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Lucinda Williams ‘Down Where The Spirit Meets The Bone’ chart-bound!

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Thirty Tigers is extremely proud to announce the release of Lucinda Williams’ brand new double album
“Down Where the Spirit Meets the Bone”

this week!
see the rave reviews… 

 

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Lucinda Williams

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“…her new double-album may be the best work of her career”  THE INDEPENDENT – ALBUM OF THE WEEK, 5 STARS  

SUNDAY EXPRESS – ALBUM OF THE WEEK, 5 STARS

MAIL ON SUNDAY (EVENT MAGAZINE) – 4 STARS

DAILY MIRROR – 4 STARS

“This is prime Lucinda Williams”  THE SUN, 4.5 OUT OF 5

“…the Louisiana-born singer-songwriter on top form..”  F.T. 4 STARS

“ A 20-track album that scarcely dips in quality across more than 100 minutes of blues, country, folk, pop and soul”  SUNDAY TIMES (CULTURE) 

“..her resilience demands respect”    INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY

“an intimate, end-to-end, night-drive companion”  Q MAGAZINE – 4 STARS

MOJO – 4 Stars 

UNCUT  – 8/ 10

As a rule, you can divide music into three categories — the kind that aims for the head, the kind that aims for the heart and the kind that aims for the hips. Forging two of those connections at once is pretty impressive, but connecting on all three? That’s a rare accomplishment indeed, one that Lucinda Williams manages on her 11th studio album, Down Where The Spirit Meets The Bone.

Down Where The Spirit Meets The Bone, the first release on Lucinda Williams’ own Highway 20 Records label, is easily the most ambitious creation in a body of work that’s long on ambition. Over the course of two discs, Williams leaves no emotional crevice left unexplored, drinking deeply from a well of inspiration that culminates with an offering that overflows with delta-infused country soul.

Williams wrings every drop of affirmation from uplifting tracks like the empowering “Walk On” (a loping paean to life’s most sustaining aspects, the fleeting and the permanent) and every whit of dark beauty from songs such as “This Old Heartache” (a stark reminder that churning psychic waters can lurk beneath a placid surface).

“I felt like I was really on a roll when we started working on the album,” says Williams, who produced the album with Greg Leisz and her husband Tom Overby. “I usually have enough songs to fill an album, and maybe a couple more, but when I started writing for this, the inspiration just kept coming, and the people I was working with kept telling me the songs were worth keeping. It’s not like I was reinventing the wheel — there are only so many things you can write about, love, sex, death, redemption, and they’re all here — but I felt like I was really in a groove here.”

There’s no disputing the immediacy of the set’s offerings, both the most hard-edged (like “West Memphis,” which extrapolates a hardscrabble landscape from the story of the wrongly-convicted West Memphis Three) and the softly caressing (the bittersweet “When I Look at the World”). As ever, she uses words to ensnare her audience, sometimes with an arm around the shoulder, sometimes with hands grabbing the lapels, and sonics to hold that crowd’s rapt attention.

But here, Williams pushes herself as a vocalist as well, making the most of both her instrument’s honeyed warmth and its sandpaper-to-the-soul toughness. She un-tethers herself more fully than she has in ages, or possibly ever. “I felt really comfortable and happy when I was singing, and sort of on my toes a little, since I was working with a lot of new musicians, not just my regular band,” she says. “Putting different people together in different combinations, there was a lot of room to maneuver – a lot of room to make little changes that really made things click.”

That list of “new musicians” is peppered with names that will be familiar to most rock and roll aficionados. This includes longtime Elvis Costello collaborators Pete Thomas and Davey Faragher, guitarist Bill Frisell, iconic Faces keyboardist Ian McLagen, guitarist Stuart Mathis from the Wallflowers, vocals from Jakob Dylan and the distinctive guitar tones of Tony Joe White. Her longtime rhythm section of David Sutton and Butch Norton provides a rock solid foundation on a passel of the tunes, and Leisz — who she credits as “the glue that holds the whole thing together” — adds ornamentation in all the right places.

While there’s no shortage of eureka moments on Down Where the Spirit Meets the Bone, Lucinda digs deepest on “Compassion,” which is based on a poem that was published in 1997 by her father Miller Williams — who read at President Clinton’s second inauguration. She says the homage was a long time in coming.

