SurfSide 61 is a celebration of the golden age of instrumental guitar music.
Surf Music, as it was called in the USA, originated in Southern California in the early 60s along with the booming surfing craze.
In The UK a similar sound was happening led by The Shadows, who were hugely successful across the world with no less than 5 number one hits between 1960 and ’63.
Stephen Housden formed SurfSide61 to present authentic versions of the music that inspired him and a generation of guitarists.
Stephen toured the world for many years as a member of Little River Band. He has also has played along side many music greats including; Glen Frey, Christopher Cross, Dr. John, Warren Zevon, John Entwistle (The Who) and Albert Lee.
SurfSide 61: Stephen Housden; guitar, Dónal O’Sullivan; guitar, George Hart; bass guitar and Brian O’Higgins; drums.
Growing up in Clonakilty you are surrounded by music.
Eoin grew up with people who were genuinely passionate about music and that has always stayed with him. His older brother, uncles, and aunts would show him a variety of music from all different genres and eras, allowing him to appreciate music holistically.
He says that this holistic approach to music has been one of the major influences on his song writing. Another major influence was the discovery of his favourite band, The Doors, and other 1960s psychedelic bands like Jefferson Airplane and Love. Jim Morrison’s song writing showed him, more than anyone else had before, that lyrics can be a form of poetry. This idea blossomed with his growing interest with rap albums, especially concept albums that had particular themes. He was blown away by certain rappers ability to speak of situations in life completely alien to his own, yet was, because of their words, able to understand and empathise with them.
After 4 years of wishing, Eoin is finally set to release his debut EP ‘Songs from my Windowsill’. He has described it as a series of introspections, documenting a 3 year period of change both musically and mentally in his life.
The EP seeks to combine two genres, which heavily influence Eoin’s music, folk and the psychedelic sounds of the 60s. He says that this era of music gave him a lot of confidence in writing his lyrics as he felt like he didn’t have to hold back on the subject matter or his opinions.
The Lovely Eggs are an underground surreal-psych punk rock duo from northern England.
They have a fierce ethos that music should have no rules.
For Holly and David being in a band is a way of life. True to this, they live the way they play. Fiercely, constantly in search of the good times.
With 8/10 thumbs up from the NME and much support from BBC 6 Music and Radio One the band continues to sell out gigs across the UK without the help of management, booking agent or record label support.
With SIX BBC 6 music sessions under their belt, as well as sessions for Radio One and XFM, The Lovely Eggs have enjoyed huge support from BBC 6 Music. Marc Riley declared their last two singles “Goofin’ Around (in Lancashire)” and “Drug Braggin'” his official top tracks of 2015 and 2016, with the band also attracting airplay from DJs Steve Lamacq, Lauren Laverne, Chris Hawkins, Gideon Coe, Shaun Keavney, Radcliffe and Maconie and Jarvis Cocker.
Their songs have been produced by Gruff Rhys (Super Furry Animals), remixed by Tjinder Singh (Cornershop) and sampled by Zane Lowe for Scroobius Pip. With releases in the UK, Europe, USA and Japan, The Lovely Eggs have played hundreds of gigs around the UK, USA and Europe.
With observational and often surreal lyrics about life The Lovely Eggs have a powerful stripped down sound: one vintage guitar amp, one Big Muff distortion pedal, a guitar and a drum kit.
They have produced four albums. The latest “This Is Our Nowhere” was self-recorded in an abandoned factory in their home town of Lancaster. It’s title sums up their celebration and love of a scene which doesn’t exist in the eyes of the manufactured mainstream. Ironically the record received 8/10 in the NME and received massive support from DJs across the board at BBC 6 Music as well as sell out tours of the UK.
Their 5th album has been produced and mixed by Dave Fridmann (Flaming Lips, Mercury Rev, Mogwai, MGMT, Tame Impala) at his studio in upstate New York. It is due to be released in February 2018.
