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August 13, 2016August 13, 2016

HELEN’S PICKS: Moseley Folk Festival @ Moseley Park 04-06.09

Words by Helen Knott / Lead pic by Rob Hadley – Artist pics courtesy of Moseley Folk

On first glance I wasn’t particularly excited by this year’s Moseley Folk Festival line-up. But how wrong I was.

Admittedly the headliners probably aren’t as captivating as last year (Spiritualised and The Monkees vs. The Proclaimers and The Coral), but scratch a little below the surface and you’ll find a real strength in depth in this year’s festival, which includes some of music’s most intriguing new artists alongside a selection of cherished favourites.

Here are a few of my picks from the Moseley Folk Festival‘s 2016 weekend line up:

Mothers

Mothers began as the solo project of Georgia-based visual artist Kristine Leschper, who wrote the majority of the songs for debut album When You Walk A Long Distance You Are Tired while finishing art school. Having recruited multi-instrumentalist Matthew Anderegg, guitarist Drew Kirby and bassist Patrick Morales, the band recorded their debut after playing together for just a month.

Leschper lists her influences as solo artists Sufjan Stevens and Joanna Newsom, as well as experimental music, math rock, and noise artists, Lighting Bolt, Hella and Don Caballero. It’s a raw, unconventional, moving album and Mothers will be well worth a look when they take to the stage on Friday.

For more on Mothers, visit www.mothersathens.bandcamp.com

Sam Lee & Friends

Sam Lee’s first career was as a ‘wilderness survival expert’. I guess folk isn’t a million miles away from the world of survival – both spheres are focused on traditional ways of life. Lee quickly found success in the music world, with his critically acclaimed debut album, Ground of its Own shortlisted for the 2012 Mercury Music Award, establishing him as one of the UK’s foremost folk stars.

Lee is most well-known as a specialist in the inventive reworking of the music of the Romany Gypsy and Irish traveller communities. He’s lauded as a one-off, an innovator. Though, with one of his songs providing the soundtrack to the trailer of the new Guy Ritchie film King Arthur, he could soon be reaching a much more mainstream audience. He will perform at Moseley Folk Festival with his regular band, Sam Lee & Friends.

For more on Sam Lee, visit www.samleesong.co.uk

Billy Bragg

“Since the Brexit result, our political environment has shattered.” – Billy Bragg

It’s been a rocky time for politics in the past few months and who better to guide us through these troubled waters than Billy Bragg, the country’s most well-known political singer. He plays Moseley Folk Festival ahead of the release of latest album Shine a Light: Field Recordings from the Great American Railroad, a collaboration with guitarist Joe Henry that explores a lost American tradition. Expect a rousing Friday night set of folk and protest songs spanning Billy Bragg‘s 30-year career.

For more on Billy Bragg, visit www.shinealight-joehenry.billybragg.co.uk

Songhoy Blues

When Islamic extremists banned music in his hometown in Mali, Garba Touré grabbed his bag and his guitar, headed to the capital and formed Songhoy Blues. The band’s energetic live performances caught the eye of Damon Albarn, with one of their songs being included on a compilation released by his label African Express. Gigs in the UK and a record deal with Transgressive Records quickly followed and their debut album Music in Exile, produced by the Yeah Yeah Yeah’s Nick Zinner, was released in February 2015.

The band has gone from strength to strength ever since, performing in festivals and shows all over Europe, including their very own sold out date at the Roundhouse earlier this year. The name says it all really – traditional West African music mixed with Jimi Hendrix and Beatles style blues, with a little bit of hip hop and R&B thrown in.

For more on Songhoy Blues, visit www.songhoy-blues.com

Benjamin Francis Leftwich

York singer-songwriter Benjamin Francis Leftwich lost the person he describes as his “number one source of inspiration” – his dad – to cancer in the intervening five years between his debut and new album After the Rain. As our interview with Leftwich from earlier this year shows, the impact of the death of his father is felt throughout the new album – due for release on 19 August, on Dirty Hit Records. Read our full interview with Benjamin Francis Leftwich from May this year.

