and TV's Over to bring legendary alternative act Psychic TV back to Manchester for the first time in a very long time. Tickets are on sale now and we do not expect them to last long.
Website / Watch / Listen
Psychic TV was first born in 1982 at 50 Beck Road, Hackney following the termination of Throbbing Gristle the year before. Six months later the duo completed the nucleus of the new unit with ex-TG’er Peter Christopherson. By that time Genesis had already conceived, named and pioneered the genre “lndustrial Music” with Throbbing Gristle. Along with groups like The Velvet Underground, Throbbing Gristle is and remains one of the most influential rock groups of the last 30 years; if you haven’t heard their music, you will certainly have listened to someone who has. In Throbbing Gristle, Genesis and company synthesized the influences and philosophies of Gen’s close friends and collaborators, including Beat writer William S. Burroughs; Beat poet and painter Brion Gysin; psychedelic shaman Dr Timothy Leary; queer activist film maker Derek Jarman; and those of legendary occultist Austin Osman Spare, theorist John Cage and various seminal underground authors, thinkers, artists and film makers. The group “TG” produced some of the most unsettling and thoughtprovoking music of all time. Their pioneering “Industrial” sound and self-sufficient approach to record distribution has had a profound impact, becoming key elements of underground music production and distribution ever since.
Right from the outset, Psychic TV in turn made highly innovative and unflinchingly provocative music blending elements of psychedelia and dance with Industrial sounds (named “HYPERDELIC” by Genesis). As with TG, the details of Psychic TV’s packaging, marketing and the radical lifestyle of the musicians were all treated as equally crucial components of the final aesthetic statement. For some 14 odd years, Psychic TV recorded and released dozens of live and studio albums ending up in the Guiness Book Of Records for releasing more albums in one year than any other artist (even Elvis!). Psychic TV was terminated in the mid 90′s as Genesis pursued further musical goals with his spoken-word and expanded poetry/video installation project Thee Majesty.
In 2003, drummer Edley ODowd of New York City’s legendary rock band Toilet Boys gently but persistently persuaded Genesis to rekindle her rock spirit and Psychic TV. Edley succeeded and they played their first public show that December. The reactivated ensemble led by ODowd, has been touring the US, Europe and Russia and releasing music ever since. Presently motivated by a love of performance & recording, Genesis calls this most current lineup ‘the best version of Psychic TV ever’.
The full history of Genesis Breyer P-Orridge and her varied seminal musical exploits of the past three decades as well as her soclo-cultural (or should that be politico-sexual? Or all the above!) adventures would easily fill a book (and has ... Soft Skull/Shortwave Books published “Painful but Fabulous: The Lives and Art of Genesis P-Orridge” in 2003 and more recently with “Thee Psychick Bible” in hardcover in 2009 and paperback in 2010). Genesis continues to exhibit artwork around the globe (Most recently at Art Basel Miami and The Serpentine Gallery, London).
Already living a creative further chapter of her “life” book Genesis continues to provoke and explore in her very public private life; from replacing all her healthy teeth with solid gold permanent replicas in an homage to Pierre Clemente in Luis Bunuel’s “Belle De Jour.” Littering the dictionary and culture with new words for new, original ideas Genesis can be said to follow the serious process and joy-filled strategy of “When there is no example imagine it, when there is no word for it invent one.”
Tickets for this show are £22.50 in advance.
You can get tickets in person from Band On the Wall in Manchester or online from here.
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Blue Rose Code
The Basement, York
Wednesday 8th November, 8pm
Ross Wilson finally returns to York, this time Blue Rose Code is a trio and will be playing songs from their forthcoming album released in November.
Website / Watch / Listen
Press:
'Blue Rose Code is as slippery as an eel; a genre dodger; a mess of influences and contradictions. This rare display of soul and emotion will not be boxed, a sign of something special.'
Spiral Earth
‘An affirmation of love that links human relationships with the natural world. As sublimely paced as Astral Weeks-era Van Morrison.’
