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PLAYING OUT LOUD! The Drams - Railway Inn, Winchester -
Wednesday November 22. The Drams are fronted by singer/songwriter/guitarist Brent Best, with Jess Barr on lead guitar, Tony Harper on drums, singer/keyboardist Chad Stockslager and singer/bassist Keith Killoren. The Drams specialise in soaring vocal harmonies and their lineup allows them an expanded instrumental range to produce ebullient, hook-laden rock and pop in an adventurous and invigorating style. The Drams are a very experienced bunch of musicians with Brent Best and Tony Harper former members of Slobberbone, who I remember being impressed with at The Brook in Southampton a few years ago. Keyboard player Chad Stockslager and bassist Keith Kiloren both played in the band Budapest One, which, like The Drams, was based in Texas. The Drams come to Winchester toting a brand new CD, “Jubilee Drive,” 14 brawny, rocking tracks lasting nearly 70 minutes, which are said to be typical of the band. "I was trying, on the whole, to make this a lighter, more hopeful album," Brent Best confesses, "But to me, we live in a time when people have just gotten so used to bullshit on every level that you can spew utter bullshit-and be called on it! - and then just go, 'well, here's the next bullshit,' and somehow, that's okay." But bullshit doesn't play with The Drams, who always go for the jugular with no punches pulled. Fueled by blistering guitars, swirling organ and great harmonies, the album is apparently so long because of Best's enormous accumulated backlog of top-shelf material awaiting a band capable of fully-realizing its multiple textures and possibilities. Fans of late lamented rock and blues band The Hoax will be
familiar with the enormously talented Jon Amor, former lead guitarist with the
band. With a very reasonable ticket price of £8, it should be a stonking
evening. Tickets are available from the venue or through Ticketweb on 08700 600
100. Deitra Farr - West End Centre,
Aldershot - Thursday Nov 23 & Tower Arts, Winchester - Tuesday Nov 28. Over the years Deitra has been nominated for Traditional Female Blues artist of the year by the WC Handy Awards, Female Blues Artist of the year by the Living Blues Critics Awards, the British Blues Connection Awards, and the Les Trophees France Blues awards. She began her career in 1975, singing with local soul bands, before starting her blues career in the early 1980s. From 1993 to 1996, Deitra was the lead singer with Mississippi Heat, recording two CD’s with this all-star group. In 1997, Deitra resumed her own solo career, continuing to sing blues, while reaching back to her soul music roots. After recording on eight previous CD projects with others, she recorded her first solo CD, “The Search is Over”, for the London-based JSP records. In 2005, Deitra released her second JSP CD “Let it Go!” The multi-talented Deitra Farr is also a published writer, poet, songwriter, and painter. A graduate of Columbia College (Bachelor of Arts in Journalism), Deitra has recorded many of her own compositions and has written articles for the Chicago Daily Defender, The Chicago Blues Annual, and the Italian blues magazine il Blues. Currently she has a column "Artist to Artist" in Living Blues Magazine. In 1990, Deitra represented the Chicago Tourism Bureau in Düsseldorf, Germany and has toured England, Iceland, Finland, Norway, Canada, Holland, Belgium, France, Switzerland, Italy, Yugoslavia, Greece, Israel, Austria, Latvia, Portugal, and Sweden. Deitra toured Europe with the 2000 Chicago Blues Festival with Lil Ed and the Blues Imperials. In 2003, Deitra completed a six week British tour with Otis Grand and Bobby Parker, as the American Festival of the Blues II. She also appeared on the 2004 Chicago Blues Festival European tour with Jody Williams and Andrew “Jr. Boy” Jones.
Karine Polwart - Wedgewood Rooms, Portsmouth - Sunday
November 19. She's also a co-writer and guest vocalist on Idlewild frontman Roddy Woomble's new album "My Secret is My Silence" and will feature, alongside Belle and Sebastian, on the forthcoming album release by Glasgow indie collective Future Pilot AKA. And she contributed some of the most vivid and starkly affecting songs to the acclaimed music-social documentary series “The Radio Ballads”aired on Radio 2 earlier this year. So, one way or another Karine is making an insidious impression on the UK music scene. Filmed recently for a feature on BBC 2's "Culture Show", Karine has also been chalking up a considerable national radio presence over the past few months with live sessions for BBC Radio 2, 3, 5 and 6, including Drivetime, Janice Long, Andy Kershaw, Simon Mayo and Tom Robinson, not to mention regular plays by Bob Harris and others and sustained support from local radio networks. She's also picked up some fans over at RTE1 in Ireland. Her first album “Faultlines” introduced the Scottish Borders based singer-songwriter to the music scene. Building on its success - it picked up Best Album at the 2005 BBC Folk Awards - she produced “Scribbled In Chalk.” With this album Karine showed that she was unafraid of tricky subjects: her quietly disturbing tales of human cruelty and loss - twentieth century genocide, TV executions and sex trafficking - betray her background as an anti-violence and children's rights activist. But this dark streak is offset by wistful musings upon the age and beauty of the night sky, comic tales of lovelorn gas installers and wry observations on the links between cosmetic dentistry and global domination. At 35, Karine is no novice, however, and her apprenticeship on the international folk-roots scene with traditional Scots groups Battlefield Band and Malinky make her a vibrant stage communicator. Her refreshingly direct stage presence, the emotional depth of her writing and the quality of her live performances are backed up by a dedicated and personal web presence, which, together have won her a loyal and ever expanding audience.
