Marnhull Acoustic Sessions - Tom Clements and Annabelle Chvostek

Sunday just gone was the last Marnhull Acoustic Session before the summer recess for festivals and suchlike. The opening artist was Tom Clements and he could hardly be more local to the venue.  The use of live self-sampling is amazing to watch as are the sounds that he can make with that guitar. You won't need telling that one of his influences is Mark Knopfler but this is more than imitation, or indeed flattery.

His LP 'Roots, Morals and Other Life Choices' is released on 15 May.

Not so many have come to Marnhull from as far away as Annabelle Chvostek: as she put it, while the consonants in her surname give away her Slovak roots, she is in fact third-generation Canadian.  Some may know her through her stint with Canadian trio The Wailin' Jennys, which she left in 2007, but there is a whole lot more territory that she covers. At times her mandolin playing is replete with eastern European influences but, when it comes to her forthcoming LP 'Be The Media' it isn't the star of the show and neither is her acoustic guitar. In this sense it was one of the least acoustic sets I have seen at Marnhull, but no matter.

Her "new toy" is new to her but not actually new at all. To quote:

"A 1969 Fender Mustang, with a racing stripe and matching machine head."

'Be The Media' is a fine album too and is officially released in July (well, probably it is).

There is a certain, somewhat retro, groove to it as I suggest that the cover artwork implies. It is that good.

A few recent (live) videos.

I never sure whether to make this sort of addendum a post on its own or to add the items to (recent) posts about the same act or artist. In this case I have avoided the issue as such and chosen a combination of the two concepts. These first two are added to recent posts (links included below):

• Sound of The Sirens - 'Faith in Fire' (live, Plymouth, 11 April 2015) here.
• Annabelle Chvostek - 'Be The Media' (live studio session) here.

I have a few more to share but they relate to earlier posts, some very much so, and I will therefore add the new content below but with links back to earlier posts or references as appropriate.
This next is in a sense a cover of a cover. The song 'Fields Of Gold' was written by Gordon Sumner, aka Sting, but the famous version is that by the late Eva Cassidy. This is a live version of that recorded by Hattie Briggs, and from her recent début album 'Red & Gold', that features violin and was also mixed by Eva Cassidy's brother Dan Cassidy. 

The rest of the album, and that comprises her self-written songs, is stunning too. It topped the iTunes folk chart yesterday. The next question is how soon we can get to see her play live in Frome - Rook Lane might be the ideal venue but The Grain Bar would be very good too.

This next is rather a different prospect and certainly a change of style and tempo. I have quite happily driven a total of four hundred miles to see Joanne Shaw Taylor live three times. Next time it is going to be a fifteen minute walk from home. 

New Music 2015 - Part 26 - back across the ocean

I was always intending the theme of new, or new to me, music from North America to be the theme of a few upcoming posts. I have been listening to plenty of it, across various genres, recently.

It is with much happiness that I heard the condition of Joni Mitchell is improving. It is with sadness that I heard that, on Friday evening, Robert Lewis Jones Sr. and the original drummer with Southern Rock band Lynyrd Skynyrd,was killed in a car accident. He had already left the band before three of its then members were killed in a plane crash in 1977.

I have a 12" single of 'Freebird', it was on the band's 1973 début album, and I'm giving it a spin right now:

If I leave here tomorrow, would you still remember me?

For I must be travelin' on now, for there's too many places left to see.

Southern Rock hasn't been such a big deal, certainly viewed from a UK perspective, in recent times but maybe that isn't the way things will remain. This next band was going to figure here regardless of the foregoing. It is not the same, I don't suppose they ever intended that, but it is worthy of a listen I think.

I guess that, as regards to this band, I'm a bit slow to the nose-bag with this release.

Staying down South, but changing genre, this news is to me as good as it gets.

Amy LaVere and Will Sexton's 'Hallelujah I'm a Dreamer' is released today, 7 April,  in the US as a download by Archer Records. It is said the CD follows on 19 May. As for UK/Europe release I just don't know - yet. I'm on the case not least because it is a live album by one of the artists that I would most like to see live but thus far never have.

This is the track-list:

• Cricket (At Night I Can Fly)
• Dreamer
• Day Like Any
• Cupid's Arrow
• It's the Thing to Do
• Last Rock 'n' Roll Boy to Dance
• Overcome
• Red Banks
• Tonight Will Be Fine
• Lesson
• Tennessee Valentine

It would be remiss of me to leave music from Canada out of this post. This looks intriguing too and Annabelle Chovstek is coming to the UK soon and not least to Marnhull Acoustic Sessions on 10 May. She brings a new LP 'Be The Media' into the equation too.

I don't know a whole lot about it yet but it is said to see her largely play electric guitar (of 1957 vintage) and that it includes a cover of fellow Canadian Neil Young's 'Like A Hurricane'. It was notably covered by Jason Isbell and The 400 Unit on the 2013 live LP 'Live From Alabama'. On that subject Jason Isbell has just about finished work on his latest studio LP that is the follow-up to 'Southeastern'.

That said, this is the track-list I believe:

1. Be The Media
2. Jerusalem
3. Black Hole
4. This Night
5. Carnal Delights
6. You Can Come Now
7. Like A Hurricane
8. Inside The Scream/Screen

Here is the title track from it:

Come and see live music.

Right then. Spring is coming, sooner or later, and it is time to stop making excuses and start making plans for the summer. If you have never really engaged with live music but thought that you might, be it indoors or outside, now is the time to make some decisions. There has arguably never been such a choice as there is just now. I'll say it now, loud and plain, even vinyl isn't a patch on live performance.
The tired old excuses - about the kids, food, camping, toilets, whatever.... well they don't really hold water any longer. You can have anything you want - from a couple of hours at an intimate indoor gig to four days camping in a field - and it is up to you. What is more is that it doesn't need to cost the earth either. The one thing that you will have to find minders for, if it is more than a short escape, is your pets. Your cat may have other ideas of a good weekend whilst you are away but that's not my problem.

Here is a selection, biased to those that are reasonably local to me but not entirely so:

Nine dates in cities across the UK and Marnhull Acoustc Sessions in a hall that seats about a hundred.
For more about the artists see here  ---  Blair Dunlop  ---  Emma Stevens. At the same venue the following Sunday Megan Henwood and on 10 May Canadian artist Annabelle Chvostek (formerly a member of The Wailin' Jennys). She has a brand new LP 'Be The Media' coming out on 1 June.

Then on 13 June comes the second edition of Behind The Castle Festival and, as it says, it is held just behind Sherborne Castle, Dorset in beautiful parkland. Bigger and better than last year, which was great this one-day family-friendly festival now has camping overnight on the Saturday (but you need to book that and soon) and will have enhanced catering and bar facilities as well as more stuff just for kids.
Here is the upper crust of the line-up. The rest won't disappoint.

In the way such things can happen, one of the artists not on the above list has been forced to cancel owing to illness. The replacement, who would otherwise have been on the list above, is to be announced tomorrow. It will be worth watching, trust me.
That is not to say that the others in the running list are any less worthy of your attention or indeed mine. I'm a firm believer in always arriving in time to see all of the support sets at any gig and, in so far as is possible, turning out to see the opening acts on festival stages even at 11am on Sunday morning.
You might just get the live music bug. If you do then the longer festivals beckon.
When summer is fading in to autumn  it will be time for North Dorset Folk Festival. That is a long time off and we must not wish all those months away.

If I were to write such a piece then it would not come out much different to this very recent preview:
http://www.rock-regeneration.co.uk/wordpress/2015/04/news-behind-the-castle-music-festival/