Folk Radio UK
Full bio:
Edinburgh born Ross Wilson spent his creative formative years in East London, then moved to South England “to be by the sea’s energy” but it is in his homecoming that he has found where his heart is. Life wasn’t always simple for Wilson. “I have swapped one type of chaos for another” says Wilson. “On my darkest day I found my benediction”.
Now a committed enthusiast and creative whirling dervish, Wilson has seen the past few years produce his most exciting work including the album ‘The Ballad of Peckham Rye’, which was nominated for the prestigious Scottish Album Of The Year Awards in 2014 and featured a roll-call of remarkable talent, including Danny Thompson, Karine Polwart, John Wetton, Aidan O’Rourke and Kathryn Williams.
'Grateful', the first single from the new album, was released at the end of 2015 and was playlisted on BBC Radio Scotland for a full five weeks. In unprecedented fashion, the following two Blue Rose Code singles were playlisted by Radio Scotland, making three in a row.
Further praise has come from the most unexpected of quarters in Hollywood A-lister, Ewan McGregor. Ewan explained, “My uncle Denis Lawson, gave me a copy of The Ballads Of Peckham Rye, it’s beautiful and I can’t stop listening to it.”
McGregor is featured on the follow up album ‘…And Lo! The Bird is on the Wing’ along with Scotland’s Jazz and Folk greats, music legend Danny Thompson and Nashville Gospel singers, The McCrary Sisters.
Speaking about the album, Wilson says “It’s an album for music fans and musicians, a challenging record. I’m passionate about that fusion of folk and jazz and where it intersects with songwriting. Working with these musicians has been a game changer.”
Live performance is where Blue Rose Code connects strongly with their audiences; having toured the length and breadth of the UK, selling out venues wherever they go and leaving a trail of fans in their wake.
Recent festival highlights include: Celtic Connections, Edinburgh Fringe, Looe, Summer Isles, Lindisfarne, Southern Fried and Underneath the Stars.
2017 has already seen BRC play to 1000 people at Glasgow’s City Halls and an appearance on BBC Radio 2 as part of ‘Live from Celtic Connections with Mark Radcliffe’. An anticipated third self-released album is due in November.
Ross Wilson has spent most of his musical life curating; he sculpts his band to every mood and temperament in order to create the perfect happening. From attrition to intense moments of ecstatic love, Wilson’s lyrics challenge the ear and soften the heart.
As the man at the helm of Blue Rose Code, he is, part director, part sculptor…total chameleon.
Tickets for this show are £10 in advance.
You can get tickets from the venue in person, Jumbo Records in Leeds or online from here.
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Shopping
Gauche
The Crescent, York
Wednesday 8th November, 7.30pm
More info to follow.
Tickets for these shows are £6 in advance.
You can get tickets for from the venue in person, Jumbo Records in person or online from here.
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Daniel Romano
Brudenell Social Club, Leeds
Sunday 12th November, 7.30pm
Prolific singer/songwriter and Rock ‘n' Roll chameleon Daniel Romano will release his seventh solo album Modern Pressure next Friday, May 19, via New West Records. In celebration of the record’s release, Romano will embark on a U.S. tour that includes shows in Boston, Washington DC, Brooklyn, Philadelphia, Atlanta, Nashville, and Chicago before heading to Europe to finish the job.
Noisey previously announced Modern Pressure’s release and premiered the video for album track "Roya" calling it “a dreamy, laid back head-nodder featuring shuffling shakers, jangly tambourine, and ever-present, slinking guitar lines.” Of the 12-song set, they praise, “It's sonically spiritual to 2016's Mosey, and shows Romano continuing to sharpen his signature sound, combining elements of retro-tinged rock 'n' roll, country, and psychedelia to create a vibrant tapestry of tunes that feel just as at home in 2017 as they might in 1965.”
