New Music 2018 - Part 6 - Orphan Colours - All On Red

I can't quite believe that this is my sixth post of 2018 but while I am in the mood for posting I guess I should just go with it. More forthcoming new music but this time from an all male band based in England. It has to be said that this is still mining the rich seam that is UK Americana.
As a phrase it might appear an oxymoron but those inclined to solipsism please take note; it is flourishing in a time when the UK might have been perceived to be turning in on itself and back to its perceived core values.  If this is the kind of work that is the result then it is just another case of clouds and silver linings.

All On Red - Orphan Colours (At The Helm Records, 26 January 2018).

The genesis of Orphan Colours came out of the accidental wreckage of two bands, ahab and Noah and The Whale, that were forsaken by their respective labels as commercial priorities changed. That is where the independent side of UK Americana plays a vital part. It is a community in the true sense of the word and that shaped this, the band's first LP, as I'm thinking as I listen to it again. All eleven songs on it.

Orphan Colours - All On Red:

• Start of Something
• High Hopes
• Goodnight California
• Loving Kind
• Waiting
• Lonely Lately
• Sun Is Rising
• Renegade
• Sarah
• Inside Out
• Rambling Rose

The first thing that strikes me is this isn't a UK band aping Americana (from America, obvs.) and that is why the whole thing works quite as it does. It is the concept of Americana filtered through the unique perspective of the UK in recent years.
It comes as no surprise to me at all that At The Helm is releasing this record. I'm pondering a post about how labels that can be trusted to release interesting and often challenging new music have slowly risen again.

Here's a little live goodness:

The title of the record 'All On Red' is apparently a reference to table gambling and the putting of all available resources on a single outcome. It is apropos the situation in which the founders of Orphan Colours found themselves after their previous bands folded.

Another musical journey.

I said that I would do this over the Easter break but I didn't. I'm now thinking that I need at least six weeks between such projects and it's not about finding the music. I love doing that - I wouldn't be writing at all if that were not the case. It's more the richness and variety that is on offer; I could write twice as many posts if I only listened to a quarter of the new (at least to me) music that I do. Posts like this are the ones I like doing the most. They are the most rewarding but they take the longest time to figure out. That's the excuses done.
If it raises awareness and sells a few of the artists' works then that is good enough for me.
Let's go!

The last post of this kind Imaginary Appalachia started in Canada. This one starts in Michigan and I'm not sure that we will get any further south this time, although the music might at times suggest that we have.

Red Tail Ring - Fall Away Blues (CD Baby, 2 September 2016).

This is the most recent release from the Kalamazoo, Michigan based duo that comprises Laurel Primo and Michael Beauchamp. Entirely acoustic, it contrasts new takes on traditional songs and tunes with new ones that tackle themes such as gun crime (something in traditional music that is as old as guns), immigration and environmentalism (both of which are barely less so). It is their fourth album release.

Now this.
It is, as the artist says, "more southern and more country influenced" than her first release 'Sad-eyed Lomesome Lady' and I will return to that in another post. Raised in East Vancouver, BC and now based in Saskatoon, SK (and also in Toronto)  this is all about... quite simply  the things that she wanted to write about and it is not going to get a party started.

Steph Cameron - Daybreak Over Jackson Street (Pheromone Recordings, 21 April 2017).
The LP is to get a full UK release on At The Helm Records on 10 November 2017.

I only happened across this artist by a rare strike of fortune. Yesterday. It got me thinking and now writing again. It is as sparse and beautiful in its production as it is disenchanted, yet hopeful, in its content. The most important thing is that it is always questioning but never preachy.

This journey is not really about new music. I discovered the next record after it occurred to me that I couldn't recall having heard anything new from Canadian fiddle player and singer-songwriter Kendel Carson in a couple of years.  I found this... and if you like female vocal harmonies and multiple fiddle players this could be just the thing for you too.

Belle Starr - belle starr (Roaring Girl Records, 2 April 2013).

The two other artists are Stephanie Cadman and Miranda Mulholland. The trio had previously released an EP 'The Burning of Atlanta' in April 2012 but that is harder to find. In both cases there are quite a few covers.  I think that, to be found on the above-mentioned LP, the cover of Bruce Springsteen's 'Tougher Than The Rest' is particularly effective.

Not all the content relies on lyric and the fiddle tune 'Charity Kiss' is top-notch. It reminds me just how much I like this sort of music and, therefore, of Orcadian fiddle group Fara.
The penultimate track 'Art O'Leary' is an English translation of an Irish poem, Art Ó Laoghaire, set to music.  He fought for the Catholic cause with the Hungarian Hussars, in the army of Maria Theresa in the mid-late 18th century and survived that only to be murdered on his return to his family in Ireland.

