Joanne Shaw Taylor - live at The Royal Festival Hall

It is rare that I venture to London for live music. Last Wednesday was an an exception and with good reason. It was for to see this artist live a fifth time but the fact that I had never set foot inside the iconic Royal Festival Hall did no harm either.

Photo credit: John Bentley

The artist was Joanne Shaw Taylor and despite a cold that had caused the cancellation of the previous day's show at Bristol Colston Hall we were treated to an awesome set. Her voice held but, sensibly in the circumstance, the guitar parts and the addition of an entirely instrumental number were to the fore. It was to be quite stunning. I have never seen and heard guitar played quite like that by anyone...  the acoustics of the room playing a full part here. The whole set seemed to go so very quickly but was not in fact any shorter than might have been anticipated.
Support was provided by the impressive South African blues-rock artist Dan Patlanky and his band of which I have to admit that I was previously quite unaware. On the other hand I really like being caught off-guard by new music.
Rather suspecting that I would not be permitted to use it I didn't take a camera. In some ways that was liberating too. The whole evening, involving company and travelling to London and back, seems to have pressed some sort of reset button in my mind.  Since the summer's festivals I have been listening to absolutely loads of music but had somehow lost the wish to write about it for a month or two. It has to be spontaneous. It isn't something that I can make myself do though I often think in some detail about what I might post even when I don't actually do it.

New Music 2016 - Part 36 - Joanne Shaw Taylor - Wild

Let's just get straight to the point here. This is what this post is about.

Joanne Shaw Taylor - Wild (30 September 2016, Axehouse Records).

This is the playlist:

• Dyin’ To Know
• Ready To Roll
• Get You Back
• No Reason To Stay
• Wild Is The Wind
• Wanna Be My Lover
• I’m In Chains
• I Wish I Could Wish You Back
• My Heart’s Got A Mind Of Its Own
• Nothin’ To Lose
• Summertime

I don't know quite what it sounds like but suffice to say that when I saw her play live (once again) a few months back the omens were good. Very good indeed. This is her fifth studio album and the second to be released on her own independent label Axehouse Records; so take it as read that she has a fine sense of what she wants her music to sound like and who would be the people to work with in order to make that happen.

If you don't believe me then see this piece:

http://teamrock.com/news/2016-06-07/joanne-shaw-taylor-next-blues-superstar-producer-kevin-shirley 

Of course no record producer, it is Kevin Shirley in this case, would seek to undermine their own work or that of the artist that has employed them. On the other hand this, coming as it does more than three months before the recording is released, is a considerable departure from the normal state of things: Muted expressions of understanding, of shared values and so on are the most one usually hears. If one hears if anything at all that is and even when one does it comes from the artist more often than not. I for one am hoping that he is right.
Any which way Joanne Shaw Taylor is a phenomenal live artist and she is touring widely in support of 'Wild'. That is something you need to experience.

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. 

My 2014 in Music - Albums - Part 1

With December, traditionally the start of the pre-Christmas hiatus in meaningful musical releases, just hours away it is time to start mentioning those releases of 2014 that have for whatever reason been highlights for me.
One change is that while the acts are grouped in alphabetical order the number of entries has been reduced to ten in this list. This is not due to a shortage of possibilities, far from it indeed, but rather to make compiling and writing each post more manageable.

• Angel Olsen - Burn Your Fire For No Witness
• Arc Iris - Arc Iris
• Clara Engel - Looking Glass Fire
• Jennifer Crook - Carnforth Station
• Joanne Shaw Taylor - The Dirty Truth
• The Moulettes - Constellations
• Ninebarrow - While The Blackthorn Burns
• The Rails - Fair Warning
• Sylvan Esso - Sylvan Esso
• Ward Thomas - From Where We Stand

One thing that changed not a jot is the influence that music I have seen live during 2014 has had on the outcome - eight of the ten above fall into that category and of those eight I have seen four live on at least two distinct occasions. Of the ten, five are LPs that I own on vinyl.

I just felt the need to get the ball rolling on this late autumn afternoon. It is easy to keep putting the start of such things off for another day for while it is certainly not a chore, a certain activation barrier has to be overcome nevertheless. Links - some might be my own and others to the artist or label - and probably some relevant photos will follow shortly.
I am happy if people would like to make comments and suggestions. I will be equally so if this leads anyone to find music of which they were previously either unaware of had forgotten about. If it tempts you to head out and see some live music then that is a real bonus. It is also, truth be told, quite simply the music that I really liked.

The alphabet is as it is; it starts this list with an artist that was a complete surprise, and a revelation, to me. I had heard it said that, as a performer, she is at best diffident and at worst obtuse. Be that as it may I can now go only with what I heard and observed myself. Those descriptions are quite harsh I believe; reserved and self-absorbed maybe, which means it admirably mirrors the album title 'Burn Your Fire For No Witness'. 

Angel Olsen - Green Man Festival 2014.

A bonus that accrued from starting a blog is that I really had to go out to see live music and soon armed with a camera. I often don't go far at all...

