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 Tickets available at this link https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/the-skinner-songbook-tickets-109608997462 THE SKINNER SONGBOOKAcoustic Concert at FRETSFriday 20th November, 2020The Strathaven HotelTHE SKINNER SONGBOOK is a new troubadour concert show produced by vocalist Grahame Skinner. The idea of the show is to highlight songs Grahame enjoys performing live as a vocalist, including songs from his own repertoire (Jazzateers / Hipsway / Cowboy Mouth), and songs by other artists (including Scott Walker / Lee Hazlewood / Frank Sinatra / Lou Reed / Orange Juice / Josef K). The music in the show is stripped down and performed as torch songs, focussing on the interpretive voice and lyrics.Grahame Skinner first came to prominence as a vocalist on the Jazzateers eponymously titled debut album on the Rough Trade label. Jazzateers were signed to legendary Postcard Records (and managed by label head Alan Horne), but after the demise of Postcard, Jazzateers joined label-mates Aztec Camera and the Go-Betweens in signing to Rough Trade. Skinner’s laconic Lou Reed meets Iggy Pop drawl worked perfectly with Jazzateers, resulting in international acclaim for the album.After the demise of Jazzateers, Skinner regrouped and formed a new group, Hipsway, who would go on to significant commercial success with their debut album, which sired single success with Broken Years, Ask The Lord, The Honeythief, and Long White Car. The group toured internationally, with Europe and the USA being particularly popular countries for Hipsway. The Honeythief was a big hit single in the USA, and the group based themselves in New York to record their second album, Scratch The Surface.Exhausted from years of recording and touring, Hipsway disbanded, though Skinner kept working on musical projects for a period before taking a complete break from being involved with the major label industry. However, on receiving an offer by Hamburg based label Marina Records to record, he returned to singing and writing, releasing two album on Marina with his new group, Cowboy Mouth.In recent years Skinner has worked on a variety of projects, most notably reforming Hipsway to record an album “Smoke and Dreams” and return to live touring to considerable success. |
Tickets available at this link https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/roddy-woomble-acoustic-concert-at-frets-in-the-strathaven-hotel-tickets-108488820984
RODDY WOOMBLE
FRETS
THURSDAY 10th Dec 2020
THE STRATHAVEN HOTEL
FRETS CONCERTS is delighted to announce Roddy Woomble will be performing an acoustic concert on Thursday 10th Dec in the Strathaven Hotel.Roddy Woomble is widely regarded as one of Scotland’s finest songwriters. Known for his enigmatic lyrics, warm baritone voice and consummate gift for a tune, Roddy has released five solo albums to date – ‘My Secret Is My Silence’ (2006), ‘Before The Ruin’ (2008, with Kris Drever and John McCusker), ‘The Impossible Song & Other Songs’ (2011), ‘Listen To Keep’ (2013), and ‘The Deluder’ (2017). Roddy’s first poetry collection ‘Instrumentals’ was released in 2016.
For the past 25 years Roddy has also been the frontman of much loved IDLEWILD, releasing eight studio albums, and touring worldwide as a headline act, but also in support to R.E.M., Pearl Jam and U2 amongst others.
Tickets are available at this link https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/grant-lee-phillips-at-frets-friday-22nd-jan-2021-the-strathaven-hotel-tickets-107692214312
With the release Widdershins in 2018, Grant-Lee Phillips invests the insight, nuance, and wit that has distinguished his songcraft over the past three decades in a riveting dissection of today’s fraught social landscape. Beneath the moment’s tumultuous veneer, Phillips uncovers resonances spanning centuries – patterns echoing from the present day to the distant past. In doing so, he unearths deep reserves of hope and even humor, transcending shock to reveal age-old cycles and archetypes – which Phillips delights in resurrecting.
Phillips explains. “I made a commitment to myself not to sink into despair: I’m tracing a longer narrative here. We’ve been through some of this before – not just our country, but the civilization as a whole…”
The urgency that first spurred Phillips informs Widdershins both lyrically and musically, as its twelve songs arrive in a headlong rush, with the sharp trio of Phillips (guitar, vocals, keyboards), Jerry Roe (drums), and Lex Price (bass) serving as messengers. Recording live in the studio – with all of Phillips’s vocals sung while cutting basic tracks – emphasizes the clarity and prescience of the material. Says Phillips, “This moment is explosive, volatile, and heightened. It’s important to me that the music reflect that – not just lyrically, but how it wallops you over the head. It should convey that same spirit of revolt, upheaval, and absurdity.”