“It was challenging, to say the least,” she says. “For years, I’ve wanted to take one of his poems and turn it into a song. You really have to take the poem apart and put it back together, you can’t just sing it as is. Tom had said he felt it might work with ‘Compassion,’ so I finally started working on it and came up with something. I told my father about it and he loved the idea, which made me really proud.”

“He had always maintained that there’s a clear differentiation between songs and poems. When I’ve shown him something I thought might become poem, he always just says ‘Honey, I think it wants to be a song.’”

Lucinda Williams has been maneuvering down a path all her own for more than three decades now, emerging from Lake Charles, Louisiana (a town with a rich tradition in all of America’s indigenous music, from country to the blues) having been imbued with a “culturally rich, economically poor” worldview. Several years of playing the hardscrabble clubs of her adopted state of Texas gave her a solid enough footing to record a self-titled album that would become a touchstone for the embryonic Americana movement – helping launch a thousand musical ships along the way.

While not a huge commercial success at the time – it went out of print and stayed there for years –Lucinda Williams (aka, the Rough Trade album) retained a cult reputation, and finally got the reception it deserved upon its reissue earlier this year. Jim Farber of New York’s Daily News hailed the reissue by saying “Listening again proves it to be that rarest of beasts: a perfect work. There’s not a chord, lyric, beat or inflection that doesn’t pull at the heart or make it soar.” In calling it “a masterpiece,” Blurt magazine dubbed it “a discovery worth making and music that will live in your heart and mind long after the disk stops spinning.”

For much of the next decade, she moved around the country, stopping in Austin, Los Angeles, Nashville, and turning out work that won immense respect within the industry (winning a Grammy for Mary Chapin Carpenter’s version of “Passionate Kisses”) and a gradually growing cult audience. While her recorded output was sparse for a time, the work that emerged was invariably hailed for its indelible impressionism — like 1998’s Car Wheels on a Gravel Road, which notched her first Grammy as a performer.

The past decade brought further development, both musically and personally, evidenced on albums like West (2007)which All Music Guide called “flawless…destined to become a classic” and Blessed(2011), which the Los Angeles Times dubbed “a dynamic, human, album, one that’s easy to fall in love with.” Those albums retained much of Williams’ trademark melancholy and southern Gothic starkness, but also exuded more rays of light and hope — hues that were no doubt imparted by a more soothing personal life, as well as a more settled creative space.

Those vibes come to the fore once again on Down Where The Spirit Meets The Bone. While she stays very much rooted in the here and now, Williams also conjures up the spirit of classic ‘70s country soul — the province of Dan Penn, Bobbie Gentry and Tony Joe White. The resulting warmth of tone gives the album a late-night front-porch vibe — one that could be accompanied by either a tall glass of lemonade or something a little stronger, all the better to let the sounds envelop the listener like a blanket of dewy air.

“I didn’t set out to do a whole album of country-soul, but once I started working, a stylistic thread kind of emerged,” she says. “It’s a sound I can relate to, one that’s really immediate and really timeless at the same time — kind of sad in an indefinable way. It’s like something my dad said to me many years ago, something I wrote down and included in my song “Temporary Nature (Of Any Precious Thing)” because it was so profound to me — ‘the saddest joys are the richest ones.’ I think that fits this album really well.”

Lucinda W - Covert Art

Tracklisting

CD N°1
1. Compassion
2. Protection
3. Burning Bridges
4. East Side of Town
5. West Memphis
6. Cold Day in Hell
7. Foolishness
8. Wrong Number
9. Stand Right by Each Other
10. It’s Gonna Rain
 
CD N°2
1. Something Wicked This Way Comes
2. Big Mess
3. When I Look at the World
4. Walk On
5. Temporary Nature (Of Any Precious Thing)
6. Everything but the Truth
7. This Old Heartache
8. Stowaway in Your Heart
9. One More Day
10. Magnolia

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Listen to the new single ‘Burning Bridges’ bellow:

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Lucinda Williams’s website

Lucinda Williams’s facebook

Lucinda Williams’s twitter

Lucinda Williams’s youtube

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Thirty Tigers

Scott Matthews – ’86 Floors From Heaven’ – the amazing new video …

TT logo-newScott Matthews
’86 Floors From Heaven’