Ward Thomas, Cheese & Grain, Frome, 2 August 2014.  The opening date of their début headline tour.

The Moulettes are currently supporting Bellowhead on tour, but often playing as a four-piece and good though this is (dubbed the Moulllites by Hannah Miller) when I saw them thus live at Reading Hexagon just a couple of weeks ago you really do need to see them live as a six-piece playing a full set because that is in another league entirely. This was fresh on my mind as I had seen them thus just ten days previously at Marnhull Acoustic Sessions. You can do exactly that at Behind The Castle Festival on 13 June 2015.

One of the Reading absentees: Ruth Skipper, Marnhull Acoustic Session, 9 November 2014.

New Music 2014 - Part 23 - Joanne Shaw Taylor - The Dirty Truth

Barely a year after the release of the live LP/DVD 'Songs From The Road' and less than two after the release of her third studio album 'Almost Always Never' in 2012, Joanne Shaw Taylor returns on 22 September with her studio LP 'The Dirty Truth' and this is the artwork for it and the track list.

1. Mud, Honey

2. The Dirty Truth

3. Wicked Soul

4. Fool In Love

5. Wrecking Ball

6. Tried, Tested And True

7. Outlaw Angel

8. Shiver And Sigh

9. Struck Down

10. Feels Like Home

It is to be released on her own bijou label 'Axehouse Music' on physical formats including two heavyweight vinyl options. For this project, more blues rock than the last two LPs perhaps, she is reunited with Jim Gains who produced her début 2009 LP 'White Sugar' and if you haven't listened to that then now is the time to do so.

If you have never seen her play live then you ain't heard nothing yet!

        

The most recent time I saw her live was at The Brook, Southampton on 12 June.

2013 In Music - Albums - Part 2

Despite what I said I might do in the last part of this review series, this is not EPs and mini- albums of 2013. It is the second tranche of 'albums of 2013'. The former category is proving far more fascinating, and therefore complex, than I imagined even a couple of weeks ago. It will have to await my attention this coming weekend. The first part afforded you one album that was largely sung in a foreign language. This will include another but the comfort is that at least both of them are sung in the same foreign language. I make no excuses about this, the links, or indeed the variety of music included. You won't catch me adding a link to NME very often but here I chose to do so:

• Danni Nicholls - A Little Redemption
• Deap Vally - Sistrionix
• Emily Barker and The Red Clay Halo - Dear River
• Ethan Johns - If Not Now Then When?
• Joanna Gruesome - Weird Sister
• Joanne Shaw Taylor - Songs From The Road
• Lanterns on the Lake - Until The Colours Run
• Phillip Henry and Hannah Martin - Mynd
• Siddi - Un Tro
• Texas - The Conversation
• Troubadour Rose - Find An Arrow
• Wild Belle - Isles

I've seen seven of these acts live, four of them more than once, and the other five are well and truly on my list of 'ones to see'. Choose your own favourite, not from these, unless you really want to do that, because it is your turn. Write about it - somewhere, anywhere legal.

New Music 2013 - Part 30 - three forthcoming rock/blues albums

I said early last week that this would be the next in my 'New Music' series and it is. That various things including more on End Of The Road 2013 that came between them is just how the cookie crumbles.
In the last few years I have got to like blues more than ever before. In particular in that I no longer regard it as an semi-historical genre. That is something that I should have known was not true. In many ways I have my friend John to thank for this: we had intended to see Gary Moore, who we both much admire, live but ultimately we left it too late.
About the same time I saw Bex Marshall live in Frome, supporting Seth Lakeman, and that rekindles my interest in modern blues artists especially. This forthcoming album is by US artist Samantha Fish from Kansas City, MS.

UK release date (physical): 23 September 2013 (Ruf Records).

This is her second studio album, following Runaway (2011) and 'Girls With Guitars 2011', a live album also featuring Dani Wilde and Cassie Taylor.

    This next is the second studio album by an artist that, whilst I had no idea who she was at the time, I caught very briefly on one of the smallest stages at Latitude Festival. Once I had worked out that it was Lissie Maurus (from Rock Island, IL) I bought the two EPs that preceded the release of her début album Catching a Tiger (2010). It was a surprise hit in the UK charts and UK audiences also took to her live show, which can be understood and resulted in a  CD/DVD Live At Shepherds Bush Empire (2011).

Back To Forever is slated for UK release (Columbia) on 14 October 2013.

The last of these three is UK artist, although now resident in the US, Joanne Shaw Taylor. Three studio albums into her career the live CD/DVD treatment follows soon (all on Ruf Records), This was recorded at one take during an intimate performance at The Borderline in London earlier this year. I saw her at Tavistock Wharf last October and shall do so again at London's Shepherds Bush Empire in November.

UK release: 25 November 2013.