Propelled and resourceful as he is prolific, Romano recorded Modern Pressure at a minimalistic cabin in secluded Finnsäs, Sweden with additional string and horn players being added at Baldwin Street Sound in Toronto, ON. Engineered by long-time collaborator Kenneth Meehan, the fevered pace of work lent itself to the unrestrained and undeviated nature of the songs themselves. Songs that were written in observational scrutiny beneath the overcast atmosphere of 2016 and vigorously tackle the present-day heaviness we contain in the jotting bones of our guilty expressions. The twelve tracks boldly ask, “What age is this? What blooming weight do we carry?”
Website / Watch / Watch / Watch
Daniel Romano took the stage for the first time in 1993 as the eight-year-old drummer for his family’s rhythm and blues band. He has since released six solo albums, on which he is the sole performer of all instruments, and launched a pioneering punk rock project called Ancient Shapes that Canadian metal blog Hellbound asserts is “an outstanding new work in its own right.” Romano has simultaneously acted as a producer, engineer, artist, composer, arranger, and videographer. Over the past decade, he has gained three Polaris Music Prize nominations and three Juno nominations, as well as been awarded two platinum albums and Juno Awards for his performance, production, and arrangement work with artist City and Colour.
His 2015 New West Records debut If I’ve Only One Time Askin’ garnered rave reviews from NPR’s Fresh Air, Rolling Stone Country, Mojo, Uncut, Boston Globe, and Exclaim!; and it set the stage for the release of Mosey, which Pitchfork praised as “songs that look to the great beyond” and The Line of Best Fit named one of "The Fifty Best Deep Cuts of 2016.” The album features actress Rachel McAdams on standout track “Toulouse.” McAdams is one of many impressive collaborators whom Romano has worked with throughout his career, including The Tragically Hip’s Gord Downie, legendary Canadian singer-songwriter Ron Sexsmith, and trailblazing bands The Constantines and The Sadies.
'Mosey is clearly not just the work of an absurdly gifted musician, it's the product of an exceptionally vibrant mind.'
**** Uncut Magazine
'This is ain't your average country record.'
**** The Line Of Best Fit
'Mosey is highly approachable and magnetic without being mawkish, but it also speaks clearly to Romano's various frustrations with his generation. These 12 tunes are as poetic as they are powerful, and house a hefty amount of meaning.'
**** Exclaim!
Tickets for this show are £12 in advance.
You can get tickets in person from Crash Records and Jumbo Records in Leeds or online from here.
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Kane Strang
The Basement, York
Saturday 18th November, 8pm
'Singer-songwriter Kane Strang is from Dunedin, New Zealand, and the echoes of that city's musical heritage (The Chills, The Clean, The Verlaines) can be heard in his breezy, bouncy guitar pop. He's not regurgitating the past, though, and he's carved out his own sound already despite being a very new artist.'
Brooklyn Vegan
Website / watch / Listen
Kane Strang’s first proper album, Blue Cheese, picks up on the rough disaffection of his earlier demo collection, A Pebble and a Paper Crane, which he recorded in a WWII bomb shelter in Germany. Back in his hometown of Dunedin, New Zealand, Strang spent two curious months alone, housesitting for his parents. Re-nested, yet still isolated, Strang composed all of Blue Cheese over those quiet days.
Lead-off track “The Web” channels pummeling bass lines punctuated by a twinkling synth that calls upon microscopic pop principalities of restlessness (“Yeah, I met someone else / Without leaving my little house / No, I haven’t held her yet / I met her on the internet”).
Its abrupt ending parallels Strang’s own disconnect. “She’s Appealing” weaves Day-Glo guitar motifs into distant, detached ’80s garage pop vocals. “Never Kissed a Blonde” is driven by a slapping delay on both vocals and guitar. Strang’s path toward a melody is always surprising, and he never misses a hit-on-the- head-obvious-in-retrospect memorable line.
Kane Strang is already picking up strong international interest. As well as the Flying Nun release of Blue Cheese, he has also signed to Badabing Records in New York and Secretly Canadian Publishing.
Strang has amassed a band and has started playing his distinct psych-pop live, including a tour in June 2015 and a memorable set at The Others Way Festival.