 

Scott Matthews 20_0

 

The story of Evelyn McHale and the iconic photograph by Robert C. Wiles made it’s way into the only piano-based song on the album.
In 1947 a 23-year-old Evelyn jumped from the 86th floor of the Empire State Building, ending her life atop a crumpled Sedan in a New York street below.
I clearly remember the first time I laid eyes on the extraordinarily profound image, via a ‘70s Life annual.
This was a birthday present from my friend, Mick Burrows, with a message inside the front cover prompting me to “check out page 104 – one of the most incredible photos ever!!!”
Like millions of other people, the image both inspires and saddens me a great deal.
I lived with Evelyn’s peaceful expression and my thoughts for more than twelve months before I felt compelled to write a song about her story.
I’m sure the photograph will have the same effect on people in a hundred years from now.

 Scott Matthews – September 2014.

In regards to the relationship between the music and the film: I think it’s important  when making a video that you do not give easy answers.
A director must trust in the listener or  the viewer to understand from the video what happened and if he/she has interpretations of their own and which are not necessarily what you had in mind while making the video, it doesn’t matter.
What matters is that you have made something that made others think and made those people spend their most valuable asset, time, to reflect on it and to find the visual connection with the lyrics and between the song and the visual on their own.
Also hopefully they see new elements to solve the puzzle each and every time you watch the video over and over again.

For the creative idea, I didn’t just want to recreate the day of Evelyn.
In the six minutes, I wanted to recreate the times when that day happened.
I think that using vintage footage makes you reflect and become more immersed through seeing people that actually lived in those times.
Maybe even some of them knew Evelyn. Maybe they saw the jump.
You will never know and yet it is possible. It even makes for a great story itself.
Also there is always something extremely melancholic and nostalgic about seeing buildings the way they were back in the day; to see young people full of dreams and hopes, knowing that most of them are long gone now. That’s almost surreal when you think about it and this surreal feeling continues in shots with “our” Evelyn.
I wanted this video, this song to stay with our viewer long after they stop watching.

Lukasz Pytlik – Director
September 2014
 

Watch ’86 Floors From Heaven’ here

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Scott Matthews’s website : http://scottmatthewsmusic.co.uk

Scott Matthews’s facebook : https://www.facebook.com/ScottMatthewsUK

Scott Matthews’s twitter : https://twitter.com/scottmatthewsuk

Scott Matthews’s youtube channel : https://www.youtube.com/user/UKScottMatthews

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“I WILL NOT BE AFRAID” 1st September and LIVE 2nd & 3rd September – 24 year old extraordinary Caroline Rose debuts in London!

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Little Hi! Records and Thirty Tigers are proud to announce ‘ I Will Not Be Afraid ‘, the official debut album by Caroline Rose, a fiery 24 year-old songwriter raised on rockabilly, vintage country and blues-infused rock.

 

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Caroline Rose

“I Will Not Be Afraid”

 

“Rose is a true American songwriter like Dylan, Van Zandt, or King – different stylistically, but all touch on something inherently continental…[she] spins stories with a sense of adventure, a certain badass swagger, and devil-may-care attitude.” 
– WXPN

Sometimes epic failures produce epic results. With the release of her new album I Will Not Be Afraid, keen-eyed young singer-songwriter Caroline Rose has broken her long string of short-circuits with a live-wire national debut that draws on her roots in rockabilly, vintage country and blues to capture her unique and personal vision.

Hoping to escape the dead ends that befell her hometown, colloquially dubbed a stop on “heroin highway”, Rose found her way out via a full ride to a small liberal arts college, where she failed as a scholar, barely scraping by to graduation. Next came a stint as a failed hippie, working on and leaving an organic farm. She then bought a vintage sports car to travel the country, but it quickly broke down. On the plus side, Rose got a job at a cider distillery, where she got to taste apple brandy and applejack all day…Followed by a stint stocking shelves and sweeping floors at a grocery store for a boss who eventually fired her.

“That was the last straw,” Rose recounts. “I don’t like most bosses and most bosses don’t like me. I don’t like most professors and most professors don’t like me. So here I am. I’ve made my own way on my own terms and it’s destiny knocking on my door. BAM!”

