Exciting stuff – a *new* Rendell-Carr Quintet album. Not words one can often use. Hats off to not-for-profit label impresario John Thurlow for this. PR blurb here:

The never-before-released complete performance of the Rendell-Carr Quintet at The Highwayman in November 1965. Includes an essay written by Simon Spillett.

“Live. Up close and personal. Palpable. Almost within reach. There’s no argument about the best environment in which to witness the magic that is jazz invention. It simply has to be a club setting, the kind of place where an audience isn’t filed neatly into rows like so many sardines and the band isn’t forced to battle cavernous acoustics certain to defeat any attempt at subtlety. Somewhere as singly focused as the musicians themselves, somewhere, more often than not, as self-contained at the music on offer; somewhere in which those performing can take chances, stretch, feel at home… When Trevor Tomkins entrusted his own recorded archive to Jazz in Britain in 2021, the year before his death, it was found to include the full unedited Highwayman gig (a previous issue cherry-picked its contents), in more than passable sound, thus enabling a full restoration process to begin, resulting in this new ‘complete’ » Continue Reading.

03/12/2022

Three fairly local acts in the magnificent surroundings of the Waterbeach Baptist chapel, 5 minutes outside of the Cambridge city limits.

Kerry Devine is a solo singer/songwriter. The British IBM an indie-rock trio. Magnificient headliners (and Cambridge supergroup) The Pony Collaboration straddle the gloomy orchestral indie of Tindersticks, Belle & Seb and Lambchop, road testing material from their soon-to-be-released fourth album. Now in their 15th year, they have supported Fonda 500, The Wave Pictures, Jeffry Lewis, almost everyone you can think of, and played both my 40th and 50th birthday parties. Suffice to say, I rather like them.

Top-flight PA system, superb venue acoustics (so good I sometimes use it as a recording studio), sightlines from every seat, tea and cake during the interval, a pub next door, me on the sound desk.

Nothing new to say – that time of year again. It’s all in the poster.

Released almost one year to the day since the 2021 studio album Lammas Fair, ‘Live After Lammas’ is a one night snapshot of Henry Parker performing with his electric trio in the student quarter of Leeds at the Hyde Park Book Club, with Rob McNicholas on electric bass and Louis Berthoud on drums. The title of the live album, which marks as a nod to the much loved heavy-metal live albums of his teenage years (Iron Maiden, Motorhead) seems ever more appropriate as the set progresses, with performances of Drive East, and the The Brisk Lad transcending notions of what a folk artist should sound like in 2022 with wailing guitar leads and cascading drums.

The varied set takes in cuts from Parker’s two studio albums, the aforementioned Lammas Fair, as well as 2019’s Silent Spring, albums both long out of print on vinyl and much celebrated across the music press and the echelons of the psych and folk music forums that lurk in the overlooked, dusty corners of the web.

2022 saw Henry Parker play shows across the country, London, The Isle of Wight, Margate and North Shields, but this performance amongst his Yorkshire peers in Leeds stands » Continue Reading.

02/09/2022

I’m delighted to have been involved in this project, driven by former Transatlantic senior staffer Laurence Aston – held over from last year (dating the start of the label was happily flexible between 1961/62). Starting next week. Here is the PR sheet:

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On 28 September BMG will begin the Transatlantic Records 60th Anniversary roll-out campaign, releasing 30 albums from the label’s vaults over the period of one month.

Transatlantic was founded by Renaissance man Nathan ‘Nat’ Joseph, who was in the tradition of great record company bosses like Jac Holzman (Elektra), Mo Asch (Folkways), Chris Blackwell (Island) and Tony Stratton-Smith (Charisma). Named after his practice of importing US records into the UK and selling them to retailers, Transatlantic was the first UK record company to license releases from prestigious jazz labels Prestige and Blue Note, and American folk and blues from Folkways and Elektra.

The label’s slogan ‘Where Trends Begin’ was a manifesto it always strived to live up to, from its humble beginnings of releasing recordings by controversial sex educationalist Dr Eustace Chesser (aka Dr Keith Cammeron), actors Sheila Hancock and Tony Britton, TV calypsonian Cy Grant and jazz singer Annie Ross, to the ‘satire » Continue Reading.

11/09/2022

We all know the old gag. Q: What’s the last thing the bassist said before he got fired? A: ‘Hey gang, could we try one of MY songs?’