Tickets for these shows are £7 in advance.
You can get tickets for from the venue in person, Jumbo Records in person or online from here.
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Jim White
Cicada Rhythm
Brudenell Social Club, Leeds
Monday 20th November, 7.30pm
A genuine one of a kind. The genius (yes, genius) singer-songwriter returns with his eighth album of story songs from his highly engaging southern-states perspective. Jim has seen more of this old world than most the rest of us put together and he's pretty good at relaying the info as anyone who's ever seen him perform will testify.
Press:
'Terms like "alt.country" are far too prosaic to contain music which might equally be called post-bebop, spook-folk or ghoulish horror soundtrack.'
The Guardian
There's also the fact that you won't hear another record like it this year, possibly ever-- all the comparisons that can be made to Tom Waits, Lambchop, Grandaddy and Vic Chesnutt will only tell a small part of the story.
Pitchfork
Bio:
Raised in Pensacola, Florida, a town crushed between the church and heroin, Jim’s songs reach deep into the underbelly of the South. One time Pentacostal, fashion model, New York taxi driver, drifter, pro-surfer, photographer, film-maker, his music is the conduit for all the stories he collected along the way. His previous albums ‘Wrong-Eyed Jesus’ [1997], ‘No Such Place’ [2001] and ‘Drill a Hole in That Substrate…’ [2004] were acclaimed as masterpieces of ‘outer space alt.country’ and established Jim as a phenomenal maverick talent. Jim also starred in the BBC4 film ‘Searching for the Wrong-Eyed Jesus’, an award-winning road-movie exploring Southern culture through its music and stories. Now living in an old farmhouse in the backwoods of Georgia, Jim White may have finally reached a place called home, but his other search, for what he calls ‘the gold tooth in God’s crooked smile’ continues in this new set of backyard tales.
Tickets for this show are £13 in advance.
You can get tickets in person from Crash Records and Jumbo Records in Leeds or online from here.
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Rob Heron & The Tea Pad Orchestra
The Crescent, York
Tuesday 21st November, 7.30pm
MRob Heron & the Tea Pad Orchestra are one of the hardest working bands in the UK roots circuit.
With thousands of touring miles under their belts, they have earned themselves a sizeable fan base in the UK, Europe and beyond. Based in Newcastle Upon Tyne, they play their own brand of Western Swing, Blues, Gypsy Jazz and Country, or “North Eastern Swing” as they've coined it.
Website / Watch / Listen
Their style is more eclectic than most, influenced by early 20th century American music, with the addition of “razor-sharp” solos, great arrangements and original songs; their music harks back to a golden age whilst staying perfectly modern. The songs are penned by Rob Heron, a crazy fool for country music and a full time dandy-cowboy. His songs are full of character, satire, and good old fashion hollerin’.
The band, a hot six-piece, features Ben Fitzgerald (guitar), Tom Cronin (mandolin), Colin Nicholson (accordion), Ted Harbot (double bass) and Paul Archibald (drums).
Their debut album, ‘Money Isn't Everything’, caused a sensation when it was released in 2012, winning a host of rave reviews – many of them 5-star. Their second album, "Talk About The Weather" (released July 7th 2014) is also gathering some notable radio play and reviews.
The best way to experience Rob Heron and the Tea Pad Orchestra is at a live show!
Press:
'That's one hot band right there!'
Huey Morgan, BBC Radio 2
'Rob Heron evokes the spirit of Bob Wills and Django Reinhardt with a quintet that shuffles and boogies with panache. Infectiously good-humoured.'
Uncut Magazine
'Amazing musicians who play with both passion and a sympathetic regard for the history of the genre.'
Maverick Magazine
'On this, their second album of skewed Texas swing, gypsy jazz and hot, humorous country blues they’ve added reeds and horns for a big, thick sound, but their spontaneous combustion is always unstoppable.'
Scotsman On Sunday
Tickets for these shows are £10 in advance.
You can get tickets for from the venue in person, Jumbo Records in person or online from here.