She describes the 11 songs on I Will Not Be Afraid as “postcards I’ve picked up from along the road,” and she means that literally. Rose is in perpetual motion. She tours and lives in her van, traveling the highways and back roads to fuel her creative spirit.

Rose’s wanderlust has taken the 24-year-old from her birthplace in a not-so-idyllic small Northeastern town to every corner of the nation, where she’s made friendships, heard stories and had experiences that she’s fashioned into songs like “America Religious,” which uses a driving snare drum with brushes and psychedelic folk fiddle to underpin the cool waterfall of her peaches and molasses voice as she sings about the open skies and the storm clouds inside the American heart. And in her own.

The themes of some of Rose’s songs are drawn from the familiar. “Blood On Your Bootheels,” which opens I Will Not Be Afraid with her prickly guitar and crazy-carnival organ, was inspired by the Trayvon Martin slaying and Rose’s own passionate reaction to violence and intolerance. “Everyone seems to have their opinions about how to live free in this country, especially when it comes to young men and even more especially when it comes to young black men like Trayvon,” Rose observes. Injustice and hardship also underline “Tightrope Walker,” a song inspired by a friend’s stories about working in the school system of an impoverished Mississippi town.

But other songs literally haunt her dreams. The gorgeous textural arrangement and lyrics of “When You Go” — which evoke the openness of both the Southwest and of the future in Rose’s and co-producer Jer Coons’ shimmering guitars and her strong, defiant vocal performance — tumbled out during a night’s rest. “Sometimes songs come to me while I’m asleep and they wake me up, and that’s the best time for me to write,” Rose relates. “When I wake up my mind is like a clear glass of water. I can see everything and capture it.” That’s especially apt for the stream of consciousness lyrics that bring many of her numbers to life.

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Rose’s own life seems more akin to Jack Kerouac’s On the Road. Growing up in a coastal town, her parents — who were visual artists with a love for travel — gave Rose a restless, creative spirit. And like many working class seaside locales, her hometown suffers epidemic heroin abuse.

“I saw a lot of my friends get consumed by it, but I was one of the people that got out,” Rose says. “I worked my ass off to go to college and that really was my only plan of escape at that point. I think I was in denial about being an artist.”

For two of those years Rose worked on the aforementioned farm, hoping the experience would provide her with balance and direction. “I liked the work, but I’m too city to be country and too country to be city,” she offers. “So I moved on.” When Rose worked at a cider distillery, she slept in the barn loft where she recorded many of the demos for I Will Not Be Afraid with her acoustic guitar.

“I finally accepted the idea that writing, singing and playing songs is the only thing I’ve ever really been good at,” Rose relates, “so I decided to forget about everything else and live in my car, and I hit the road.”

Rose joined a new generation of touring songwriters who blend tradition, innovation and edginess, like Hayes Carll, whom she opened for in 2014 and bandmember Jer Coons, whom Rose shared a bill with one night and discovered to be a kindred spirit. Rose produced I Will Not Be Afraid with co-production by Coons at his Burlington, Vermont studio, where they also made Rose’s 2013 self-released America Religious, playing all the guitars, keyboards, harmonica, mandolin, drums and percussion themselves.

Rose explains that the title track is her mantra. “So many people are held back by fear,” she says. “They wish they could do something else with their lives, and they just can’t take the first step. I grew up questioning everything and learned that I needed to be on my own. I needed freedom and I needed to create on my own terms and to keep moving forward without fear, wherever I go.

“I also came to understand that I don’t have any choice,” she continues. “Music is what keeps me breathing. I can’t do anything else.”

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Tracklisting

1. Blood on Your Bootheels
2. Tightrope Walker
3. When You Go
4. Let Me In
5. At Midnight
6. America Religious
7. Red Bikini Waltz
8. Time Spent, Money Grow!
9. Shepherd
10. Back East
11. I Will Not Be Afraid

You can watch the video of ‘ I Will Not Be Afraid 

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Soundcloud for the ALBUM which will be available digitally from 1st September

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The album has 3 songs w/curse words in them!
Blood On Your Bootheels – has the words “God damned”
Tightrope Walker – contains the word “Shit”
Red Bikini Waltz – contains the word “F**king”
UK DATES INTRODUCING CAROLINE ROSE WHO WILL BE IN THE UK FROM 30th August until 6th September

