Live and Local - Zora and The Tatsmiths

What better way to spend a Sunday afternoon if that is not a short walk from home, at one of the best pubs anywhere, one that brews its own beer too, listening to one of the best new live acts that I have heard in some time?   No "rapture" for me as I clearly don't know what heaven really is.  If this is just life however then it is certainly good enough for me.

This was the last date on their first ever tour - a four-day jaunt around Wessex - and I think it fair to say that it went down very well indeed with the audience at The Griffin. The Brighton-based five-piece played a long set that was as well paced as it was varied. The only tinge of sadness came with the announcement that for Belinda, playing electric violin, it was her last show with the band as she is relocating to California.
  
For a band that only recently evolved from being an all-acoustic three-piece as heard on the 2010 Places Like This EP, which I highly recommend, to perform so much material so well, and interspersed with banter with the audience that was often of true Ealing-inspired comic genius, was something to remember.

The songs are all strong and distinctive. 'Secret', which I have mentioned before, is a highlight for me as is 'Mary Jane'. They played this twice - the second time being as a request for an encore at the end.

This one is just a warm up...

Zora McDonald playing some of 'Secret' solo.

  

This being Somerset it is worthy of note that a poster has crept into all of these photos...  one announcing a performance by the long reigning kings of 'Scrumpy and Western', The Wurzels!

New Music 2011 - coming live to Frome

Like buses, like bands... one can wait for ages and then several are announced at about the same time. Thinking about it, in Frome that is actually far more likely with bands...
  
They may not be very famous, yet, but no matter.  Here is one that has caught my attention as being in the latest e-newsletter from The Griffin, arguably Frome's best pub and also that with the best beers (the winner of both Somerset-wide accolades in the 2010 'Taste of Somerset' awards that were voted for by the public), and which also does live music.
The May programme looks good too but I'll start by mentioning this, although there is much of note to come before.  
On Sunday, May 22 The Griffin plays host to Zora & The Tatsmiths. If punk-jazz-folk was never before a genre then, so they have decided, it is now. And I can't wait!

  

It is a five-piece from Brighton and if you wish to avail yourself of a legal listen before May here is a link.
The track 'Secret' should be, along with the band, one-no-longer and it is available as a free, legal download for the price of registering your interest. It is on repeat here at the moment and I'm minded to post the lyric for it tomorrow...  it is simple and yet rather scarily real.

Kathryn Tickell - NXNE versus SXSW!

SXSW is the largest "altenative-indie" showcase in the world and it takes place in venues across Austin, TX each March. Although called a festival it is much more an industry convention but strange in that sense. In an industry that is in many sectors on the verge of desperation, it also has the ability to bring UK artists to popular attention here as well, if not more so, than in North American markets. It has probably also done much to increase the profile of US-based folk/roots/country inspired music in the UK, something that has been a very apparent, and in my view welcome, trend in the last three years or so.

What they are wont to forget is that we also have a huge traditional canon of our own, played in a bewildering range of styles and on a vast range of instruments, that cover almost every topic from the positively ancient to the most modern in almost every way imaginable. What is not so easy to do, quite so simply, is to scan a 12" album cover as it is too large.

Ranting Lads - High Level Ranters

I mentioned this 1976 album [on the phone, in a private conversation, yesterday] and not even a half-decent image can seemingly be found on the internet. That is not a problem - or at least not round here - for this a photo of the original 12" album (TOPIC - 12TS297) taken about an hour ago. In keeping with the album there were no clever digital tricks involved, except to employ a lack of them; no flash, no tripod, and a 1/16 second exposure on my F20 using only the diffuse background lighting in my sitting room. It was originally 2048 pixels each way but, to make it more suitable for posting, I have reduced it to a more manageable 800 x 800 pixels but it seems to have lost little, if anything, in the transformation. Using flash for this kind of thing always results in undesirable brightness and burnt-out reflections. Using a tripod is fine but I decided to try without --- it is easier to centre the image this way. The challenge is to stay sill enough for 1/16 second - and this was the best of three.
I can't wait until Saturday when I'm going to see the Kathryn Tickell Band. It's been a long, long time since I have heard Northumbrian pipes (and Hardanger-tuned fiddles) played live and The Cheese & Grain has much to recommend it as a venue for such music.

Kathryn Tickell - live in 2004

The slightly rustic surroundings do nothing to spoil the atmosphere but nevertheless it also has surprisingly good acoustics for such a venue, a bar serving real ale from Frome's own 'Milk Street Brewery', and it is less than a twenty-minute unhurried walk from home.