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Seamus Fogarty
(band)
The Basement, York
Wednesday 22nd November, 7.30pm
Irish alt-folk and electronica alchemist Seamus Fogarty will release his new album The Curious Hand on October 6th. It is his first for Domino and follows his debut full-length God Damn You Mountain (Fence/Lost Map) and 2015’s EP Ducks and Drakes.
Website / Watch / Watch
Originally from County Mayo on the west coast of Ireland, Fogarty now resides in London, and the capital provides the canvas forThe Curious Hand. Fogarty’s method of lifting sounds wholesale from his environment and tucking them into the folds of his songs like keepsakes, renders himself at once, artist and archivist as well as twisting the notion of the folk singer’s role as collector and custodian of stories, traditions and cultural curio.
The Curious Hand was produced by Seamus and Leo Abrahams (Brian Eno, Wild Beasts) who also plays on the album. Other notable players include Emma Smith on a plethora of instruments (violin, clarinet, bass to name a few), Rozi Plain (backing vocals), Aram Zarikian (drums) and Seamus’ brother John Fogarty (accordion). .
Tickets for these shows are £7 in advance.
You can get tickets from the venue in person, Jumbo Records in Leeds or online from here.
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Peggy Seeger and Family
‘The First Time Ever’ UK Concert Tour
The Crescent, York
Monday 27th November, 7.30pm
Peggy Seeger and Family - ‘The First Time Ever’ UK Concert Tour
“Each first time ever is the last time that that first time ever will happen. The first time I die will be the last time I live. I was born joyful. This is the first and last time I will write my life.” Peggy Seeger, from ‘The First Time Ever: A Memoir
To coincide with the publication of her memoir (Faber & Faber, Oct 5th) and accompanying CD, singer songwriter and feminist icon Peggy Seeger will take to the road this autumn for a 20-date UK concert and literary festival tour. At 82 she is the undisputed queen of folk and political song with a charisma that shines as brightly as ever.
Concerts will feature Peggy and family members performing her and Ewan MacColl’s most treasured songs from a career spanning over 60 years interspersed with readings from her memoir and plenty of whip-smart banter.
Peggy has always had the ability to take an audience from laughter to tears and back again in the space of a few songs. Her memoir achieves the same in just a few paragraphs. Put the two together and it’s guaranteed to be a memorable night.
Website / Watch / Listen
The Seeger MacColl family are one of folk music’s most loved dynasties. Singer, songwriter and feminist icon Peggy Seeger performs with Neill and Calum, her sons with Ewan MacColl. Join these three exceptional musicians for a gloriously relaxed evening of great music and witty family banter. Expect to hear songs of love, politics and storytelling, including some from Peggy’s award-winning latest album alongside Ewan MacColl’s best loved songs. This is an intimate evening with a remarkable family that will linger long in the memory.
Press:
“Peggy may be folk royalty, but there’s nothing either reverent or nostalgic about this joyous performance”
The Guardian
“A memorable warm and charming evening of great music,
family humour and grace.”
Irish World
“Glorious”
The Times
“An effortlessly intimate affair”
The Scotsman
Tickets for this shows is £18 in advance.
You can get tickets for from the venue in person, Jumbo Records in person or online from here.
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Euros Childs
Wharf Chambers, Leeds.
Tuesday 28th November, 7.30pm
Euros Childs is a solo artist hailing from Pembrokeshire south Wales.
Website / Watch / Listen
Having fronted the band Gorky's Zygotic Mynci from 1991 until 2004, Euros went solo and has released 12 solo albums to date – the last 9 having been released on Euros' own National Elf label ''I set up my own record label so that I could never be dropped'' says Euros ''I'm on the label for life''.