This journey will end with a Canadian duo - Kacy & Clayton -  that has covered another poem set to music. This one is often regarded as trad. and anon. but in fact it is nothing of the kind. That song is not, however, on this that is their second LP.

Kacy & Clayton - Strange Country (New West Records, 6 May 2016).

For me the classic cover on this album is their take on 'Over The River Charlie' that is an American song of long standing.  It is not the song I was alluding to above, however.

That is 'The Dalesman's Litany' and it appears on the 2013 album 'The Day Is Past and Gone'. It is in fact a 20th century song in the sense it is now known.
The words, originally a poem in Yorkshire dialect, were written and/or collected by Frederic William Moorman (1872 - 1918), the first Professor of English Language at the University of Leeds (1912 - 1918). The setting of it to a tune, by Dave Keddie of Bradford, Yorkshire, came decades later.
The first commercially released recording of this song that I am aware of is that by Tim Hart and Maddy Prior on their first record as a duo, 'Folk Songs of Old England Volume 1' (1968). On this the lyrics have been "translated" into more prosaic English. The duo later became the core of electric folk band Steeleye Span and the song became a classic of the British folk revival.
The thing about the version by Kacy & Clayton is its beautiful naïvety; it is all the better for the fact that a few of the many Yorkshire locations mentioned in it are mispronounced but, like so many before it, the song has crossed the ocean.

New Music 2017 - Part 8 - Ags Connolly - Nothin' Unexpected

The second full-length from West Oxfordshire native and resident Ags Connolly has been a while in the making, quite deliberately so it would seem.
The first was 'How About Now' and  it appeared back in 2014. That was around the time that the blossoming of the indigenous UK Americana scene was starting to be noticed as the real change it was, rather than just the preoccupation of die-hard fans and would-be journalists.

Nothin' Unexpected - Ags Connolly (At The Helm Records, 3 February 2017).

The title of this latest is 'Nothin' Unexpected' and might sound almost underwhelming but that is quite deliberate too as the music is no such thing. The point here is that it is not flash or crass in any way at all. It is however very well done indeed - from the ten songs (nine originals and a cover of the Loudon Wainwright III song 'I Suppose'), to the instrumentation that accompanies them and the carefully balanced production values. It ticks boxes.

• I Hope You’re Unhappy
• Do You Realise That Now
• When The Loner Gets Lonely
• Neon Jail
• I Suppose
• Nothin’ Unexpected
• Haunts Like This
• Fifteen Years
• Slow Burner
• I Should’ve Closed The Book

It is certainly often wistful and resolutely stoical, especially about times spent alone and this applies as much to the honky-tonk influenced numbers as to the others; there's both a time and mood for that.  I happen to be listening sat in front of the fire on a dark and wet winter's evening but it would be just as good heard in the early hours around the dying embers of a summer campfire, with the last few burnt BBQ ribs and a beer to go with it.

One thing even better would be to see him play live, preferably in one of the old small-town bars that are mentioned in a couple of songs. Rather like this...

Ags Connolly, Saloon Bar stage, Truck Festival 2015.

Truck Festival 2015 - Part 1

Since I got back from my fourth visit to Truck Festival yesterday I have been working through my thoughts and also the associated photographs.
Sometimes I tackle such things on a stage-by-stage basis or a chronological one, but this time I'm going to do it on an how-I-remember-it basis --- that is as a mixture of the different kinds of music I like all jumbled together. I did, however, start the way I always espouse, which is to see the opening act of the festival and also those on as many stages as possible.
That duty, for opening a festival is not easy, fell to Delora, an overtly cheerful indie-pop three-piece from London that is soon to release its first EP 'Superglue'.

Delora - Market Stage - Friday lunchtime

The strange colouring of this marquee always puts me in mind of that curious creation that is 'Neapolitan' ice cream (for those of a certain age in the UK at least). This kind of music is just the thing with which to start a festival in order to create the idea of a world-apart from the ordinary. The challenging stuff - full of contrasts - is best left until later.

Once I started writing [this post] I decided that it will have a theme of  a kind after all and that is of artists confirmed to release new LP/EPs shortly. The hardest thing is to actually start writing; thinking about it is very easy indeed.
The next is Delta Bell and an artist that I mentioned only recently. The début LP 'Bow Out Of The Fading Light' is released by At The Helm Records on 31 July. It is quite... well you'll just have to wait and see. Live she and her band, that includes pedal steel, were awesome.

Delta Bell - Saloon Bar stage - early Friday evening.