After about twenty years of playing bass on other people’s songs, I finally saved up the money to put an album together about a year ago. Some of these songs go back a long way. A few were created as part of a monthly song club I was part of for a couple of years, which stretched me (for example, write a song from the point of an inanimate object, or a song about a famous painting – both of which appear here). Two were written in lockdown, including the closing number (video below). I always wanted to finish with a downbeat song, in the vein of Costello’s The Favourite Hour, or Goodnight, Hollywood Boulevard by Ryan Adams.

It’s called Strum Und Twang because a) I can’t resist a pun and b) all the instruments apart for drums and percussion are stringed – all sorts of guitars, many basses » Continue Reading.

In the early 2010s I had a run of four years in which circumstances – frugal but doable – allowed me to write three research-heavy books in succession: ‘Bathed in Lightning: John McLaughlin, the 60s and the Emerald Beyond’, published by Jawbone Press in 2014, was the first. That run of 3,500 sold out a year or more back and second-hand copies online are very scarce. Not very many people buy my books but those who do have a tendency to keep them! 🙂 So I decided to reprint it myself – it was economically borderline for Jawbone to do so but viable for me on a smaller scale, and Nigel and Tom at Jawbone very kindly gave me the physical rights and digital print files.

My stock arrived today – 80 copies manufactured by the always reliable Biddles Books, with minor tweaks to the original edition.

As was the case with ‘Dazzling Stranger: Bert Jansch and the British folk and blues revival’ (Bloomsbury, 2000), two thirds of the book traverses London in the 1960s – with a different lens, but with some characters cropping up in both. I don’t believe you need to be a McLaughlin diehard to » Continue Reading.

04/11/2022

This has been a long time in the making, and I’m glad to played a part in hauling Bert’s BBC survivals into the lifeboat of posterity. Here is the PR material:

Bert At the BBC is a comprehensive collection of Jansch’s appearances at the BBC, featuring over eight hours of rare and unreleased recordings, including live-on-air spots, studio sessions and full concerts straight from the BBC vaults, delving further into this legendary performer’s canon. Bert Jansch was the very essence of folk music, providing inspiration for everyone from Paul Simon and Neil Young to Led Zeppelin and countless folk revivalists.

This unparalleled limited-edition compendium is available as a 4xLP and 8xCD set, housed in a coffee-table bookback set with 40 pages of liner notes, tracing the recordings from Bert’s earliest moments at the BBC. It includes interviews and insights from Lauren Laverne, Jools Holland, Johnny Marr, Jacqui McShee, Bob Harris, Bernard Butler, Mark Radcliffe and many more. Twenty broadcasters, producers and collaborators contribute at length to the booklet, with great affection for this gentle, maverick genius.

Bert’s BBC legacy remains the most significant and exciting untapped reservoir of his music. The undeniable advantage of recordings made for broadcast » Continue Reading.

This is my occasional ‘studio band’. We are the Alan Parsons Project without the success 🙂 Amazingly, 2022 is the 25th anniversary of my crackpot collective. There’ll be a digital release best-of later in the year. In the meantime, ‘Days Full of Rain’ – a 17-track / 78-minute album is released on Friday. Strictly, 250 physical copies. Crowd-funders and the NI Arts Council’s Creative Recovery grant made it possible. (Ten tracks plus two others will appear as a digital release version of the album in due course.)

https://colinharper.bandcamp.com/album/days-full-of-rain-6-tracks-from-the-album

This time around, the Legends are a happy gang of personalities and friends from Northern Ireland’s blues, punk, folk, pop, jazz, classical and classic rock worlds:

Lead vocals: Breige Devlin, Dave McLarnon, Colin Harper, Lyndsay Crothers, Barry Devlin

Backing vocals: Mickey Rafferty, Ben Trowell, Lisa Brady, Ellen Weir, Jim Lockhart

Guitars: Colin Harper, Anthony Toner, Pat McManus, Eugene Davey, Ben Trowell, Big Bill Campbell, Norman Boyd

Piano/organ: Scott Flanigan, Cormac O’Kane, Jim Lockhart

Trumpet/flugelhorn: Linley Hamilton

Clarinet: Rachelle Cathcart

Low whistle: Jim Lockhart

Bass: Ali Mackenzie, Barry Devlin

Drums: Louise Potter, Petesy Burns, Victor Bronzini Fulton

https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=vdUcfx5T2VU&feature=share

A little plug for my new music project. Crowballoch: Seven instrumental tunes in a defiantly gentle 70s folk-prog style, as is my wont.

Sounds a bit like: Brian Eno, Bruce Langhorne, Anthony Philips, Ralph McTell, Bo Hanssen, Pink Floyd’s pastoral bits and the inevitable Mike Oldfield.