– 02/09/14 – The Lexington, London, United Kingdom ( w/ Hayes Carll )
– 03/09/14 – Bush Hall, London, United Kingdom ( w/ Hayes Carll )

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Caroline’s Website

http://carolinerosemusic.com

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John Fullbright

TT logo-newThe Return Of John Fullbright

Plays 9 UK Shows This July

New Album ‘Songs’ Out July 21st

 

‘Throughout there is a world weariness and wisdom far beyond John Fullbright’s 25 years. 4*’ MOJO

Hot off the back of his biggest London show to date at the Islington Assembly Hall last night, John Fullbright has announced 9 further unmissable dates for July.

John is already confirmed to play festivals in July including Secret Garden Party on the 26th and to coincide with this, ‘he will be playing Manchester, Sheffield, Birghton and Leicester, places he could not get through on his mini jaunt in June.

John Fullbright plays:

July

Fri 18th                      GATESHEAD, SummerTyne Americana Festival

Sat 19th                    MANCHESTER, Ruby Lounge

Sun 20th                   SHEFFIELD, Greystones

Mon 21st                  BRIGHTON, Green Door

Tues 22nd                 LEICESTER, The Musician

Thu 24th                   GUILDFORD, St. Mary’s Church

Fri 25th                     WINCHESTER, The Railway

Sat 26th                    HUNTINGDON, Secret Garden Party

Sun 27th                   PERTH, Southern Fried Festival

Born in Woody Guthrie’s hometown of Okemah, Oklahoma, John Fullbright grew up surrounded by a rich musical heritage. He started playing the piano at 5 and learned to play guitar at the legendary Blue Door eventually supporting Joe Ely and Jimmy Webb.

His stunning debut LP ‘From the Ground Up’ – released in 2013-was a lyrically diverse, genre-spanning collection of memorable songs with staggering depth and promise and more than deserving of its Grammy nomination, up for the Americana award.

The press were unanimous in their praise for the LP with Uncut declaring “…The arrival of a major talent”, The Evening Standard calling John “A new all-American idol” and Sunday Times Culture saying he has “…a remarkable way with words”.

 

http://www.johnfullbrightmusic.com/

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Wakey!Wakey! Launches Brand New Album at Madame Jo Jo’s

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WAKEY!WAKEY! RELEASE FIRST SINGLE FROM NEW ALBUM AND UK DATES

Wakey!Wakey

MUMMAGRUBBS RECORDS/THIRTY TIGERS WILL RELEASE ‘ALL IT TAKES IS A LITTLE LOVE’ THE FIRST SINGLE TAKEN FROM FORTHCOMING WAKEY!WAKEY! ALBUM ‘SALVATION’. TICKETS FOR LONDON DATES GO ON SALE FRIDAY MAY 30TH.

“Grubbs combines some beautifully played piano with a voice so striking it resonates around the room galvanizing everybody within earshot – both painful and beautiful in equal measure.” – NME

“Driven by a stern piano bounce — courtesy of frontman Mike Grubbs — indie-pop-on-Mozart quintet Wakey!Wakey! are quickly becoming the talk of the Big Apple with rhythm-heavy, heartfelt ballads, and — most notably — Grubbs’ striking Top 40 pipes.”  Spin

“In a word: Wow. Ear to ear smiles. Seriously good stuff. Trust me.” – MTV

 It is, as Roberto Benigni’s character says in Jim Jarmusch’s cult 1986 black and white movie, Down By Law, a sad and beautiful world. And every once in a while an artist happens along who reflects all this sadness and beauty back at you in a way that breaks your heart just as it lifts your spirit. An artist like Mike Grubbs, alias Brooklyn-based Wakey!Wakey!

The self-confessed scrawny, dopey kid who was the worst athlete on the planet, has morphed into a cool chronicler of the human condition on planet earth in the blood and guts of the new millennium. His narratives of lost love tempered by hope – in a voice both aching and animated, beneath a sound that combines classical sensibility with indie attitude – resonate with every refugee from a disconcerted affair. Already creating a buzz in New York, from where Spin magazine counts among his audience “wet-eyed punk rockers and stay-at-home moms”, there’s a certain inevitability about his songs making a successful transatlantic crossing, such is the discerning ear of the great British public, suckers for sorrow elegantly conveyed.