The final act in this, my opening salvo relating to Truck Festival 2015, is a duo pure and simple. So pure and simple that they only use one microphone, which is very old-time but it works wonderfully.

Trevor Moss & Hannah-Lou - Virgins and Veterans stage - Saturday evening.

This is not the first time I have seen them live, not even the first time at a Truck Festival, but it was without doubt the most memorable by far. The new songs, and they played several, are memorable and the execution of all of it faultless. Their latest LP 'Expatriates' comes out late summer/early autumn. It is produced by Ethan Johns and to me that says a great deal.

Now it is time to think about 'Truck Festival 2015 - Part 2'.

Truck Festival 2014 - life, live in The Saloon

This time last Friday evening I was exactly in the place I'm about to write about. By the end of a festival weekend there is often something of a desire to spend a weekend at home (writing about it). To be honest, however, I'd quite happily be back there or somewhere similar right now.
Almost all of the time that I wasn't watching electric guitar bands on the main stage, or the equivalent delights of the Barn stage, this is likely where I was to be found instead. It has already featured in my posts about Truck Festival 2014 and certainly did so heavily in those of Truck Festival 2013. It was a new feature then. I know what I like when I come across it and my only concern was whether it could live up to my memories of it last year.
I'm not one to be shy of seeking out new music, especially in genres that I like - and so very much including folk, roots and Americana - yet last year it served up several acts the knowledge of which I was quite naïve. It was certainly no less so this year but I made it something of a mission to explore and, if possible, photograph. I'm not sure how well I succeeded in the latter but I thoroughly enjoyed trying. The music was amazing. All of it.

The action started a couple of hours after that on the other stages: at 2:20pm Friday with Delta Mainline. A big sound on a small stage, and a guitar band (vide infra) to boot, that hails from Edinburgh.
Three things to note here:

• The Saloon is just a tin shed (as many of the prototypes no doubt were) but sheds and music have a certain affinity - particularly this one!
• It is one stage on which a wide-angle lens is as useful as a telephoto one, and I'm still missing a band member here.
• The Dreaming Spires' drum-kit is generic, for all to use, although the band did perform there twice over the weekend too.

This is one from the outside, looking in. The Saloon has doors that open both ways and that, for important reasons, one can see both over and under.

Otis Gibbs - Saturday afternoon.

   

By mid-afternoon I felt like I was part of the furniture, often sat on the floor, and either nobody seemed to notice or they didn't care. That is a good place in which to be.

The August List. The duo have yet to release an album, but it is in the works. Watch this space!

After this I wandered back out into the summer sunlight for a few hours, only to return without remembering to change my camera settings for the evening gloom back in The Saloon. As luck would have it the next act was 'Rutland troubadour' Paul McClure. My bacon was saved because his tales between songs are as long as, if maybe not actually longer than, the songs themselves. As for the song and what it is about, Lord only knows. 

We are up to early Friday evening now.

Putting this supposed précis together is actually taking longer than listening to the original performance. Do I regret starting this - post or even festival-going? Hell no.
Maybe I shall split the post into a Saturday portion and a Sunday one but, either way, I'm not going to finish it on Friday.
And not to be finished on Saturday either, but for different reasons. Riding the iron horses...

Truck Festival 2014

This weekend gone I headed off into the Oxfordshire countryside for two days of music at Truck Festival 2014. Now I have had a little time to reflect on it and also look at the pictures it is time to start writing. First of all a picture that I didn't take myself, and some thanks to the weather gods...

It was a weekend in which much of the UK experienced some unusually violent summer storms. Viewed over the camper-van area and car park on Saturday afternoon this one just missed us but visited hailstones 2cm in diameter on Oxford, which is barely ten miles away. For the most part however, it was hot and sunny.
I'm always keen to catch the opening acts on as many stages as I can and this was no exception. I will add a link as soon as I can (there are many bands called Heavy Heart worldwide) but this one from South London, with its New Wave echoes, was a good first act to see.
Note added 29 July:
Heavy Heart can be found here - many thanks to the band for providing confirmation of this.

The Veterans and Virgins Stage, early Friday afternoon.

I visited all five stages at some time or other but little from the Barn Stage will feature as I spent almost no time there for one reason or another.

The smallest is The Saloon Stage and I spent a great deal of time there, as I did last year. On Friday the artist list was curated by Clubhouse Records and on the Saturday by At The Helm Records and was home to more great acoustic, roots and Americana music, both home grown and imported, than you could shake a stick at. As often as not it was packed to bursting. Very much from across 'The Pond' comes this artist.

Otis Gibbs - Saloon Stage, Friday afternoon.