Performances Birmingham Archives -

August 30, 2018August 30, 2018

BREVIEW: Project Soundlounge @ Town Hall 18.08.18

Words by Cariss Auburn & Ed King / Pics by Callum Lees

On Saturday 18^th August, Project Soundlounge returned to Birmingham’s Town Hall for its 6^th annual event. With entry free all night, a line up including Jerry Williams, Lady Sanity, Population:7, Riscas, FABRIK, and Cariss Auburn took to the Town Hall stage from 5pm.

Showcasing some of The Midlands’ brightest bands and musical stars in the making, Project Soundlounge is a one day festival organised by a collective of 16 to 25 year olds – giving young people a chance to promote a live music event in one of the most prestigious venues in the city. Seriously, this is quite an incredible opportunity for our region’s fledgling creatives. When I started out I had Slipmatt in The Dance Factory…

Although, giving young promoters such a large venue to play with – albeit a beautiful cavern – may not be the most confidence inspiring first foray into the world of selling tickets. Even if they’re for free.Promoting live music is hard, promoting it in Birmingham is even harder, and getting over 1,000 people to give up their Saturday is no mean feat. Ask Live Nation. Or whoever promoted the last Ani DiFranco gig within these walls.

But Project Soundlounge presents a good local line up. Not box ticking-public funding good either, but actually good. As in, I’d-pay-money-to-see-that kind of good. As in, i’d give up my Saturady. So here, with the programme, Project Soundlounge is not a hollow gesture – or even worse, a patronising pat on the back for people who need something to stick on a CV. It’s a confident first step – one that would have a decent crack at a lower end three digit capacity. And whilst other initiatives are out there purporting the same ‘opportunity for young people’, I’ve seldom see any that come this close to such a firm foot forward for both the people playing on stage and those that put them there.

But, as I can hear tired yawns from too much sycophantic copy floating in (a noise I’d probably be making if I wasn’t the one writing it) who better to tell you what’s what than someone at the centre of it all.

Carris Auburn is a Wolverhampton based ‘singer-songwriter and self-taught producer’, whose debut Unphased EP is worth some serious attention – gathering accolades from Glastonbury’s emerging talent hawks to longstanding soul legend Alexander O’Neal.

Auburn has also been compiling a series of cover songs in and around Wolverhampton, with the last one filmed Wightwick Manor to celebrate the ‘100 years after the first set of women gained the right to vote in the UK’ – a project that fell a little outside of our editorial postcode, but check out what the Express & Star had to say about it by clicking here.

Closer to (our) home, Carris Auburn recently played a headline set at The Kitchen Garden Café in Kings Heath – a gig we sadly missed due to too much diary juggling, but one we kicked ourselves repeatedly for not making. So to throw some well deserved column inches her way, and save us some thinly spread Saturday, we asked her to write a ‘diary entry about her experience playing’ at Project Soundlounge, giving us ‘an honest account of the night, on stage and off’.

And to her credit, she agreed:

08:59 / It’s the day of Project Soundlounge! A festival held at Birmingham’s Town Hall organised entirely by 16-25 year olds. This year it’s all in aid of national charity Crisis and their campaign to end homelessness and I’m starting the day in panic mode because I’ve woken up an hour late.

11:00 / We’re somehow arriving at the Town Hall way before our load in time of 11:40am and it’s a good thing because I’ve managed to drive straight past the entrance.

11:15 / Take two and we’re in, being greeted by Lydia, our go to person for the day.

12:00 / Soundcheck – the venue looks as impressive as ever with screens reminding everyone to donate. It’s a bit slow getting everything set up but we manage to get a song in. I tell the band about the cover of ‘I Say A Little Prayer’ I decided to learn last night as a tribute to Aretha Franklin. They agree to join in like the masters of improv they are.

12:25 / I spot Lady Sanity in the kitchenette area backstage waiting to soundcheck. There’s only time for a quick hello before I head back to Wolves for a couple hours.

17:15 / I’m back at the Town Hall and the comedy of errors continues as we realise the track for my final song ‘Oil on Water’ is missing. Someone pops up asking me for a bio but I never see her again. The debate of what to do continues down to the wire but a shift around in the order of the set solves the issue.