Still, if ‘Tilikum’, its moving first single, is anything to go by, Leftwich has channeled his grief into a melancholic but optimistic piece of work. He will be hoping that the album garners the same success as debut Last Smoke Before the Snowstorm, described by The Fly as “majestic” and selling over 100,000 copies worldwide.

For more on Benjamin Francis Leftwich, visit www.benjaminfrancisleftwich.com

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Moseley Folk Festival takes place on 2^nd, 3^rd & 4^th September in Moseley Park. For more on Moseley Folk Festival, including online tickets sakes, visit www.moseleyfolk.co.uk

Or check out Moseley Folk Festival’s social media on Facebook or Twitter

August 12, 2016

INTERVIEW: Ghosts of Dead Airplanes / Die Das Der – Yr Welcome 3 @ Wagon & Horses 13-14.08

Words by Tony Appleby / Gig pis by Rob Hadley (Indie Images)

Yr Welcome 3 takes place on 13^th & 14^th August at the Wagon & Horses in Digbeth. Tickets are £10 for the weekend or £7.50 for a day pass. For direct event info, including online ticket sales, click here.

Greg Smith, guitarist from Ghosts Of Dead Airplanes, exits the Haygate stage front trailing a cacophonous barrage of white noise and sweat, grabs at an innocent chair, and with anarchic disregard for the conventions of furniture proceeds to use one of its legs as a slide against the neck of his Fender Jag.

Despite, or maybe because of, the skull splitting sonics spilling from the speaker stack my face breaks into a wide grin and I think to myself, ‘yeah this a guy I’d like to know.’

Rewind five years, transport yourself into the Sunflower Lounge during a gig of Greg’s previous band, Black Heart Generator, and you’ll find Steve Bridgeman in the audience – recently arrived in Birmingham from Manchester, staring at the stage and thinking exactly the same thing.

Together with Ben Humphrey, the double-snared drummer from Ghosts of Dead Airplanes, Greg and Steve make up part of a Birmingham collective of musicians, photographers, filmmakers and artists known as Die Das Der. On a sunny Sunday afternoon, the day after the Haygate show, I sit down with the three of them to find out more about who they are and how things are going with the preparations for Yr Welcome 3 – Die Das Der‘s two day showcase of 29 bands across two stages at Digbeth’s Wagon & Horses that takes place on Saturday 13^th and Sunday 14^th August.

“The first time I met Greg I thought he was a bit of a cunt,” says Ben, “and now that I’ve been playing with him for a few years I’m positive about it!”

Ha. So he doesn’t have a mesmerising effect on everyone then. Ben’s previous band, Magic Bullet Theory, had played a couple of shows on the same bill as Black Heart Generator – so the two were known to each other when Greg asked Ben to record drums on some tracks he was putting together. At the time Greg was living in a lock-up in the Jewellery Quarter that had 24-hour access and low rent.

These initial sessions formed the genesis of Ghosts of Dead Airplanes (named after the parting album of Leicester indie/punk act Prolapse). Add one keyboard player (firstly Julia, latterly Leanne) and bassist Jonny, take to the road playing a finely blended mixture of Wire and Pulp, with Television hooks, Pixies structure and MBV overdrive, and then – attack chairs!

“I grew up playing trombone actually – got to grade 8, was planning to study music at university, but then I got hit by a car and lost my teeth,” says Greg, popping out an incisor to make his point. “There’s not much chance of making it as a trombonist after that.” Whilst recovering from this misfortune Greg’s uncle gave him a cheap Hofner guitar and a small Selmar Truvox amp, “which you could turn right up to get distortion.” Not being the sort of person to sit around and cry over spilt teeth, he poured his musical urges into a new instrument.

“I was into classical music and jazz,” explains Greg, “but usually on the dissonant side of things – John Cage, John Cale… I was into Cale first and got led backwards into The Velvet Undergound.” His musical tastes came about, like most of us, as a reaction to the Billy Joel records in his parents’ collection, and he put his first bands together in sixth-form whilst listening to Britpop with a Grunge hangover.