All It Takes Is A Little Love is the perfect track to whet your aural appetite prior to the release of Salvation on July 21st. Produced by “Fabulous” Fab Dupont, the 11-track album is their first full-length release in four years.

 

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Soundcloud link: https://soundcloud.com/251management/all-it-takes-is-a-little-love-2

 

Grubbs collaborated with some big names – Boots Ottestad, Dan Keyes, Fredrik Eriksson, Peter Stengaard, Caleb Shreve – to write all the songs on Salvation.

That Grubbs is on intimate terms with the goddess of melody should come as no surprise given his formative years. He was learning scales and chords on a baby grand at the age of five. His mother, a piano teacher and choir director, would ask him and his siblings to sight read music before breakfast. Homework was something they did only to secure more time on the keys.

It was almost like video games for me,” says Grubbs. In high school he discovered Billy Joel and Elton John – kindreds in sonic and lyrical profundity –and Led Zeppelin in their lascivious pomp, and mated them with touchstones Bach, Beethoven and Brahms, to conceive his own place within the universal soundscape.

One of my main influences now is the fact that I didn’t have someone to teach me proper jazz or rock playing. I had no idea how to put a song together, no-one telling me, ‘Hey, you should check out Gershwin’. So I found my own style by experimenting with what works and what doesn’t.”

The experimental process was aided by Lach, founding father of the Big Apple’s anti-folk scene. Grubbs saw Regina Spektor perform with abandon, “shouting and hitting her stool with a drum stick”, and was impelled to express himself similarly without restraint, singing as if his life depended on it.

Of course, if you think Grubbs looks and sounds familiar, you aren’t wrong. Mark Schwahn, creator of the hit American TV series, One Tree Hill, was so impressed after seeing Wakey!Wakey! live, he used the track, ‘War Sweater’, in the finale of season six, and offered Grubbs a recurring role as a bartender and musician named, er, Grubbs. More than two million viewers got to see and hear him play ‘Almost Everything’, ‘Twenty-Two’ and ‘Got It All Wrong’.

And now, eight years after Wakey! Wakey! debuted with their album, Silent As A Movie, and four years on from Almost Everything I Wish I’d Said The Last Time I Saw You… (number one on the Billboard Heatseekers chart in the States), the UK is bracing itself for Salvation.

 

Wakey!Wakey! will be in the UK for 2 exclusive launch shows on:

July:

Wed 02 Brighton, The Latest Bar

http://www.seetickets.com/Event/wakey-wakey/the-latest-music-bar/794399

Thurs 03 London, Madame Jo Jo’s

http://www.kililive.com/artists/wakeywakey

Tickets will be available at 9am on Friday May 30th.

 

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www.wakeywakeymusic.com

www.facebook.com/wakeywakeyband

www.twitter.com/wakeywakey

Label:Mumma Grubbs Records/Thirty Tigers

Cat No:MGR05802

 

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The Weatherman cometh…

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GREGORY ALAN ISAKOV

GREGORY ALAN ISAKOV

EUROPEAN TOUR DATES ANNOUNCED

Including London’s Bush Hall

THE WEATHERMAN DEBUTS AT #5 ON BILLBOARD’S FOLK CHART

#1 ON BILLBOARD’S MOUNTAIN AND PACIFIC HEATSEEKERS CHART



“There’s a gentle, comforting ease to Gregory Alan Isakov’s songs on The Weatherman, at times recalling the likes of Bob Dylan or Paul Simon with a little more banjo. But the ease of his tunes is deceptive; they’re beautifully arranged and more than a little haunting. That kind of impact doesn’t always come so easy.” –American Songwriter

About The Weatherman “Lauded for its genuine lyricism and hushed, yet powerful, vocals” – Paste Magazine

“…an eloquent lyricist who delivers soul-searching ruminations filled with cosmic pondering, nomadic wisdom and plenty of earthy metaphors. His understated voice has a hushed force akin to that of Jose Gonzalez’s and, at its best, the alluring comfort of Paul Simon’s.” The Washington Post

Weatherman cover

Stream The Weatherman single ‘Amsterdam’ – https://soundcloud.com/suitcasetown/amsterdam

Gregory Alan Isakov has announced an eighteen-date tour of Europe across October and November 2014 in support of his new album The Weatherman. This will be Isakov’s first tour in Europe since the album’s release in late 2013 and will commence with five UK headline shows, including London’s Bush Hall on Tuesday, October 21.