The Lovely Eggs are one of the most exciting, innovative and genuine bands on the British Underground Music Scene. Welcome to their world.
THINGS PEOPLE SAID:
“One of the country’s most beloved underground bands”– NME
“You won’t hear another band like this anywhere between now and the the end of the millenium. The Lovely Eggs are just brilliant!”– Huw Stephens, Radio One
There is a fearless quality to the music of Christopher Paul Stelling. A voice that sounds both old and young, an effortless yet intricate finger-picking guitar style and lyrics that are both dramatic, and intensely confessional. It’s a sound that channels the restless spirit of a young man who left home to travel the country, formed by endless nights alone on stage with a guitar, playing to packed houses, other times to nearly empty rooms. Stelling estimates that he’s played over four hundred shows in just the past three years. It places him within a longstanding tradition that serves to nurture ones character and art.
Amidst the euphoria of playing in bars, cafes, theaters, festivals, under bridges and in living rooms, were late night conversations with friends, new and old, about the undercurrents of tension and change in their countries and concerns about what was happening back in his own. And so Christopher Paul Stelling wrote songs about it all. Darkly beautiful and powerful songs which became the album “Itinerant Arias” on Anti Records.
Unlike previous records, the new album finds Stelling backed by a band, electrified if you will. It is a record inspired by movement and travel. With a little more than a week before returning to the road, he retreated to a friend’s Connecticut cabin out in the woods with
some musician friends. They slept there, ate there and didn’t leave for the next eight days, recording the haunting and powerful record.
PRESS:
“The richly layered storytelling of John Prine, the croon-to-howl hybrid vocal of Tom Waits and Glen Hansard, and an intricately finger-picked guitar style that lands somewhere between Lead Belly and Lindsey Buckingham” – 10 new country artists you need to know – Rolling Stone, May 2017
“The musical storytelling of Christopher Paul Stelling embodies a long road full of lush folkloric, mythological and religious imagery.” — WNYC
“False Cities finds Stelling owning his particular pulpit with the strength of a dozen Southern Baptist preachers.” – SPIN
“heart-plucking stylings of an acoustic troubadour” – New York Magazine
“Every song on his debut album Songs of Praise and cooks with both down-home comfort and avant-garde brio, Stelling building earthy folk troubadour stories over a fluster of wild arpeggios.” – Village Voice
“The way this man delivers his songs, it’s not hard to imagine him actually “tap-dancing down the edge of this here knife,” as he sings at one point from within a small tornado of acoustic guitar and fiddle.” – SPIN
“…Stelling has put together an album that will hopefully draw people to live performances where they can see what a real self-contained, modern-day troubadour looks and sounds like. Songs of Praise and Scorn is a fine way to introduce someone who should be a voice to be reckoned with in the years to come.” – American Songwriter
“I’m an architect. But it’s not my profession. I live making music. At times, I design things… and it’s a welcome release. But music is what I do.”
Talos is Eoin French. A musician from Cork, Ireland, and also an architect. But first and foremost, a musician. That’s why he’s surrendered certain things. That’s what drove him to an attic in Dublin; further afield to Iceland and finally, to splendid semi-isolation in the expanse of West Cork. The end result: a private world that becomes public, and a debut album called ‘Wild Alee’, released on April 21.
Produced and mixed by Talos and Ross Dowling over the course of 18 months, the 13-track record – released on Feel Good Lost – includes new single the New Music Friday-approved ‘Contra’, recent single ‘Odyssey’ plus earlier cuts ‘Your Love Is an Island’ and his debut release, ‘Tethered Bones’. ‘Wild Alee’ is a personal, emotive and ambitious electronic pop record; one that both looks to the past and signposts to the future.
Since debuting in December 2014 with ‘Tethered Bones’, Talos has picked up nods from the likes of Fader, New York Times, Wonderland, BBC Radio 1, The Line of Best Fit, Nialler9 and more, and racked up over 5 million streams on Spotify. Live, Talos expands out to a five-piece, and with appearances at Electric Picnic, Eurosonic, Other Voices, Longitude and more under their belts, the band have just completed a sold-out debut album tour in their native Ireland, with further dates to follow.