With a Masters degree in philosophy, Karine delivers her profoundly personal and
quietly political messages without posturing and with plenty of room for
individual interpretation. Her humanity and sense of justice, as well as her
warmth and wit, shine through. She says, "The thing I love most of all about
writing songs is the meanings they take on for the people who hear them. I'm
really humbled by the stories they tell me about their lives and experiences as
a result."
Amy Dickson - Turner Sims, Southampton - Monday
November 20. This could change though after reading about saxophonist Amy Dickson and seeing her photograph. Amy appears at the Turner Sims on Monday November 20. Amy Dickson performs regularly throughout the UK and in her native country, Australia. Amy has won many prizes and she was the first saxophonist to win the Gold Medal at the Royal Overseas League competition in London in 2004, the Symphony Australia Young Performer of the Year Award 2004, the Bromsgrove International Young Soloists competition and the Eastbourne Young Musicians' Competition. Amy has also won the Yamaha International Wind Competition, the Princes Prize, the wind section of the Tunbridge Wells Young Concert Artists competition and was named Young Performer of the Year by the British Clarinet and Saxophone Society in 2000. In 1999 she became a recipient of the James Fairfax Young Artist of the Year Prize.
She has given concerts for music clubs and festivals throughout the UK and Australia and has recorded on many occasions for ABC Classic FM, for Sydney's 2MBS FM and for BBC Radio Three and Four. She has been featured on Australian television programmes including Channel 10's 'Live it Up', a documentary about young gifted and talented people, and in 2005 she performed at the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting in Malta. She is supported by the Hattori Foundation, the Australian Music Foundation, the Zonta Clubs of Australia, and the Big Brother Foundation of Australia, the Countess of Munster Musical Trust, the Musicians Benevolent Fund, the Wingate Foundation, the Boise Foundation and the Worshipful Company of Musicians. She has studied at the Royal College of Music in London, the Conservatorium van Amsterdam, and the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, where her teachers have included Kyle Horch, Arno Bornkamp and Mark Walton.Amy has a particular interest in contemporary music, and works closely with composers on new works for saxophone and piano with pianist Catherine Milledge, as well as works for saxophone and orchestra. She has premiered and recorded many new works by composers including Graham Fitkin, Michael Csanyi-Wills, Cecilia McDowall, Philip Ashworth and Adam Sherkin. Amy’s recital at the Turner Sims will include works by composers as diverse as Gershwin and Rachmaninov.
Martin Harley - The Maltings, Farnham - Sunday Nov 12 &
Ashcroft Arts Centre, Fareham - Saturday Nov 18. One of the hits of this year’s Larmer Tree Festival, Martin is a mesmerising singer songwriter who draws on influences from old time blues and folk to world music to come up with an original and evocative sound. His lyrics are about ordinary experiences - living in cars, worn out shoes, girls lost in the carnival lights - and his voice is suitably raspy. His guitar playing is also singular: he plays slide guitar across his lap, and his accomplished finger style playing is equally adept. Martin sometimes plays solo, but usually with his band, who consist of Peter Swatton on the worlds smallest drum kit and Graeme Ross on double bass. When playing together the trio achieve a high degree of synergy; their obvious love of music and playing live shines out. For the last couple of years Martin and the band have been touring constantly and recording songs in remote cottages during storms, in caravans, and at the kitchen table on equipment begged, borrowed, stolen and sometimes hauled from the bounteous skips of Surrey. Martin and his band have appeared on Channel 4, Sky One, compilations with JJ Cale, PJ Harvey and Eric Clapton. They have played numerous festivals and released an album “Money Don’t Matter” and are currently planning to record their first studio album for release next year.