G.A.I europe 2014 dates

Recorded and mixed outside the quiet mountain town of Nederland, CO, The Weatherman was produced by Isakov along with Jamie Mefford. Of making the record, Isakov notes, “I wanted to make something that felt genuine. We recorded everything with analogue gear and mixed it on tape, which gives the songs a raw and vulnerable feeling.” He goes on to add, “The idea of a weatherman is really powerful. There’s a guy on television or on the radio telling us the future, and nobody cares. It’s this daily mundane miracle, and I think the songs I chose are about noticing the beauty in normal, everyday life.”



The Weatherman is Isakov’s third full-length release and follows 2009’s This Empty Northern Hemisphere, which the Denver Post praised as “an artistic masterwork” and Paste Magazine described as “quietly lush” and “deeply vibrant.” Born in Johannesburg, South Africa, and now calling Colorado home, Isakov is a lifelong traveler.  With a degree in horticulture, Isakov balances the art of making and exhibiting his music with the art of gardening and connecting to the land. 

European live dates & tickets:

Thu Oct 16 / UK / Oxford / The Jericho Tavern

Fri Oct 17 / UK / Brighton / Komedia Studio Bar
Sat Oct 18 / UK / Bristol / 
Louisiana
Sun Oct 19 / UK / Glasgow / 
King Tut’s
Mon Oct 20 / UK / Manchester / 
Gullivers
Tue Oct 21 / UK / London / 
Bush Hall
Thu Oct 23 / Brussels / Belgium / Witloof Bar
Fri Oct 24 / Netherlands / Nijmegen / 
Doornroosje
Sat Oct 25 / Netherlands / Amsterdam / 
Paradiso
Sun Oct 26 / Germany / Hamburg / 
Prinzenbar
Mon Oct 27 / Germany / Cologne / 
Studio 672
Wed Oct 29 / Norway / Oslo / 
Parkteatret
Thu Oct 30 / Sweden / Stockholm / 
Nalen
Fri Oct 31 / Denmark / Copenhagen /
 Ideal Bar VEGA
Sat Nov 1 / Germany / Berlin / 
Privatclub
Mon Nov 3 / Austria / Vienna / TBA in June
Tue Nov 4 / Germany / Munich / 
Amphere
Wed Nov 5 / Switzerland / Stans / 
Pillow Song Loft

Fri Nov 7 / France / Paris / La Maroquinerie

http://gregoryalanisakov.com/

https://www.facebook.com/gregoryalanisakov

https://twitter.com/GregoryAIsakov

Watch ‘Saint Valentine’ Serialbox Presents session

G.A.I videohttp://vimeo.com/87543379

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John Fullbright releases album ‘Songs’ and single ‘Never Cry Again’!

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‘Songs’ out 27.07.2014

On July 21st, John Fullbright will release his second studio album, ‘Songs,’ (Blue Dirt/Thirty Tigers). The new album showcases the strongest songwriting of the 25 year-old’s career and follows the breakout success of his 2012 debut ‘From the Ground Up,’ which was nominated for the ‘Best Americana Album’ Grammy and featured in the Wall Street Journal, LA Times, NPR and more.

If there’s a recurring motif that jumps out upon first listen to ‘Song,’ it’s the act of writing itself. ‘When I discovered Townes Van Zandt, that’s when I went, ‘You know, this is something to be taken pretty damn seriously,” says Fullbright. ‘You can write something that’s going to outlast you, and immortality through song is a big draw.’

The arrangements on ‘Songs’ are stripped down to their cores and free of ornamentation. Fullbright’s guitar and piano anchor the record, while a minimalist rhythm section weaves in an out throughout the album. That’s not to say these are simple songs; Fullbright possesses a keen ear for memorable melody and a unique approach to harmony, moving through chord progressions far outside the expected confines of traditional folk or Americana. The performances are stark and direct, though, a deliberate approach meant to deliver the songs in their purest and most honest form.