Free to stream!

18/06/2022

On Saturday the 18th of June it would have been Jackie Leven’s 72nd birthday. Anyone interested to celebrate meet at his bench in Soho Square, London at midday and perhaps go on for a beer at nearby Nellie Dean’s on Dean Street ( buy your own!). Nothing is formally planned! (The bench is on the south side edge of the gardens).

It’s Great Kate – make a date and don’t be late! 🙂 Catch the elfin voice, guitar and songs sensation at the following places:

28.4 BROMSGROVE | Bromsgrove Folk Club and Festival 30.4 CHESTER | Alexander’s Live Chester 06.5 HULL | Wrecking Ball Music and Books 07.5 KETTERING | The Old Forge Tea Room (SOLD OUT) 12.5 BARRY | The Small Space 13.5 PEMBROKE DOCK | Cwtch coffee shop & Art Gallery 14.5 RHAYADER | The Lost ARC 15.5 HEREFORD | WEIRDSHIRE presents Katie Spencer 19.5 MANCHESTER | Crumpsall Folk Club 20.5 SHEFFIELD | Cafe#9 22.5 YORK | The Crescent Community Venue 24.5 BIRMINGHAM | Kitchen Garden 25.5 LONDON | Green Note 26.5 MARGATE | Rosslyn Court 27.5 BRIGHTON | The Folklore Rooms 28.5 PORTSMOUTH | Groundlings Theatre 29.5 HALIFAX | The Grayston Unity 04.6 LEEDS | Seven Arts Leeds

Raised in the East Yorkshire flatlands on the fringes of Hull, Katie Spencer’s landscape has always been that of open skies and widening rivers. Industry still shapes the city here. The people, as with the land, are moulded by tides and stark horizons. Stand in the same place for long enough and you can watch the sun rise over » Continue Reading.

21/04/2022

With her new live-in-lockdown album The St Buryan Sessions drawing critical raves and appearing on best-of-2021 lists on three continents, Sarah McQuaid is once again preparing to hit the road – this time for a six-week tour of Ireland and the UK.

The tour coincides with the release of a new video filmed earlier this month at the behest of The Bert Jansch Foundation, as part of their “Around The World In 80 Plays” project.

In what would have been the legendary guitarist and singer-songwriter’s 75th year, the Foundation set three Yamaha LL TransAcoustic guitars travelling around the globe from guitarist to guitarist, each playing a song or tune inspired by Bert.

Videos of all the performances feature on the Foundation’s YouTube channel (https://www.youtube.com/bertjanschfoundation), including contributions by such iconic guitarists as Richard Thompson, Johnny Marr, Bernard Butler, Tony McManus, Tommy Emmanuel, Alex de Grassi – and now also Sarah McQuaid.

“I was tremendously honoured to be invited to take part,” says Sarah. “It was incredible just to handle an instrument that’s been played by so many guitarists I’ve worshipped from afar for so long, and to see their signatures on it and sign my own name under theirs. It » Continue Reading.

29/07/2022

A 50th Anniversary 33CD/2DVD Super Deluxe box set celebrating the work of Ireland’s greatest Celtic Rock band, Horslips.

The ultimate collection of the band’s recorded work, More Than You Can Chew contains more than 500 audio tracks and features over 250 previously unreleased pieces and 4.5 Hours of unreleased video.

The set has been curated by Bert Jansch/John McLaughlin biographer (and longstanding Horslips fan) Colin Harper in close collaboration with the band members.

The audio, including most of the film audio, has been restored and (re)mastered by IFTA award-winning engineer Cormac O’Kane.

Herculean Horslips biographer Mark Cunningham has written the books in the set with fresh input from the band and, wearing his day-job designer hat, has lovingly designed the set under the oversight of Horslips’ de facto art director Charles O’Connor.

More Than You Can Chew also includes two albums new to any digital medium: Tryal (1983) by the Host (a post-Horslips band featuring Eamon, Johnny and Charles) and Breaking Star Codes (1983) by Barry Devlin.

Contents:

• 33 CDs containing 506 audio » Continue Reading.