His lastest album 'House Arrest' is due out on the 17th November on National Elf. It was recorded by Stephen Black (aka Sweet Baboo) and Euros at Gus' Dungeon II in Cardiff. The albums includes an ode to a colander (My Colander), the joys of being in a coma (Happy Coma) cannibals dining at an all you can eat restaurant (Crystal and Misty) as well as directions to a whist drive (Whist Drive). Euros plays all the instruments himself: ''I think around 12 or so keyboards were used in the end. Mostly brought in carboot sales and charity shops. One was found in a skip. They'd been hanging round the house for a long time – it was good to put them to use.''
Euros will be embarking on his first UK tour in two years around the release of House Arrest. In recent year's Euros has toured with a band but this time round things will be different ''It'll be a keyboards and drum machine set up. Which will give me the chance to play material I've never played live before - more of the synthesizers based stuff. There'll be two of us onstage. I'm very much looking forward to it.''
Tickets for this show are £10 in advance.
You can buy them from Jumbo Records in person or online form here.
Wharf Chambers is a Co-oporative club...
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Pictish Trail
'Winter Acid Reflux Tour'
The Crescent, York
Tuesday 12th December, 7.30pm
After a fervently busy summer which included triumphant appearance at festivals including Field Day, Glastonbury, Green Man and Lost Map’s Howlin’ Fling, and was capped with a shortlisting for the Scottish Album of the Year Award by popular vote, Isle of Eigg-based Scottish DIY electronic folk-tinged croft pop sonic hermit and Lost Map Records founder and director Johnny Lynch AKA Pictish Trail looks ahead to the cold season with the Winter Rewind Acid Reflux Tour. A self-styled “intimate yuletide Eigg-nog of Hebridean Casio folk, with stripped back, twisted and blissed out regurgitations of ol’ Pictish Trail favourites” it’ll take in a clutch of dates up and down the UK, and feature Johnny performing as a three-piece together with multi-instrumentalists Suse Bear (Tuff Love) and John B. McKenna from Monoganon, who also be the tour support.
It’s the latest round of tour dates in support of Pictish Trail’s critically garlanded third album Future Echoes, which came out in September 2016 on Lost Map Records with distribution courtesy of Caroline International. Future Echoes earned ★★★★ reviews from MOJO, Uncut, Clash, The Arts Desk and The Scotsman among others. Pictish Trail’s bonkers epic video for the track ‘After Life’ was hailed by The Guardian as “a warped myriad of apocalyptic symbolism... brilliant”.
Website / Watch / Listen
To introduce the Winter Rewind Acid Reflux Tour in his own words, here’s Johnny...
---------------
“Hi. Pictish Trail, here.
“Hey, look at that photo up there. That’s me. I’m regurgitating. Weird pink stuff is coming out of my mouth. It’s spilling over my beard. Don’t panic, though. It’s merely a visual representation of a compulsion to expel something within me. I’m quite literally bringing stuff back up from inside. But, what exactly does the thick, milky-pink heartburn medication I’m spewing represent? MY BEAUTIFUL SONGS, of course.
“Last year I released an LP called Future Echoes, which was conceived and delivered as a big, epic sounding album. One publication described it as “space-disco-wonk-pop”, pretty much what I was aiming for (unless their description was a one-letter-shy misprint). It was designed to be bold, and colourful, and loud. Over the past 12 months I’ve been performing on stages wearing a multi-coloured silk poncho, covering my face in glitter, and accompanied by a full-band in skin-tight, soft-pink clothing. It’s been lots of fun, and we’ve been fortunate enough to play a lot of really cool places.
“Recently, I was around at my friend Suse’s place, and we were mucking about with the songs, deconstructing them, making some more minimal, blissed-out, harmony-driven versions. We recorded them, and they sounded really great. It got me thinking it would be cool to do a run of shows – in more intimate, cosy spaces – where we perform these musical regurgitations. So, we’ve put together some dates across the UK in November and December which I’ve obnoxiously entitled the Winter Rewind Acid Reflux Tour. Suse is gonna be joining me, as will my pal John B. McKenna – who will also open each show, with a special Monoganon performance. We’re gonna make the shows suitably festive and merry, so it would be very nice indeed to have your company.”
Tickets for this show are £10 in advance.