2012 In Music - Albums - Part 1

No real change in presentation here from the last two years; two lists of a dozen albums each and both strictly in order alphabetical by artist. In no way is this intended to be a balanced list, far from it in fact: It is quite utterly biased to what has caught my attention in a lasting way in 2012.  It is vastly influenced by artists that I have seen live, either this year or somewhat previously, and I make no bones about that fact. Here it is:

• Alabama Shakes - Boys and Girls
• Awna Teixeira - Where The Darkness Goes
• Bex Marshall - The House of Mercy
• Boy - Mutual Friends
• Cowbois Rhos Botwnnog - Draw Dros Y Mynydd
• Ellen and The Escapades - All The Crooked Things
• First Aid Kit - The Lion's Roar
• Hurray For The Riff Raff - Watch Out Mama
• Joanne Shaw Taylor - Almost Always Never
• Karine Polwart - Traces
• Phantom Limb - The Pines
• The Tatsmiths - Curiosity Shop
• Trailer Trash Tracys - Ester

Please feel quite free to add comments, queries, suggestions or questions. It is what this is all about, whether negative, positive or simply mystified!  All comments are moderated (by me alone, so you know that I read them) and while I prefer it that you can put your real identity to your piece, because you should believe in what you are saying and be prepared to stand up and be counted, I will sanction the publishing of "anonymous" comments. Comments that are defamatory, offensive or totally irrelevant will not be published.

I don't bite either. I'll attempt to answer questions and comments either in comments of my own in reply or in a more general 'round-up' post.

I intend to post the second of these lists later this coming weekend. I am intending to add links to related content in both the above mentioned posts as soon as I can.  It is my intention to deal with the ever more interesting category of "EPs and mini-albums" in the meanwhile and I'd like to do that as a post complete with such links from the get-go.

Live Music 2012 - Grip of the Blues

While the title of the post is borrowed from a 2008 album by Finnish blues guitarist and songwriter Erja Lyytinen, who is not actually touring the UK until 2013 but I very much intend to see her live then; it happens to sum up my live music forays in the next couple of weeks rather well.
It all kicks off next weekend and involves only small venues...
If you were watching footage of the Diamond Jubilee Concert in London earlier this summer you might have noticed a rather special guitarist accompanying Annie Lennox for her performance. That was Joanne Shaw Taylor. She is a songwriter and singer too and has very recently released her third album on Ruf Records (Ruf 1181). Here it is.

Live at Bristol Tunnels, 11 October and Tavistock Wharf, October 12.

Having never seen her live before I'm very much anticipating that it will be amongst the live highlights of my 2012 - and there have been many.

  

This next artist I have seen live, in 2009 supporting Seth Lakeman, after the release of her excellent 2008 album 'Kitchen Table'. Bex Marshall also has a new album out and is playing at The Griffin, Frome on 20 October. Here is that album, released on House of Mercy as HOM 002.

The following day, Sunday 21 October, is the first Frome Blues Festival held at the Cheese and Grain. In an exciting line-up one highlight is Chantel McGregor, the recently announced winner of 'Best Female Vocalist' at the British Blues Awards 2012 and an award that Joanne Shaw Taylor had been the recipient of in both 2010 and 2011.
   

  'Like No Other' is her 2011 début album - released by Tis Rock Music as TRM001.

The twelve tracks on it include inter alia a splendid cover of Stevie Nicks' Rhiannon (3:39) and yet the self-written songs vary wildly in length. Track 8 'Cat Song' is just 2:16 but follows the rather remarkable 'Daydream' and another truly astonishing cover version...

New Music 2012 - Part 17 - Joanne Shaw Taylor - Almost Always Never

It is almost unthinkable. 

Announced only today, tickets not yet on sale, is this tour around the UK from US-based, but originally from Wednesbury in the West Midlands, electric-blues phenomenon Joanne Shaw Taylor. What is more it is also in support of her third album 'Almost Always Never' released in the UK by Ruf Records on 17, September 2012 (almost certainly). This is the track listing:
  

ALMOST ALWAYS NEVER
• Soul Station
• Beautifully Broken
• You Should Stay, I Should Go
• Piece of the Sky
• Army of One
• Jealousy
• Almost Always Never
• Tied and Bound
• A Hand In Love
• Standing To Fall
• Maybe Tomorrow
• Lose Myself To Loving You
  
Note added May 22, 2012:
Tickets for the tour go on sale Friday May 25, 2012.  For an earlier comment on this topic see here.

Note added May 23, 2012:
Now think about this; how good this could be in a venue that has a capacity of 400 standing - about 60% of the capacity of the Cheese and Grain here in Frome?
That venue is Tavistock Wharf  and pre-sale tickets are available now.

New Music 2012 - Part 13 - whispers on the wind

This is less focussed than most such posts: just things that I've seen, heard or otherwise divined in the last couple of weeks.
Back in 2009 and 2010 I mentioned Smoke Fairies on several occasions...
Their second LP and the follow-up to 'Through Low Light and Trees' is to be released in May; it is called 'Blood Speaks' and is, in as far as I can do so, pre-ordered already. The timing would be good for a festival or two this summer...
  
One thing that we do know is, while if you are hoping to see Joanne Shaw Taylor live in the UK this spring you might be disappointed, she is however busy recording her third LP. I have no idea of any release date, or title, but the mere fact can hardly be a bad thing. If waiting for that is too much, and really it should be...