17:45 / Showtime! We’re up on stage to kick off the night after being introduced by a slightly nervous announcer. It’s not the easiest at first with a small audience in a vast hall but everyone warms up and and has fun on the stage, the performance whizzing by. The Aretha Franklin tribute goes smoothly and I don’t even notice the lack of backing for ‘Oil on Water.’

18:40 / By the time everyone is packed up and we’ve thanked Lydia, I’ve missed most of Population:7’s performance. I catch the end after chatting to a couple members of the audience. The seven piece are a mix of rappers and singers with an incredible drummer, soulful harmonies and masses of charisma.

19:00 / Next up are synth grunge outfit FABRIK who the announcer hilariously introduces as Population:7 by accident. Such a powerful vocal from the lead singer. One avid fan is dancing alone and the resident videographer is straight in with the 360º shots.

20:40 – After a fun set of covers from Crisis worker Jeremiah it’s four piece indie band Riscas. Frontman, George Maycock, comments on the surreal nature of playing the Town Hall – relatable. They’re instantaneously sweating and it’s an energetic performance of catchy songs that wouldn’t be out of place at Glastonbury.

21:30 / The penultimate act is Birmingham rapper Lady Sanity and she comes out swinging, the relentless delivery of her lyrics a stark contrast to the chilled old school hip hop beat as she raps about striving for better days. Dubbed “energy crew,” a small group of people at the front of the hall shout her lyrics back at her.

22:15 / Jerry Williams and her band are on and not to be dramatic but she is wearing the greatest trousers I have ever seen. The high octane set is a journey of beachy rock songs and post-punk. We’re given some beautiful stripped back pieces – one solo song is an ode to an alcoholic’s promise to go sober if she wrote a song about him. A slick cover of Jamie T’s ‘If You Got the Money’ has a lot more people up on their feet and it’s a great end to the night.

22:35 / At this point the audience is largely made up of the organisers. I had thought it was a shame to see the event so sparsely attended and I encourage people that may read this now to donate what they can to Crisis. However, sat watching on my own, I felt the emptiness of the surrounding grandeur create this defiant pocket of live music energy and it was something I was truly proud to be a part of.

23:05 / I grab my things and walk out to my car, being reminded that it’s Saturday night by a passing hen do. I hope Project Soundlounge goes from strength to strength over the coming years, for the charities it helps and the young people it motivates.

Jerry Williams – Project Soundlounge @ Town Hall 18.08.17 / Callum Lees

For more on Jerry Williams, visit www.facebook.com/Jerrywilliamsmusic

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Lady Sanity – Project Soundlounge @ Town Hall 18.08.17 / Callum Lees

For more on Lady Sanity, visit www.ladysanity.com

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Riscas – Project Soundlounge @ Town Hall 18.08.17 / Callum Lees

For more on Riscas, visit www.riscasofficial.com

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Jeremiah (from Crisis) – Project Soundlounge @ Town Hall 18.08.17 / Callum Lees

For more on Crisis, visit www.riscasofficial.com

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FABRIK – Project Soundlounge @ Town Hall 18.08.17 / Callum Lees

For more on FABRIK, visit www.fabriktheband.co.uk

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Population:7 – Project Soundlounge @ Town Hall 18.08.18 / Callum Lees

For more on Population:7, visit www.population7.com

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Carris Auburn – Project Soundlounge @ Town Hall 18.08.17 / Callum Lees

For more on Carris Auburn, visit www.carissauburnmusic.com

To know more about Crisis, with links for online donations to the charity, visit www.crisis.org.uk

For more on Project Soundlounge, visit www.facebook.com/ProjectSoundLounge

For more on the Town Hall and Symphony Hall, including venue details and further event listings, visit www.thsh.co.uk

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NOT NORMAL – NOT OK is a campaign to encourage safety and respect within live music venues, and to combat the culture of sexual assault and aggression – from dance floor to dressing room.

To sign up to NOT NORMAL – NOT OK, click here. To know more about the NOT NORMAL – NOT OK sticker campaign, click here.