Meanwhile in Surrey, Ben was displaying similar determination by deciding to go all out and buy a full drum kit for £600, despite having never picked up a drumstick. “All I knew was, whenever I listened to music I was listening to the drums.” He came to Birmingham, to study, in 1996 and began playing in bands. After Magic Bullet Theory, Ben started experimenting with a second snare sound for an alt-Country band. The country project dissolved (thank god) but the additional drum came with him into Ghosts of Dead Airplanes.

Steve moved down from Manchester, “where the scene was basically everyone wanting to sound like Oasis”, and became a perennial face on the Birmingham gig circuit – introducing himself to Greg at the aforementioned Black Heart Generator gig and frequenting The Flapper, “where for some reason there always seemed to be a pile of shit just to one side of the toilet!” When I ask Greg how he remembers getting into the music he still loves today, he recalls Saturday detentions at school, “staring out of the window and listening to my cassette copy of Appetite For Destruction over and over and over.”

The three of them aren’t original founders of Die Das Der. The idea was born in the minds of Dave Duell and Dan Sheridan, of bands Bombers and Melting Wings respectively, who were fed up with Birmingham promoters putting on gigs by seemingly plucking bands out of a hat at random. Gig bills like this would comprise of a bunch of totally unconnected, dissimilar acts. The audiences for these shows – equally disconnected from each other – would turn up, watch their one band, and then vanish.

“It might be my Yorkshire meanness,” says Steve, “but if I’ve paid five quid to see a bunch of bands I want to enjoy ALL the bands and get my money’s worth, not fuck off after one of them.”

Greg and Ben got involved in Die Das Der fairly early on. Steve came on board this year. Other members include Graham Reynolds from Wax Futures, Stuart Tovey, Craig Bainton and Paul Broome. It has shifting personnel, but revolves around a coherent and stable ethos – to put on a line-up of bands who might all appeal to a singular audience. The idea might sound simple but can arguably escape a lot of other promoters in the city (they respectfully mention no names). Yr Welcome, which is Die Das Der‘s two day mini-fest, aims to put out acts that the whole crowd can enjoy.

”The bands we put on don’t necessarily all sound the same. What they do have in common is their approach to music,” says Greg. By this he’s talking about their desire to push the boundaries of the music they make. Call it leftfield, or punk (as an attitude not a style), experimental noise or underground. It’s a conscious desire to not just ignore mainstream music, but laugh at it, set it on fire and then piss on it.

Aside from genre, another element to Die Das Der is the DIY ethos. They finance the venture themselves, reasoning that it’s pointless seeking funding from organisations like the Arts Council, who are only going to want to see boxes ticked, specific audiences engaged, full documentation and accountability. Funding like that is a choke chain. Besides which, it’s not needed. “We spread the cost of the festival out amongst us,” says Ben. “If we all come out of it thirty or forty quid down then it’s not a loss, it’s the type of fucking good weekend we’re happy to pay for.”

So profit is certainly no motive (if you haven’t got that by now) it’s about the music and the community. They put on bands they like – usually who they like personally, and often people they’ve played with over the years. The first meeting of each Yr Welcome project involves everyone in Die Das Der sitting down and championing all the great bands they’ve been getting into. It’s a night of listening to music, watching You Tube videos and interviews, the odd debate, maybe a vote or two, but by the end of the day they’ve picked out maybe 40 bands they want.

“It’s an exciting process,” says Steve, wearing his Sunshine Frisbee Laserbeam T-shirt (one of this year’s headlining acts) “and it feels really great to bring bands to the table who we’ve seen and met at gigs ourselves.”

YR Welcome is not an event for prima donnas either. The bands all muck in and are happy to take care of themselves, handling their own merch and helping out the Wagon & Horses‘ sound technician, ‘Wagon Greg’, with set-ups and sound checks. It’s probably a good job too, especially for Ben, who got so twisted during the first Yr Welcome he passed out under some stairs an hour before he was due to get on stage.

“I remember being woken up and helped to the stage… “ tells Ben, “I just had to concentrate really, really hard… a couple of times I thought I was just gonna fall off my stool.”

Stools be fools and chairs beware, when you share a stage with Ghosts Of Dead Airplanes.