PRESS:
‘A spectacularly assured debut deserving of a wide audience’ 4/5 Album of the Week The Irish Times
‘A breathtaking, emotionally intelligent alt-folk debut.’ 4/5 PressPlayOK
‘The biggest surprise is just how catchy the entire thing is, with melodies that rise like mist rising from a forest at dawn. An outstanding debut.’ 4/5 Irish Examiner
SLIM CESSNA’S AUTO CLUB
The Commandments According to SCAC
Biography
In September 2016, Slim Cessna’s Auto Club is releasing its new album The Commandments According to SCAC. It has been twenty-four years since Slim Cessna parted ways with The Denver Gentlemen, that grand progenitor of the peculiar strain of Gothic Americana unique to the Mile High City, to form Slim Cessna’s Auto Club with a group of talented peers.
Many bands with a long and successful run like that would stick close to its roots. But rather than rest on well-earned laurels, the Auto Club challenged itself to break with well-worn modes of operating for the new record. Wallace Stenger may have captured the spirit of the west in his 1971 novel Angle of Repose. Jim Thompson surely exposed the lurid underbelly of the Western experience. Cormac McCarthy definitely evoked the conflicted, tortured spirit of small town life on the frontier. William Faulkner and Flannery O’Connor informed all of them with a humor and soulfulness. It is that literary tradition that imbues the harrowing and celebratory sound and riveting stories of Slim Cessna’s Auto Club. And for a full twenty years it was largely in that realm of art that the Auto Club reveled and garnered a loyal cult following well beyond the boundaries of The Queen City of the Plains.
The Commandments According to SCAC, will be the first full length album of original material released on the Auto Club’s own imprint, SCACUNINCORPORATED.
The title evokes the themes of cosmic punishment and redemption that have served the band’s songwriting engine so well in the past. But this set of songs sounds more hopeful and expansive, a quality that was always there but this time out the brighter sides of the songwriting are emphasized. Hints of this saw early full-flown expression on 2008’s Cipher and Unentitled from 2011.
With The Commandments, however, the Auto Club seems to step forward into the promise of its own possibilities. It remains capable of the heady darkness and celebratory intensity with which it made its name.
Now that charmingly dusky and spare sound breathes with a color and delicacy of feeling that perhaps sat in the background in times past. Maybe it’s partly due to the greater creative contributions from longtime collaborator Rebecca Vera and The Peeler or the inclusion of upright bass player Ian O’ Dougherty. But the core of the band’s songwriting and sound is anchored firmly in the vision of Slim, Munly Munly and Lord Dwight Pentacost.
Whatever the true source of this transformation, The Commandments According to SCAC sounds like a band marshalling its creative inspiration to mark out a new chapter of its existence. When you get to see the Auto Club tour following the album’s release, you’ll get to see an already mighty band reinvigorated by this new spirit as well as by the fire that has long burned in its collective belly.
Lankum are a four-piece traditional folk group from Dublin, Ireland, who combine distinctive four-part vocal harmonies with arrangements of uilleann pipes, concertina, Russian accordion, fiddle and guitar. Their repertoire spans humorous Dublin music-hall ditties and street-songs, classic ballads from the Traveller tradition, traditional Irish and American dance tunes, and their own original material.
Having spent the last number of years performing as ‘Lynched’, the band decided that they would no longer continue with the name due to the unavoidable implications that it has in regards to acts of racist violence. Their new name comes from the ballad ‘False Lankum’, as sung by the Irish Traveller John Reilly Jr.
The band was originally formed as an experimental-psychedelic-folk-punk-duo by brothers Ian and Daragh Lynch in the early 2,000’s, and has since progressed through a number of incarnations.