February 3, 2018

BREVIEW: Katherine Ryan – Glitter Room @ Symphony Hall 02.02.18

Words by Ed King

We filed slowly, languidly into the hall. The auditorium was vast… But not silent, which is an immediate win for a Birmingham crowd.

I love my home city, but it can be a tough cookie for any touring artist – from the Insane Clown Posse to Ani DiFranco, you just can’t be sure when it come to a Birmingham gig. And I have never seen comedy at the Symphony Hall; a huge room, indeed a ‘vast auditorium’, one a friend astutely described as “the 1980’s trying to do the 1950’s”.

But if tonight isn’t sold out, then it’s a damn near close. All I can count are the empty chairs stuck in traffic or cursing an AWOL babysitter. Booking Joe Lycett as support was a bold local move too. So bold it could have even backfired, as Lycett takes to the intimidating plateau that is the Symphony Hall stage (without a orchestra on it at least) and makes it as cosy as your living room. Cosier, in fact, like the living room of a good friend but one who won’t expect you to clean up afterwards. Or a total stranger’s when you’ve drunk too much to care.

Taking us to the interval and in some case to our seats, as with the unlucky couple that arrive a little late (once the show had started, once the stand up comedy show had started, once the stand up comedy show had started in front of thousands of people that can see you’re in the wrong aisle) Lycett confidently segues from jokes of civic humour to the best use for an Amazon Alexa. Extreme, funny, and extremely funny, the now Kings Heathen is about to embark on his I’m About to Lose Control and I think Joe Lycett (nice) tour, kicking off the day before Valentines. Definitely one to watch out for, and then watch. If you can. It’s pretty much sold out too.

Sauntering onto the big and empty Symphony Hall stage, “it’s a long walk…”, Katherine Ryan looks resplendent in pink silk (I think) with red frills. Or her Vagina Trousers, as we are quickly informed. So there’s an image that will never leave my mind. Assured, tempered by a tour that’s been running since September, and all the qualities that a stand up Faust would be picking his scabs to sign, seal and deliver, Ryan opens with jokes about relationships, the ending of relationships, and moving six thousand miles away with your fingers crossed – an oddly narcissistic approach to putting your emotional cards on the table. Immediately engaging, Ryan turns what could have been trite into fresh and personal material, inviting us into walk though the weird worlds we all inhabit (even if some of us aren’t totally aware of our terrain). Honest, the fun side of frustrated, and cut to perfection; I will never look at a dolphin in quite the same way again.

From jibes about her “ineffectual butler” daughter, be it stalking Anna Kendrick or learning the difference between “day wine and night wine”, to an accentuated recount of when her family came over from the “trashy part” of Canada to see her small London freehold, Ryan has a firm grip on her delivery. Its gut wrenching; at one point I honestly feel the cartilage between my ribs ask me to stop. But by the time my favourite line of the night is uttered, namely that the Frank Sinatra standard ‘My Way’ is the “anthem of a cunt”, it’s clear there is to be little respite. And I will love that sentence until the day that I die.

But Ryan’s wrath is anything than just pure self deprecation, as everyone from her school gate peers – the bake sale obsessed Julie (who I swear is a more fertile version of my step mother) to the Lycra obsessed husband who would get “hate fucked” back in his box, get an astute poke in the ribs. And if you’ve ever spent “two Christmases” traversing a bitter and empty motorway…

Celebrity culture is also in range, as public domain miscreants – from R Kelly to the misogynists of musical theatre – receive a taste of the lash. But don’t worry, an escape to any would be sexual predator is offered; just “don’t fuck vulnerable women”, as the chant that never was (but should have been) rings around the back rows of the West End.