Matthew Barley - Arts Centre, Salisbury - Monday Nov
28. Cello playing is at the centre of Matthew Barley's career, while his musical world has virtually no geographical, social or stylistic boundaries. After training at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama and the Moscow Conservatoire, Matthew's activities in performance, cross-disciplinary projects, composition, and pioneering community programmes soon developed to form a uniquely eclectic international career. Matthew made an early London concerto debut playing the Shostakovich Cello Concerto in the Barbican Hall with the London Symphony Orchestra, as finalist of the LSO-Shell Competition. Within a year he had been invited to play as guest principal cellist with the London Symphony Orchestra, Philharmonia, London Philharmonic and London Sinfonietta Orchestras. Since then his solo and chamber music engagements have taken him to most European countries, North America, the Middle East, India, the Far East, Australia and New Zealand, performing repertoire ranging from Bach to his own compositions, music written for him and improvisation. Matthew's recent concerto engagements include the London Sinfonietta, the Orchestra Internazionale d'Italia, the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, Hong Kong Sinfonietta, Buenos Aires Philharmonic, New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, Athens Kamerata and Czech Philharmonic. His Europe-wide tour with the Netherlands Dans Theatre, as on-stage soloist in Brett Dean's cello and electronics score for Jiri Kylian's ballet One of a Kind, took him to 5 different countries with 17 performances including London Sadler's Wells, Montpellier Danse Festival, and The Hague's Dans Theater. Matthew's passion for new music has led him to premiere works by John Woolrich, Dimitri Smirnov, Carl Vine, Detlev Glanert, Peter Wiegold, Fraser Trainer, and Katsuhiro Tsubono and Deidre Gribben. He has also commissioned several works, including music for cello and electronics, which along with improvisation, is one of Matthew's special interests in this domain. His concerts, especially when he plays new music, are presented with talks about the works and often involve audience participation. Matthew Barley's non-classical collaborations include Django Bates, jazz pianists Julian Joseph and Nikki Yeoh (London Jazz Festival), appearing in venues ranging from Ronnie Scotts to the South Bank Centre. Matthew also masterminded a major project for violinist Viktoria Mullova, “Through the Looking Glass,” in which he was one of the lead performers. The project was performed in a 27-concert worldwide tour, and the recording, produced by Matthew, was released by Philips Classics in 2000. Matthew's most recent collaboration is with star Indian sarod player Amjad Ali Khan, with whom he has appeared in duo recitals at London's Royal Festival Hall (2000 and 2002), at the 2003 WOMAD Festivals in Adelaide (Australia), Wellington (New Zealand) and Reading (UK), at the St Denis Festival in Paris, as well as in Calcutta and Mumbai in India.
Bluehorses - The Brook, Southampton - Saturday November
4. But you have got the chance to play this exceptional folk-rock outfit at The Brook in Southampton on Saturday November 4.
Bluehorses are fronted by founder and lead singer Irish/Welsh Gothess Lizzy
Prendergast who plaus electric violin, electric Celtic harp, space-mandolin and
synthesizer. Joining her is co-founder and partner Nic Waulker whose ferociously
precise drums are abetted by the thundering bass of Nathan “Thunderthumbs”
Waulker and the guitar histrionics of Jay MacDonald. Fusing the passionate The band have shared stages with bands as diverse as the Levellers, Hawkwind and Oysterband and caused a riot among crowds in every country in Western Europe, Scandinavia and from Cornwall to the Orkney Isles. Very big on the festival scene, Bluehorses have played some of the biggest: Madrid, Skagen, Irun, Glastonbury, Dranouter, Luxembourg, Trowbridge, St Ives, Gosport, Fareham, Lokeren, Bilbao, Otley, Deerlijk, Ghent, Middlewich, Crawley, Guildford, Dadizele, Basle, Brampton, Oostende and Off the Tracks to name but a few. Their act at Saul Folk on the Water Festival last year, played in front of an enthusiastic 1200 strong crowd was recorded for a DVD 'Live at Saul Festival' released earlier this year. The disc comprises 1 hour and 20 minutes of live music plus an Extras disc with interviews with the band, bootleg videos and more. Tickets for The Brook gig are available through 02380 555366. |
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There’s
a double treat at the Railway Inn in Winchester on Wednesday November 22. Not
only a great headline act from the USA in The Drams, but also ex-Hoax guitarist
Jon Amor playing the support slot.
Chicago-based
Deitra Farr, a fiery, energetic and soul-stirring blues vocalist plays a couple
of gigs in the South this month. You can see her at West End Centre in Aldershot
on Thursday November 23 and the Tower Arts Centre in Winchester on Tuesday
November 28.
You
may not be too familiar with the name Karine Polwart, who appears at
Portsmouth’s Wedgewood Rooms on Sunday November 19. But her songs and voice
creep up on you in quite unexpected ways. Her deceptively jaunty wee trucking
song "Maybe There's A Road" opened a recent edition of UK soap “Hollyoaks” and
she closed the final programme of “The Hairy Bikers' Cookbook.”
I
must confess to being pretty ignorant about classical music. And although I live
only five minutes walk away from the Turner Sims Concert Hall in Southampton, I
have never attended any of their regular free lunchtime concerts.
If
you love blues, but haven’t caught up with Martin Harley yet, you’ve got a
chance to do so at a couple of venues in the South this month. Martin and his
band play the Boogaloo Blues Festival at The Maltings in Farnham on Sunday
November 12 and the Ashcroft Arts Centre at Fareham on Saturday November 18.
Currently
on a 20-date tour of the UK, classical cellist Matthew Barley is also conducting
17 workshops including one at Winchester Prison! You won’t be able to get
involved in that unless you happen to be doing time, but you can see Matthew at
another venue in the South when he gives a recital at Salisbury Arts Centre on
Monday November 28.
Formed
in the mid 1990s Bluehorses are a band who have an enthusiastic cult following,
but, surprisingly don’t seem to play that many gigs in the South.
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