As their interest in traditional music and song grew, the brothers began to attend sessions around Dublin, where they formed friendships with Cormac Mac Diarmada and Radie Peat, amongst a whole host of impressive young musicians. When Ian began work in the Irish Traditional Music Archive, after completing a folklore masters, he had the rare opportunity to record in the ITMA studio with friend, colleague and in-house technician Danny Diamond, whenever a spare evening presented itself, so he and Daragh asked Cormac and Radie to provide some backing vocals and instrumentation on “one or two songs”.
After some preliminary practice sessions it became obvious to all involved that something much more interesting was happening, and the group quickly became a dedicated four-piece, gaining experience and confidence as they played together at the Grand Folk Club gigs, which they hosted monthly. They also applied around this time for the Arts Council’s 2013 Deis Recording Award, for which they were fortuitously approved.
‘Cold Old Fire’ was recorded by Danny in ITMA in August of 2013, and although fundamentally an album of traditional Irish song, heavily influenced by Irish legends such as Frank Harte, Planxty and The Dubliners, subtle traces of the group’s collective influences can be detected, from American old-timey music, ambient techno and psychedelic folk, to black metal, punk and rock n’ roll.
The album was released in May of 2014 and has since seen them appear on Later with Jools Holland and playing some of the world’s most renowned music festivals, including Cambridge, Sidmouth, Edmonton and Electric Picnic as well as being nominated for three awards at the 2016 BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards and featured on covers of notable music magazines such as fRoots and The Thin Air.
They have a number of gigs and festivals already booked around Ireland, the UK, Europe and North Africa for the coming year, as they continue working under the name Lankum.
PRAISE
‘They do mark a turning point in folk… that authentic voice of the streets is back in a big way.’ Mark Radcliffe
‘Anarchic, yet connected, rootsy and gutsy… I love their music, it is just so damn good!’ Mike Harding
‘The most convincing folk band to come out of Ireland in years.’ ★★★★★ The Guardian
‘The most exciting album of traditional Irish song in decades.’ TradConnect
‘A sure contender for any Irish album of the year lists.’ Songlines
‘A passionate, utterly engrossing album.’ fRoots
Paula Gómez is a singer-songwriter originally from Spain but based in West Cork (Ireland) for the last four years.
Her compositions were noted as highly original and their lyrical imagery ties together a strong melodic sensibility with the wide range of her vocal, it is this style combined with powerful delivery that is attracting attention among audiences worldwide, including Mary Black, Bill Shanley, Stephen Housden and others.
After several EP and promo releases, Paula released her first complete album in 2013, ‘Love & Hate’. It recorded at Cauldron Studios, Dublin. Produced by Bill Shanley (Mary Black, Ray Davies), Andrew Holdworth, bassist Rob Malone (David Gray), drummer Paul Brennan (Waterboys) and Liam Bradley (Van Morrison). Also featuring Little River Band guitarist Stephen Housden.
Paula Gómez has collaborated with many well known musicians. Her last single released is a poem by Irish Poet Laureate Paula Meehan, music by Tim Goulding and mastered by Brian Masterson. It’s called ‘Rivermouth’ and it was released in December 2014.
Kees van der Poel was born in Hilversum in 1947. At early age his family lived in Texas USA. After returning to the Netherlands, Kees found the guitar the best instrument for the music he loved. Classical lessons around the age of 10 soon became boring and Kees played in rockbands covering Shadows and Rolling Stones.
A major shift came when Pete
Seeger on his tour in 1964 played at Kees´ high school. Acoustic 12-string, what a sound! After studying 12-string and 6-string fingerstyle guitar, Leadbelly, Blind Blake, Doc Watson, John Hurt, and medicine in Utrecht in the early 1970’s, Kees toured as a solo artist and later joined the group Wargaren. Inspired by Martin Carthy, he turned to Dutch traditional folk music and studied with Rob Smaling at the Meertens Institute in Amsterdam. This became the basis for the later legendary Dutch folk group Wolverlei.