Check out Yr Welcome 3 event updates and line-up information click here. Or to tap into the social media for Die Das Der, visit www.facebook.com/wearediedasder

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For more on Ghosts of Dead Airplanes, visit www.facebook.com/GhostsOfDeadAirplanes

For more from the Wagon & Horses, visit www.wagonandhorsesdigbeth.com

August 10, 2016

INTERVIEW: Soweto Kinch

Words by Helen Knott

“It’s about preserving ideas and versions of Britishness that aren’t often celebrated, which should be celebrated.”

The Flyover Show is back on Saturday 20th August, returning to its old home beneath the Hockley Flyover.

But if you’re relatively new to Birmingham, you might not have been to The Flyover Show before – after running annually for five years from 2008 it has been on hiatus since 2012.

The Flyover Show’s founder and curator (and a MOBO-award-winning jazz star in his own right) Soweto Kinch admits to some initial trepidation that people may have forgotten about the event. But he has been relieved by the positive reaction, “people have been saying this is exactly what we need. It has been missed, especially in the realm of Black British Brummie expression.”

Indeed, in a year when The Drum has closed and Simmer Down Festival has been cancelled, Soweto Kinch believes this ‘one-day festival of music, art and dance’ is more important than ever to Birmingham’s inner-city communities. “I think that whilst there’s great, new opportunities opening up in some venues across the city there’s a real absence of stuff happening in Ladywood, Hockley and Handsworth. It seems like resources are being pulled away from places that need it.” Kinch is keen for The Flyover Show to counteract this and to celebrate the “rude health of Birmingham’s arts scene”.

Consequently, the theme of this year’s Flyover Show is Birmingham artists – with all but headliners Eska and Ernest Ranglin coming from Birmingham. Soweto Kinch is full of enthusiasm for the acts that the festival will showcase. “Ruben James is a pianist and features on my latest album. He plays with Sam Smith too, so watch this space… Amerah Saleh, I think she’s a really exciting poet, you should be looking out for her… Truemendous – if you don’t know her music check it out. She’s a very industrious woman, I don’t know anybody who’s released three independent albums and got all the videos she’s got online. She’s got more Youtube videos than me.”

But an appearance by the 82-year-old headliner – the legendary jazz/reggae guitarist Ernest Ranglin, should be very special too. And it’s a bit of a coup for Soweto Kinch, “bringing him (Ernest Ranglin) to Birmingham feels like a real privilege. He’s normally doing big ticketed events and charging huge fees, but I think that the opportunity to play in front of a diverse audience, and certainly a community with a strong Jamaican and West Indian heritage, was music to his ears.”

Kinch is currently playing on Ranglin’s farewell tour, appearing at high profile gigs in places like Glastonbury Festival, The Barbican, Montreal Jazz Festival, Istanbul Jazz Festival and Philharmonie De Paris.

Ensuring that The Flyover Show is a community event is also clearly important to Soweto Kinch. Of course the jazz and hip hop fans are welcome, but he’s also keen to reach out to more diverse communities – including the audience that attracted Ernest Ranglin to the event. Kinch has formed a Community Interest Company (CIC) called UPRIZE to run the festival and to take forward other projects and ideas, “so it’s not just a flash-in-the-pan festival but an entire philosophy of how work is created, of how ‘diversity’ is promoted and what the arts ecology of Birmingham really looks like.”

The fact that The Flyover Show remains a free event is also key. “It’s very important,” explains Kinch, “because as well as attracting the jazz acolytes and the hip hop heads who already know these artists, there are so many people in communities such as Ladywood, Hockley and Handsworth that will never know that they like classical music, for example, until they have the chance to hear it.”

In the years since the last Flyover Show in 2012, where over 6,000 came to see a line up with Maxi Priest at the top, Soweto Kinch has further developed a successful broadcasting career – presenting a weekly jazz show on BBC Radio 3 and a TV show on Big Centre TV (“I’m Mr Media now” ). And alongside preparations for The Flyover Show 2016 he’s currently putting the finishing touches to new album Nomagram, his first since 2013’s The Legend of Mike Smith.

