Folk Awards Coverage and Pre-Party
January 30, 2009
According to Music Week Seth will be kicking off proceedings for this year’s BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards ceremony in London on 2 February. Seth is nominated for Best Live Act.
Radcliffe and Marconie will be backstage at the awards for their Monday night show on Radio 2 from 8pm – 10pm (Monday 2 February). Highlights will be on Mike Harding’s weekly folk and acoustic show, also on Radio 2, on Weds 4 February from 7pm.
Last year there were also videos of some of the live performances and interviews with the winners on the dedicated BBC Folk Awards website.
Proper Music Pre-Party
Proper Music are holding a Folk Awards pre-party at Foyles bookshop in Charing Cross Road, London, on Mon 2nd Feb from 1-4pm. If you’re in London, drop in for general folk goodness, sessions and live performances from some of the nominees. Details on the Proper Blog and the event’s Facebook page.
Related artists news
January 29, 2009
Quick round up of news of projects from Seth’s extended family, band members and former support acts. If I’ve missed anything or anyone out, leave a comment.
Sister-in-law Cara Dillon has a new album out, Hill of Thieves, which features Seth on vocals, tenor guitar and fiddle on the track ‘Spencer the Rover’.
More in the Hill of Thieves post ».
Long-standing bassist Ben Nicholls has a new single out, ‘Smart ones almost always lose’, with his one-man-band Dennis Hopper Choppers. You can catch the track on MySpace and hear Ben live in session on Q Radio TODAY Thursday, 29 Jan, from 7pm.
DHC website | MySpace.
Former percussionist Cormac Byrne’s Uiscedwr Big Band recorded their first live album, Naked and Dangerous, at the Banbury Folk Festival in late 2008. Due out officially sometime soon you can get your hands on a pre-release copy via the Uiscedwr website.
Of the support acts, Baskery, hugely popular on 2008’s Autum tour, have their first album out Fall Among Thieves. They are touring the UK until Feb 14th and you can catch a video of their performance at the 2009 Celtic Connections festival on the BBC website.
Baskery website | MySpace
Ruarri Joseph appeared on Dermot O’Leary’s radio show the other week and you can listen to the session via Ruarri’s website. He has a handful of gigs coming up including the launch of his first second album at the Princess Pavillions in Falmouth on Feb 6th and The Fly in London on Feb 9th. The album, Both Sides of the Coin, is officially released on 2nd March 2009.
Ruarri’s website | MySpace
Teddy Thompson is finishing off his headlining UK tour which runs until 12 Feb.
Teddy Thompson website | MySpace
(How come everyone’s touring except Seth? – ed)
Carus Thompson (no relation) will be over in Europe in February playing a number of dates in Germany, as well as a couple in Austria and Denmark, before hitting a bunch of smaller UK venues in March (see what I mean?). The tour coincides with the release of his new solo studio album, Creature of Habit.
Carus website | MySpace
Finally drummer Andy Tween, who missed a number of dates on the Autumn 08 tour due to a damaged wrist, is still not fully recovered and has be told to hold off the drumming for a good few months yet. Simon Lea, who stood in for Andy on the Autumn tour, was on drumming duty again at the Brook in Southampton on Jan 18th.
If I’ve missed anything or anyone out, leave a comment.
Seth raises over £3,000 for the Lifeboats
January 26, 2009
Seth and his fans raised over £3,000 for the Lifeboats (RNLI) in 2008. Ticket sales and collections at the Poor Man’s Heaven album launch in Perranporth raised £1,827.28, with a further £1,403.73 raised at bucket collections at gigs on the Autumn Tour.
“I wanted to try to do something positive in launching the ‘Poor Man’s Heaven’ album, rather than just another gig – and raising money for the RNLI felt appropriate as the new album has such a strong coastal theme.”
The fundraising was part of the RNLI’s SOS Day, to be held on Fri 30 January 2009. A portion of profits from the single release of Solomon Browne will also be donated to the charity.
Full story: ‘Stunning Overall Support as Seth Lakeman supports RNLI’s SOS Day 2009′, RNLI Press Release, 4 Dec 2008 »
Seth Lakeman talks album.next with John Williamson
January 24, 2009
Catching up on some bits on pieces from December which I didn’t get round to posting at the time, here’s a really good, original interview which talks in some depth about the EMI experience, musical control and, most intriguingly, Seth’s thoughts on the direction for the next album.
Well worth a read, regardless of your obSethion level.
On Kitty Jay
“In many ways the style and sound had a lot to do with my own naivety at the time, but when I came upon something that was very rhythmic and riff driven, I knew that it was the sound I had been looking for.”
On signing for EMI, musical control and going mainstream (or not)
“EMI bought into the business and that took away a lot of the administrative and organisational burdens that we had … Of course, it is hard to let go of something that you feel is your baby – but once you reach a certain level it becomes too big to physically retain control every aspect of what you do. So the compromise, if there was any, that I made was to make sure I retained complete control over the music while in most other areas I am kind of flowing as I go.”