You can get tickets for from the venue in person, Jumbo Records in person or online from here.
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The Monochrome Set
Brudenell Social Club, Leeds
Friday 23rd March, 7.30pm
Featuring original members Bid (Guitar/Vocals) and Andy Warren (bass) with John Paul Moran (keyboards) and Mike Urban, who was previously in the band in the early 90s, on drums, The Monochrome Set formed in 1978 and were heavily influential in the 'post-punk' scene that evolved after the initial scorched earth of punk.
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The band's early releases were on the legendary Rough Trade Label before signing with Virgin offshoot Din Disc. They also released several albums on the Cherry Red label, making a notable appearance on that labels' well known 'Pillows and Prayers' compilation.
Though The Monochrome Set split in 1985 the next decade saw several reunions for both live gigs and further studio recordings, their album release count now being well into double figures.
After a hiatus of over a decade the band reformed full time in 2010 and have since toured all over the UK, Europe, Japan and the USA, whilst also releasing four new, critically acclaimed, studio albums, the most recent, 'Cosmonaut', on the German 'Tapete' label in September 2016.
Tickets for this show are £12 in advance.
You can get tickets in person from Crash Records and Jumbo Records in Leeds or online from here.
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The Deslondes
Brudenell Social Club, Leeds
Monday 22nd January, 7.30pm
The Deslondes return with their latest album Hurry Home via New West Records. The 13-song set continues their studied and inventive take on New Orleans country and R&B but also represents a sonic shift with a more electrified sound. Long combining elements of early Stax, Sun, and Atlantic Records with the influence of a more raw, stripped-down sound gleaned off field recordings from Alan Lomax and the Mississippi Records catalog, the band have now incorporated psychedelic flourishes that bring to mind the sonic experimentation of Joe Meek, Lee Hazlewood and The Velvet Underground.
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For Hurry Home, the band split up songwriting and lead vocal duties among its five members, Sam Doores, Riley Downing, Dan Cutler, John James Tourville, and Cameron Snyder, continuing its democratic ethos and musical versatility.
Named after the street in the Holy Cross neighborhood of New Orleans where the band first came together, The Deslondes have continued to tour relentlessly since Doores and Cutler departed their roles in Hurray For The Riff Raff to focus entirely on the band. The Deslondes met up last winter at New West Records’ studio and rehearsal space in Athens, GA., and recorded everything for five days, working out new songs and arrangements. With a batch of 20 new songs, they invited their longtime producer & engineer Andrija Tokic (Alabama Shakes, Benjamin Booker) to New Orleans to begin tracking that summer, creating a makeshift recording studio at The Tigermen Den in the Bywater neighborhood. The album that emerged was Hurry Home. “It’s a fitting title for this album because our lives and our songwriting revolve around leaving and returning, or searching for, home,” says the band. “And home can be a physical place, a relationship, or a state of mind.”
Recordings from the early sessions, including Just In Love, Muddy Water, and Better Be Lonely, bear the mark of a hot New Orleans summer: a lack-of air conditioning, and creaky wood floors, which yield a languid, dreamy sound. Elsewhere on the New Orleans sessions is the feel of the city’s classic R&B, music made for dancing like Sad Song and Hurricane Shakedown. Over several sessions back at Tokic’s Nashville studio during the Fall of 2016, The Deslondes finalized the album, pushing their sound forward with new tracks like Nelly and the gospel-influenced title track. Downing’s songs bookend the album: the wistful opener, Muddy Water, recalling the “small town kids” of his Missouri childhood; and the closing ballad, Déjà Vu And A Blue Moon, which he says is “an ode to those who've spent a lot of time on the road, and maybe they always will.”
A must-see live act, The Deslondes have toured the country extensively and have supported the Alabama Shakes, Hurray For The Riff Raff, The Lumineers, John Fullbright, Michael Kiwanuka and more.
Tickets for this show are £12 in advance.
You can get tickets in person from Crash Records and Jumbo Records in Leeds or online from here.
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