Nomagram is due for release in October and is “based on principles of sacred geometry, numbers, and healing – that sound can give us visions of the best versions of ourselves and can literally psychologically and physically make us feel better.” You’ll be able to hear tracks from the new album at The Flyover Show on Sat 20^th August.

So a fair amount in the diary. And Soweto Kinch admits to feeling busy, but it’s a good busy. “It’s all consuming so I’m not sleeping very much,” admits Kinch, “but I had an epiphany a couple of days ago, you know, I’m doing a lot, I’m really tired but it’s a great job! I was at a friend’s birthday party on Wednesday and Rodney P just walked through, gave me a high five and there was a little bit of ‘Rodney P just said hi to me! I’m living the dream.’”

But there’s little let up in sight; having taken a four year break from the festival, Soweto Kinch has big plans for its future.

“The idea is for it (The Flyover Show) to grow, to move to different cities,” tells Kinch. “We’re starting to speak to Hull about doing a Flyover Show next year there, as well as Coventry, London and Manchester. We’re keen to keep exporting this model of creating work in unconventional spaces and celebrating the things that people normally dismiss.”

The Flyover Show returns to Birmingham on Saturday 20^th August, running from 12:30-9pm – taking place at the same event site, underneath the Hockley Flyover in-between Great Hampton Street and Soho Road.

Entrance to The Flyover Show 2016 is free, welcoming all ages all day – but to ensure your place at the front of the crowd, and on the mailing list, visit www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/the-flyover-show-2016-tickets-26326530361

For more on The Flyover Show, visit www.facebook.com/TheFlyoverShow

For more on Soweto Kinch, visit www.soweto-kinch.com

For more on UPRIZE CIC, visit www.uprize-cic.com

August 4, 2016

BPREVIEW: Bazaar @ Hare & Hounds 05.07.16

Words by Ed King

On Friday 5^th August, the Hare & Hounds presents Bazaar – ‘an evening on live music, comedy & more’.

A stacked smorgasbord of entertainment, from bands to burlesque, Bazaar’s Friday 5th lineup includes Masai Blues, Tom Walker Trio, Ben Drummond, Chris Tye, Jonathan Sandilands, (4.O.M) & Friends, Andy White, Karen Bayley, Freddie Farrell, Jon Pearson, Adam Regan + Canvas Live Art.

Doors open at 8pm with tickets priced at £8 (adv) and £10 (otd). For direct gig info & online ticket sales, click here.

“We’re too music focused…” is the monthly battle cry at Birmingham Review’s online editorial meetings. So when a jam packed cornucopia of fun lands in our box, it would be rude not to. Dust off the dentures people we’re going in.

Programmed by the Hare & Hounds head honcho, Adam Regan (who’s also playing at the event), Bazaar is an uber sexy line up of awesomeness. At the top of the tree we have Masai Blues – a fantastic blues/jazz/R&B quartet fronted by the sultry velvet vocalist, Judy Blue.

Next up is the tried-and tested-revered-and-respected Tom Walker Trio, bringing their blues/rock & funk to the bill. Local six string luminaries Ben Drummond and Chris Tye pad out the rest of the live line up, with a phat chunk of comedy to wash it all down with – from Andy White, Karen Bayley, Freddie Farrell and Jon Pearson. Plus load more artists waiting in the wings to do everything from live art to burlesque. Blimey… I believe that’s what they call CHOCKED FULL O’FUN. Not bad for a tenner.

There is a serious side to this event though, as Bazaar has been organised as a fundraising event for Emma Cutler – a local promoter and parent who was recently diagnosed with terminal cancer. Emma has been involved in comedy and music events for many years in Birmingham, and the pool of goodwill behind Bazaar not only reflects her career but hopes to raise some cash for her and her family. It’s a thoroughly heartbreaking situation – one so absurdly sad the only thing to do is throw a great big fat party and spread as much love as you can.

Adam Regan says “If you’ve been around the Birmingham music scene during the last decade, there’s a good chance that you will have met Emma May Cutler at some gig, club-night or random after-party in Moseley. Earlier this year Emma was diagnosed with colon cancer. Soon after, she discovered it had spread to her liver and was terminal. Many would have crumbled under the stress and sadness of it all but Emma has been a pillar of strength and positivity. She has two beautiful young children and has recently married her long-time partner Steve Chamberlain, and is determined to enjoy every moment she has left with her family and friends.