Listen to the album ‘Songs’ here:

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Never Cry Again,’ is the first single to be taken from the critically acclaimed album, ‘Songs

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Never Cry Again,’ out 02.06.2014

“Never Cry Again” is taken from Fullbright’s  forthcoming  second album simply entitled “Songs” . The new album is destined to firmly establish Fullbright with even greater critical acclaim following on from his stunning debut LP ‘From the Ground Up’ which was more than deserving of its Grammy and Americana Award nomination.

Born in Woody Guthrie’s hometown of Okemah, Oklahoma, John Fullbright grew up surrounded by a rich musical heritage, influencing his own music, as demonstrated in the brilliant new single, ‘Never Cry Again.’

 For more information about John Fullbright, contact Sara Silver
sara@thirtytigers.com +44 (0)20 8265 0772

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Independent

Stephen Kellogg returns to the land of ‘Blunderstone’ to release new single, ‘Forgive You, Forgive Me,’ and to play some dates!

“Ask any group of people if their life has gone ‘exactly as they planned’
and one person (usually recently engaged) will raise their hand and say ‘yes’.
Well this song is for everybody else! In my own search for forgiveness for the
things I’ve done of which I’m not proud, I’ve found that it usually begins and
ends here. With a willingness to forgive oneself and others. It seems to be the
lynchpin that connects the things that go wrong in our daily lives to the hope and
redemption we’re all looking for.” 
-Stephen KelloggSK_London2014

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“For someone like this reviewer who has got really fed-up with a surfeit of singer-songwriters, it is a mark of how great this record is that I have played it so often before sitting down to review it.”Ed Jupp (www.isthismusic.com)

“It’s like he has Springsteen’s plotlines and Dylan’ microscopic attention to the details, with perhaps a dash of Jackson Browne’s gift for picking the bones of emotional wreckage.”  – Folk Radio UK

“This is top-quality blue-collar Americana…” – Dave Esson, Daily Express

In the great American tradition of musical troubadour and documentarians of society, Stephen Kellogg has been furrowing the great American roads with his band the Sixers and their brand of American rock and roll for the past decade. During that time, he has grown successful to the point of recognition of his artistic insights, to be asked to do a TED talk,  which are only reserved for respected important artists and innovators.  His theme relies on the realisation that “it was better to be at the bottom of a ladder you want to climb, than at the top of one you don’t”.

It is striking that having lived through a challenging and changing moment in life in 2012, including the decision of the band to take a hiatus, the musical result of this tumultuous period is “Blunderstone Rookery” which also co incides with a desire to visit England and  plough his musical stories over here. Stephen will be introducing his album due for release in the UK on August 12th on Bread and Butter Music, by a special live Performance on July 11th at the Barfly.

The title of the album “ Blunderstone Rookery” comes from the boyhood home of Kellogg’s favourite character in his favourite book, “David Copperfield”.  The original title of which was “The Personal History, Adventures, Experience and Observation of David Copperfield the Younger of Blunderstone Rookery (Which He Never Meant to Publish on Any Account”. The production of the album was shared with long time collaborator Kit Karlson and recorded in Bridgeport Connecticut – near home and mixed by Mike Mogis (Bright Eyes, Monsters of Folk) It comprises 11 songs including the epic masterpiece “Thanksgiving” a 10 minute song that sums up  the life of a man from birth to death, touching on love, marriage, raising a family, sickness, old age and mortality and underlines the record’s overall themes of hope, redemption and forgiveness.  

To find out more about Stephen Kellogg, Click Here

Listen to the new version of Forgive You Forgive Me HERE

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Watch Stephen Kellogg perform ‘Forgive You, Forgive Me’ here:

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UK & Ireland Tour Dates

March 2014
Saturday 15th          IndigO2 C2C, London, UK
Sunday 16th            Whelan’s, Dublin, Ireland
Tuesday 18th           Borderline, London, UK*
Wednesday 19th     Night & Day, Manchester, UK*
Thursday 20th          ABC 2, Glasgow, UK*
Friday 21st               The Islington, London, UK
*Supporting Matt Nathanson

Stephen Kellogg_Album Cover_Blunderstone Rookery (High Res)

For more information please contact Sara Silver sara@silverprojects.com
0208 265 0772