There is even a little time for some proxy president poking, filtered through the plight of “the world’s most unlucky gold digger” Melania Trump. And despite the clear attack at the abject horror that currently sits in The White House, this once again over used subject is the conduit for another piece of acerbic genius – namely that the maligned First Lady is only “one line of coke and an aggressive hand job” away from inheritance and freedom. We can but hope. Or perhaps even help, to a point. I know a guy with some cracking Colombian flake…

Katherine Ryan’s Glitter Room is on tour across the UK until the 24^th March 2018. For more on Katherine Ryan, including full tour dates and online ticket sales, visit www.katherineryan.co.uk

For more on Joe Lycett, visit www.joelycettcomedy.co.uk

For more from Live Nation UK, including further event listings and online ticket sales, visit www.livenation.co.uk

For more from both the Symphony and Town Halls, including further event listings and online ticket sales, visit www.thsh.co.uk

January 31, 2018

BREVIEW: Trish Clowes – My Iris @ Eastside Jazz Club 25.01.18

Words by Anna Whittaker

Eastside Jazz Club is a new venue inside Birmingham Royal Conservatoire at Birmingham City University. Given the gig started at 6.30pm and was set in a university building, I was prepared to feel like I was still at work and be horrified by the lack of alcohol.

In fact, there is a cafe bar, from which you can take your drinks through to the venue, and they even do a little bit of food. Actually with the lighting and seating, it feels less like a lecture theatre-cum-practice room and less like a typical jazz club replete with sticky floor, general trodden in smell and dingy bar in the corner. The band gets loads more room than you see at most places, and the acoustics are great. Get here early for a seat.

Trampette, the support band of students at the Conservatoire, come on stage at 6.30pm. They’ve only been playing together since the summer but Tom Harris, Tommy Fuller, Josh Savage and Kai Chareunsy have a funky sound with songs based on your typical student things like a game of Jenga that went horribly wrong. It’s an interesting combo of keyboard/grand piano and bass guitar, with a drum kit and percussion section featuring bongos and a beat box to modernise the sound. Guest singer, Rebekah Wilkins, brings another dimension, and sounds beautifully like Melody Gardot. The best thing is they are definitely enjoying themselves. Trampette are also joined by a tenor sax player Harry Lear, for ‘Chickpea Mash’ they regularly stay with a slow rhythm then switch on the offbeat to more upbeat with impeccable timing on those pauses.

Talented saxophonist and composer, Trish Clowes, tours with her new quartet, My Iris. Clowes plays tenor and soprano sax with the accompaniment of Chris Montague on guitar, Ross Stanley on piano and Hammond Organ, and James Maddren on drums. Evocative and dreamy, Trish Clowes and My Iris build up slowly to an entrancing wall of sound as an intro to a much funkier guitar-led beat. There’s quite a lot of instrument switching going on but it’s smooth. The improv is fast but coordinated, reminding me a little bit of Ken Peplowski as there is a lot of doodle-oodle going on but it then fades into what seems to be her classic style on this album which sounds like the end of a rain storm. The puddles of sound keep coming, and actually this isn’t quite like any other jazz; with plenty of tempo switches. Clowes mixes in new material to the album My Iris released last year.

Next up is a ballad that makes the most of the gorgeous sounding grand piano. If you had to sum up the style of this set, perhaps ‘dreamy’ and ‘echoes’ would be the sort of words you would use. The piano solo in this piece is stunning to the point where the audience barely dare breathe; it’s reminiscent of Debussy. ‘Lightning Les’ finishes the first set and sounds like a barge coming through with discordant tones; you could be forgiven for thinking that the main chords were being played by an inexperienced clarinetist, blowing too hard and aiming at setting your teeth on edge, but it’s certainly a unique sound.

James Maddren’s drum solo provides some relief. But for some this might prove a little bit too experimental although it’s certainly not derivative in any way, and each musician is clearly highly talented; they meld together well, but it’s not relaxing listening. It would be nice to hear a few more solos from Clowes herself, amongst the bridges and twirls of the other artists, and we get a bit more of that towards the end of this piece on her tenor sax.

The start of the second set is more moody with just sax and piano before getting more boisterous. They’ve got sheet music in front of them, but I’d love to know how the ensemble get what they play from a mere couple of pages of scribble. This is more of a foot tapper and intriguing in its melodies. The older chairs in the audience all sit forward and start nodding in their seats, ‘Eric’s Tune’ is hitting the jazz nerve. Tap Dance (for Baby Dodds) is next, continuing the drum theme. This tune indeed has a tap dancing undercurrent throughout, with lead solo on tenor sax; it’s jumpy, it’s rhythmic while somehow mellow at the same time.

