Whatever happened to Candie Payne?

There is a book I saw a couple of years ago, amongst those aimed at the market for Christmas gifts, with the title 'The Rough Guide to the Best Music You've Never Heard' Nigel Williamson (2008).  I flicked through it in the shop and the only album that I can remember from it was one I already had - indeed it was, and remains, one of my favourite albums of 2007.  It is this...

I Wish I Could Have Loved You More - Candie Payne (2007)

  

I have mentioned it before, including the particular part it played in the events of late summer 2007 in my little world, but I don't like it just for that reason.  I had owned it for a week or two before that and it was on almost continuous rotation in that time; on vinyl when at home and on CD when travelling.  I too cannot understand why it was not better known.

After this she spent much of 2008 touring with Mark Ronson on his 'Version' tour and then for a while the trail, at least as far as I was concerned, went cold.  Towards the summer of 2010 I got the LP out again and started to listen to it quite frequently and it prompted me to look in to the issue in more detail.  That resulted in me finding out about and purchasing the following album.
  

Bright Light Ballads - Howard Eliott Payne (2009)
  

To add that it was produced by Ethan Johns (think Laura Marling, Sir Tom Jones and others in 2010 alone) says a great deal, I think.  She sings backing and harmony vocals on many of the ten tracks.

To say that Ms. Payne comes from a musical family is an understatement.  While the alt-country of 'Bright Light Ballads' bears little, if any, resemblance, one of her brothers and the above-mentioned Howard Payne, was a member of Liverpool band The Stand.  Her other brother, Sean, was the drummer in very successful Liverpool band The Zutons.  Both of these bands have now called it a day.

Come the end of 2010 it became clear that at least one new act was rising from the ashes of these various projects - one called The Big House.
  

  

Her principal partner in crime in this new band is Paul Molloy, also formerly of The Zutons. There are two sides to this: one is that there is certainly no lack of talent and the other is that I doubt very much that it sounds much like any of the aforementioned projects.
  

The Big House is very much one of the acts that I would like to hear live in 2011.