The album’s title – meaning to proceed counterclockwise – emerged from the buoyant, surging opener “Walk in Circles,” which throws down the gauntlet on the record’s frontline. “St. Augustine said the wicked walk in circles,” muses Phillips, “and I thought, I have no problem with that. Sign me up with the witches then, if that means moving in step with nature – but let’s not go backwards.”
From there commences a rogue’s gallery of charlatans, tyrants, and seers; a travelogue of manipulations, mannerisms, and misdeeds. “The Wilderness” examines our hair-trigger default to tribal divisions – that fatal tendency within us to cast out the other, making them the target of our fear and derision. Crowds also play a part in the satirical “Unruly Mobs,” in which Marie Antoinette condescendingly looks down upon the rabble proletariat, her playful disdain blinding her to the imminent tumult surrounding her. Phillips assumes the title role on “King of Catastrophe.” Choking back anxiety while thumbing the pages of history, he sings “It’s not as though we’re helpless and it has to be,” he sings. “They left a couple notes behind – they built a wall in Germany.” He describes the rollicking “Miss Betsy” as “a parlor song about the horrors of child labor. The character is essentially a wicked stepmother, a cruel headmistress – with just a hint of Mrs. Robinson tossed in for melodic pleasure.”
Phillips’s explorations reach a fever pitch on the terse, driving “Scared Stiff.” “I wrote that so quickly,” he recalls. “One sitting, in a sweat, thinking about intimidation, people feeling up against a wall.” Humor pervades, as the song nicked its title from a vintage Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin horror/comedy.
By turns sardonic, provocative, and illuminating, Widdershins delivers its poetic truths in Phillips’s peerless melodic sensibilities, relayed via vocal performances that balance intensity and vulnerability. Consistent with his many albums, Phillips presides over the production of the album. “By the time it’s done, I will have walked every inch of the album,” he says, “surveyed every alcove, crawled up in the attic. I approach being my own producer with the seriousness of a builder – just as I would if I were producing someone else.” Basic tracks were recorded over four days with engineer Mike Stankiewicz at Sound Emporium in Nashville. “He was so fast. We flew through songs and Mike never missed a beat or a button. I took it all home, added a few more brush strokes, but I knew we had something special when I left Sound Emporium.”
While this is the second album recorded with the Roe/Price rhythm section, it marks the first collaboration between producer Phillips and Widdershins mixer Tucker Martine (case/lang/veirs, My Morning Jacket, Bill Frisell, the Decemberists, Punch Brothers, etc.) “I’ve wanted to work with Tucker for a long time,” says Phillips. “It was clear that we spoke the same language and had comparable sensibilities.” For instance, when starting work on the backhanded salute “Totally You Gunslinger,” Phillips suggested they aim for a mix that combined Roy Orbison with The Smiths. “Somehow that made as much sense to him as it did to me.”
Grant-Lee Phillips’s gifts for reconciling classic touchstones with an adventurous sensibility has distinguished his work since he first emerged as the frontman of the acclaimed trio Grant Lee Buffalo in the early ‘90s. At once cinematic in scope and disarmingly intimate, the band’s music set the table for a varied, captivating solo career that embraced electronic soundscapes (Mobilize, 2001), reimagined country-rock (Virginia Creeper, 2004), faced fatherhood (Little Moon, 2009), delved into his own native American heritage (Walking in the Green Corn, 2012), and reflected upon his own life-changing move from Los Angeles to Nashville (The Narrows, 2016). Whether fronting a band or performing solo, he is a riveting live performer – which many discovered through his role as the town troubadour on the cult television hit The Gilmore Girls (both in its original run and the 2016 continuation).
Phillips sees in Widdershins a connection to his earliest work with Grant Lee Buffalo. “That was also a time of intense social anxiety. The Gulf War, the LA riots – everything became cranked up. Then a few years later there was the earthquake we lived through, which also made for a time of uneasiness. I was in a heightened state when I wrote that stuff – as I am now.”
As the past and present converge and the journey of Grant-Lee Phillips continues, his craftsmanship continues to blossom. In times of tumult, he awakens comfort and hope by shining light into darker corners. “I hope to express my faith in people, my faith in the good ideas we’re capable of, and that regardless of what opposition we face, the fact that we can surmount these things,” he concludes. “We can stare them down, laugh at them, belittle them, and drive the darkness back into a hole. Music is a way of kicking some of these giants out at the knees – along with a bit of gallows humor: All the noose that’s fit to print…”
FRETS CREATIVE 