We’ve decided to throw a massive party that represents everything Emma has done during her career. There will be live music, burlesque dancers, magicians, comedians and loads more to keep you entertained, and every single penny we raise will go to Emma and her family (everyone involved has kindly offered their services for free). If you can come along, bring a friend, share the event and help us get the place packed and jumping.”

Plus it’s a damn fine line up – one that’s well worth every shekel. But a big hug/gold star to the Hare & Hounds and everyone who has thrown their hat in the ring for this excellent event Xx

Masai Blues @ Shenstone Blues Club

N.B. There is also a Just Giving page set up for Emma and her family, which will be live until 9^th September – for more info or to donate, visit www.crowdfunding.justgiving.com/emmaandsteve

For more on Bazaar, including online tickets sales, click here.

For more from the Hare & Hounds, visit www.hareandhoundskingsheath.co.uk

August 1, 2016August 1, 2016

BPREVIEW: Carina Round @ Hare and Hounds 04.07.16

Words by Ed King

On Thursday 4^th August, Carina Round brings her Deranged to Divine tour to the Hare & Hounds (Kings Heath) with support from She Makes War. Doors open at 7:30pm with tickets priced at £10 (adv) – for direct gig, info click here.

Carina Round will be in Birmingham for the second gig in her eight date UK tour, which begins at The Globe in Cardiff on 3^rd August and ends at The Green Door Store in Brighton on 11^th August – as presented by Glasswerk. For direct info on the full Deranged to Divine tour, click here.

The first time I saw/heard Carina Round was at a pub on Bennett’s Hill, standing on a small wooden stage singing a capella. Her not me. The room was full, busy and not paying attention to anything without alcohol in it. Carina was shyer on stage back then and stood almost awkwardly, just a girl behind a guitar, being supremely ignored. But once she started to sing… something cut through the crowd. It was one of those moments.

Carina Round released The First Blood Mystery (Tori Amos metaphors eat your heart out) in 2001, produced in the rock stalwart studios of her Wolverhampton home town. Angry, perhaps; a distorted guitar, fingernails down the blackboard affair. A brave album, one that makes more sense to me retrospectively, this seven track debut admittedly rested in my CD collection waiting for ‘that song’ to pull me back in. A band was formed, a band was toured, and The Disconnection followed a year later – stabbing the clandestine power of any folk pretenses straight through the heart.

More professional and personal releases followed, before a thief in the sky took Carina Round to LA – ushering in a litany of high profile support slots and peer reviews. The ebbs and flows of industry interest followed, whilst that mega-stardom so many of us thought was a given stayed just beyond her fingertips (although her later osmosis into Puscifier – as co-lead vocals, guitar and banjitar?? – has brought more stadium crowd support). But Carina Round remained; a working musician. Uncompromising. Valid. Something fluid and exciting, even when you’re watching from the sidelines.

Slow Motion Addict came out in 2007, bringing with it a more subdued sound (kinda, sorta), a 12 episode narrative, and the chance to see what Carina Round would look like with a beard. Nails and blackboards got replaced by oil spills, echoes and the joy of twisted metals. Then Things You Should Know EP followed in May 2009, and amongst other gems brought the world ‘Backseat’ – a surprise success that almost never saw daylight, but which gave me this audience member another one of those moments at the Hare & Hounds in June 2011.

The awesome Tigermending was released in May 2012, a simply superb album, and now we’re back in the present – with Carina Round‘s Deranged to Divine tour presenting a ‘self curated collection’ of her solo work, coming to the Hare & Hounds on August 4^th. With She Make War as the noteworthy support; what a wonderful world this could be.

And whilst there are many, many, many videos worth watching from Carina Round’s back catalogue (seriously, visit YouTube and ring fence an afternoon) this dance across the heart strings is quite a beautiful place to start.

‘You and Me’ – Carina Round

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For more on Carina Round, visit www.carinaround.com

For more from the Hare & Hounds (Kings Heath), visit www.hareandhoundskingsheath.co.uk