Dutch traditional music was also the reason to study diatonic harmonica with Frans Tromp and Carel Kraayenhof. In 2007 Carel asked Kees to join him with his guitar for a concert at Concertgebouw Amsterdam.
So Kees retired from medicine and presently takes a solid daily dose of guitar.
To suggest that Steve Poltz isn’t normal is about as safe a statement as one could make. You would basically require the powers of the Hubble space telescope to locate Steve Poltz from any region of normalcy.
For music fans on both sides of the equator, this is a very good thing.
Born among the hearty seafaring folk of Canada’s Halifax, Nova Scotia, Poltz has lived most of his life in Southern California, where the sun treated his rocky Canadian DNA like clothes in a dryer. Naturally a spectrum of cultural and emotional tensions arose and he eventually sought refuge in the art of songwriting, where he tapped into an unforgettable and often horrifying depth of unhinged genius.
Among the music cognoscenti, Steve Poltz is regarded as one of the most talented and prolific songwriters of our time. His songs have been among the longest running ever on the Billboard Top 100 and they regularly appear in movie soundtracks, television shows, and even the odd commercial. His touring schedule is ferocious, ping ponging between continents with enough frequency to earn him manic followings in scores of different accents and languages.
Any musician who has traveled as extensively as Poltz will have their share of colorful road stories, but Poltz’ adventures read like a bucket list. Starting out auspiciously, Poltz recalls meeting Elvis Presley at a small airport and beaming proudly as The King hugged his sister for an inordinately long time. Growing up in Palm Springs, California, he trick-or-treated at Liberace’s house and was Bob Hope’s favorite altar boy. In an alcohol-soaked haze, he infamously accosted David Cassidy, who had summoned him to Las Vegas to write a hit song for the aging Tiger Beat cover boy.
His rich and colorful legacy is the stuff of legend, but it is his distinctive style of songwriting that has caused the world to offer up its stages, clubs, and alleys. Poltz’ sound is entirely unique- from his inhuman fingerstyle techniques to the inimitable melodies that roll from his guitar like cool waterfalls, you know a Poltz song as soon as you hear it. To see Steve to perform live is one of the most entertaining shows a human could ever see. Frenzied, aggressive, hilarious, and heartbreakingly sincere, his live performances have become bona fide events, with sub-cultures popping up all over the globe to entice him to come and tour. As relentless as he is in concert, he is also the guy who famously co-wrote the timeless ballad “You Were Meant For Me” with platinum-selling songwriter Jewel. Of course, because we’re talking about Steve Poltz, it should surprise no one to learn that the song was written on a lazy Mexican beach, where Poltz and Jewel were soon snapped up and sequestered by Mexican Federales and required to witness and eventually assist in a large marijuana bust on the beach. Don’t believe it? See for yourself in the pictures on his web site.
Poltz, an ex high school wrestler (98 pound class), is also an obsessive baseball fan, a die-hard yoga practitioner, a hopeless romantic, a smart-ass philosopher and a child-like adventurer with an absurdist’s view of the planet and all of its curious life forms.
Music fans have adored him since he first fronted the hallowed punk-folk legends, The Rugburns, whose live shows earned the band a following that is best described somewhere between the terms “cult” and “crazed substance-abusing fanatics.” Once touring over 300 days a year, the Rugburns occasionally reunite for wildly popular sold-out shows.
Poltz’ solo body of work is an impressive collection of ballads, rockers and uniquely melodic acoustic numbers that reflect his incomparable style of alternate tunings and savage finger picking techniques. Guitar geeks fall prostrate at his feet trying vainly to learn how to play his stunningly gorgeous and deceptively complex songs. To see him play guitar is a visual feast so frenetic that close proximity to his playing exposes one to risk of seizure.
His live shows have captivated audiences far and wide with a mix of singing, storytelling, shredding, and the occasional spoken word rants which have been known to incite riots. He can take an audience from laughter to tears and back again in the space of the same song. Steve Poltz transcends the word “talented.” He is unforgettable in all the right ways.