There is definitely something special about the weird wobbly sound of a Hammond organ that introduces the next piece, but what we didn’t expect was Clowes to do vocals rather than sax, in a sort of sound poem. This is really different, and such a contrasting intro to what comes next – an up tempo syncopation with echoes of the sax followed through on the piano. Tuning up the sustain on the guitar it’s very atmospheric; the moody ending is what makes them unmistakable.

Finally, ‘A Cat Called Behemoth’: the organ and guitar are the rhythm of its giant paws, the sax it’s swaggering walk, and the drums are fizzing the sound of each tensed muscle and especially every hair in his fluffed out tail. The students are amazingly attentive, by now mine are out on Sports Night ten sheets to the wind and don’t know what they’re missing.

My Iris is a completely unique sound, inspired by Clowes’ grandmother and messenger from Roman and Greek mythology (as well as a song called ‘Iris’). But as Trish Clowes says, Iris kept coming up from all directions as inspiration, like the many colours from the instruments her band.

For more on Trish Clowes’ My Iris, visit www.trishclowes.com

For more on Trampette, visit www.facebook.com/trampetteband

For more from Jazzlines, visit www.thsh.co.uk/whats-on/org/jazzlines

For more events from Eastside Jazz Club and Birmingham Conservatoire, including venue details and links to online ticket sales, visit www.bcu.ac.uk/conservatoire/events-calendar

January 29, 2018

BPREVIEW: Katherine Ryan – Glitter Room @ Symphony Hall 02.02.18

Words by Ed King

On Friday 2^nd February, Katherine Ryan brings her Glitter Room Tour to Birmingham’s Symphony Hall – with Joe Lycett as the stand up support act.

Katherine Ryan’s Glitter Room is scheduled for 8pm at the Symphony Hall, with tickets priced at £24.50 (+bf) as presented by Live Nation UK. For direct show information, including venue details and online ticket sales, click here.

Queen of the acerbic broad smile, Katherine Ryan has been poking the ribs of our populous since settling in Britain about a decade ago – winning the Nivea sponsored Funny Women Award in 2008.

Born, raised and educated in Ontario, Ryan initially moved to the UK to help the restaurant chain Hooters set up in Nottingham – sticking around in Albion longer than expected, picking up some solid bookings as a comedian and setting into the tight lipped day to day of England. Now a self described “typical British mum – a young, uneducated immigrant”, Ryan has become a familiar face in Britain as a TV presenter, regular guest on TV panel shows, and part of the festival stand up circuit.

With a self deprecating, child (adulation) bashing, velvet glove punch approach to her material, Katherine Ryan is not likely to appear at a Pontins family cabaret anytime soon (I once saw both mother and daughter on stage for a skit… not your standard red coat fodder). Likewise, I can’t imagine there’s too much sleep being lost in the Ryan household when Waitrose run out of Chai Latte mix.

But for those anti-millennials who enjoy a sticking a good two fingers up at the tacit/absurd sides of society, you might find yourself in the right room with Katherine Ryan.

Although her latest tour, Glitter Room (named after her daughter’s bedroom) sees Ryan shift from the ‘waspish put-down to a more positive celebration of her life’ – with a little room left for Trump bashing and jabs at Baby Machine Julie. Personally, I’m fingers crossed for another attack of the Beyoncés. But a boy can dream.

Katherine Ryan – on Conan, February 2017

Katherine Ryan brings her Glitter Room Tour to Birmingham’s Symphony Hall on Friday 2^nd February, with Joe Lycett as the support stand up act. For direct show information, including venue details and online ticket sales, visit www.thsh.co.uk/event/katherine-ryan

For more on Katherine Ryan, visit www.katherineryan.co.uk

For more on Joe Lycett, visit www.joelycettcomedy.co.uk

For more from Live Nation UK, including further event listings and online ticket sales, visit www.livenation.co.uk

For more from both the Symphony and Town Halls, including further event listings and online ticket sales, visit www.thsh.co.uk