THE ROLLING STONES – SIXTY – EUROPEAN TOUR 2022

JUNE WED 1 MADRID Wanda Metropolitano Stadium SPAIN

SUN 5 MUNICH Olympic Stadium GERMANY

THU 9 LIVERPOOL Anfield Stadium UK

MON 13 AMSTERDAM Johan Cruijff ArenA NETHERLANDS

FRI 17 BERN Wankdorf Stadium SWITZERLAND

TUE 21 MILAN San Siro Stadium ITALY

SAT 25 LONDON American Express presents BST Hyde Park UK

JULY SUN 3 LONDON American Express presents BST Hyde Park UK

MON 11 BRUSSELS King Baudouin Stadium BELGIUM

FRI 15 VIENNA Ernst Happel Stadium AUSTRIA

TUE 19 LYON Groupama Stadium FRANCE

SAT 23 PARIS Hippodrome ParisLongchamp FRANCE

WED 27 GELSENKIRCHEN Veltins-Arena GERMANY

SUN 31 STOCKHOLM Friends Arena SWEDEN

My pal Sarah McQuaid, whose usually strings two or more months of UK dates together at this time of year, has just about managed 10 bookings this time. These are hard times for the likes of Sarah – whose sole living is in music – and her manager/sound-person/driver Martin (ditto). If any of these dates are near you, think about giving her a go. I can’t – I live in NI. If/when she books dates in Ireland, I’ll be there. Her blurb from social media plus the dates are below…

* * * *

So it looks like my short Jan-Feb UK tour will actually be happening. These are tough times for all of us and I would be enormously grateful for any support you can give. Even if you can’t make it to a gig, please help to spread the word if you can.

I’ll be testing daily, wearing a mask when not on stage and generally doing everything I can to keep things as safe as they can be for everybody.

Mawgan Lewis Purple Knif’s beautiful videos of all 15 tracks on my new album The St Buryan Sessions (filmed as it was being recorded » Continue Reading.

I’ve had the great pleasure of curating this fabulous 13CD set, due in November. Amazon UK and Germany, and JPC, are advertising it already. UK price is £70 – an amazing price, in my view. The audio is mostly superb throughout – I’ve been OKing test pressings yesterday and today and the sheer heft and brilliance of the body of work, along with the sound, comes through loud and clear. Repertoire’s regular mastering maestro Eroc has done his usual astounding job. The complete tracklist can be found by clicking on the CD numbers at Repertoire’s site (link below).

Sales blurb:

Formed by trumpeter and future Miles Davis biographer Ian Carr, Nucleus were a distinctly British jazz-rock group forged in the musical village-like cauldron of London at the end of the 60s. Within its first year alone (1970), Nucleus had caused a sensation at both the Montreux and Newport jazz festivals, and had recorded two albums (the first of nine for progressive-rock label Vertigo) and a torrent of sessions and concerts for the BBC, from John Peel’s Top Gear and Sounds of the 70s on Radio 1 to Jazz in Britain on Radio 3. Curated by John McLaughlin biographer Colin » Continue Reading.

Jethro Tull’s 1970 classic Benefit will be celebrated in a brand-new 4CD/2DVD set, featuring remixes by Steven Wilson, an abundance of previously unreleased material, packaged within a deluxe hardback book, containing 100 pages of commentary from numerous contributors alongside hordes of images of the band creating and performing their first million-selling album. After pandemic-enforced delays, Benefit (The 50th Anniversary Enhanced Edition) will finally be out on 5th November.

Highlights include: – Original album and associated recordings remixed by Steven Wilson – Additional associated recordings including mono and stereo mixes of various A and B sides – The 1970 Fillmore at Tanglewood concert, with new stereo remix by Steven Wilson – Live At The Aragon Ballroom, Chicago 1970 concert in mono – Steven Wilson’s 2013 remix of the album, 5 extra tracks in DTS and Dolby 5.1 surround and stereo 96/24 LPCM – Flat transfers of the original UK+US LP master in LPCM – Additional tracks Sweet Dream, 17 & The Witch’s Promise – The 1970 Fillmore at Tanglewood concert on video with Steven Wilson’s 2020 audio remix in stereo and 5.1 surround.

Following the successes of This Was (1968) and Stand Up (1969), Jethro Tull returned in 1970 with » Continue Reading.

31/10/2021

Picking up what should have been 29th March 2020.

Abbey Road, Let It Bleed and something else from 1969 (suggestions please) played from remastered vinyl on a top-flight hi-fi in the Courtyard Café, Papworth Everard.

Home-roasted coffee, loose-leaf tea, locally-sourced cakes, full bar including microbrewery ales.

2:30-4:30pm, free entry. Well-behaved kids and dogs welcome.

Hello AW massive.

Hope you are all keeping well.

I finally got off my arse and released some music on Bandcamp.

Take a listen. Buy a copy if you like.

Let me know your thoughts.

https://steeveclarke.bandcamp.com/releases