…
“What I do is quite unique, which makes it quite difficult for people to interfere … the music is always going to have a rhythmic, quirky element which is always a bit alien to being massively popular.”
And finally, teasing hints about the direction for the next album:
Listening to him describe his music and its direction highlights the crossroads at which his career stands. On the one hand he has successfully defined a sound that he is happy to continue to work within, on the other, he talks of expanding the scope of it by engaging a third party producer…
There are contradictions too: at various points he suggests both that he would like to go back to the naïve approach of ‘Kitty Jay,’ at others he suggests that album number five may be the time to engage a producer of some reputation.
“I’d love to work with someone like Tchad Blake or Brad Jones, maybe even someone like John Leckie, who would probably strip everything right back. It would be great to work with a real guru like that at some stage. I think so far the records have moved from a very naïve sound to one that is much closer to the live sound, maybe there is another step to take.”
Other interviews, however, have suggested the most likely next release will be a live album.
“We are definitely going to do a live record next year,” says Lakeman. “People have been calling out for one for a number of years.” – Interview with Brighton Argus, 14 Nov 2008
So don’t go holding your breadth for a new studio release just yet!
Full Interview: ‘Seth Lakeman’, interview for The Herald by John Williamson, 8 Dec 2008 »
Seth ’steals the show’ at Midem 2009
January 23, 2009
“Seth Lakeman nearly stole the show from Jamie Cullum at the “British at Midem” concert with a rousing set, proving that his violin-driven folk can translate internationally.” – ‘The future of the music industry’, The Independent, Fri 23 Jan 2009
Midem is the annual gathering of the international music industry in Cannes France. Seth performed alongside General Fiasco, Patrick Wolf, and Jamie Cullum on Monday night.
Local Plymouth paper profiles Seth’s tour manager since 2005, Adam Maughan, who has just started up his own tour management company, Think Yellow.
“There was a media frenzy about Seth [after the Mercury Music Prize in 2005], queues around the block at gigs – everything went mental. They needed help with merchandise and asked me to do it and after speaking to Dave [Farrow, Seth's Manager], I found myself at the Oxford Zodiac, on tour with them.”
“I remember thinking, ‘This is the most exciting thing that’s ever happened to me!’
…
When Seth signed a major-label deal with Relentless it was like “pushing the big red button”.
“We took on a sound engineer and crew, moved up from a Transit to a ’splitter’ (half-van, half-minibus) to double-decker Trathens tour bus with two lounges, bunks and a production office. By this point I was looking after everything, adopting the roles of travel agent, accountant, lawyer, dietician… and mother!”
…
“It’s incredibly stressful, but hugely rewarding, though it’s quite a thankless task, as nobody should know who the tour manager is – unless something’s gone wrong!”
Read the full interview: “Geologist who took rock on the road”, This is Plymouth, Fri 16 Jan 2009
Seth Lakeman duet on Cara Dillon’s Hill of Thieves
January 10, 2009
‘Spencer the Rover‘, from Cara Dillon’s forthcoming album Hill of Thieves, is a duet with brother-in-law Seth Lakeman. It’s available to listen to now on Cara’s MySpace page and is also included on the free covermount CD on this month’s WORD magazine.
Yes, I’m pretty sure that’s Seth’s tenor guitar (and fiddle) you can hear too.
Cara is married to middle Lakeman brother, Sam Lakeman. Sam is producer, musical director and pianist on Cara’s work. She was a member of Equation with Seth, Sean and Sam before the couple left in 1996 to pursue their own projects. Seth toured with Sam and Cara for a while after he too left Equation in 2001.
Discussing the track in a recent interview, Cara explained:
Sam and I were asked to do a version of the song back in 2001 for a charity album released in Ireland and we worked out the version with Seth who was on tour with us at the time. It became a firm favourite in our live repertoire but failed to make it to record as it never seemed to fit with the other material selected (until now). I’ve always loved the story and I think our version breathes a lot of life into a song that has been almost done to death.
Salut! Live ‘The Big Interview’, Jan 2009
As well as the duet with Seth, Hill of Thieves includes contributions from Sean Lakeman, and Seth Lakeman band fixture Ben Nicholls on double-bass.
Hill of Thieves is released on 26 January 2009.
Buy Hill of Thieves
CD from Amazon
Download from: Amazon | iTunes | 7Digital
Buy Spencer the Rover
Download from Amazon | iTunes | 7Digital
Cara Dillon links
Official website | MySpace
Video
Cara performing ‘Jimmy Mo Mhile Stor’ and ‘The Verdant Braes of Skreen’ from Hill of Thieves at this year’s Celtic Connections festival
‘Seth Lakeman: My Music’ showing on Sky Arts this weekend
January 9, 2009
Late notice this one (sorry) but you can catch repeats of the excellent ‘My Music’ documentary on Seth tonight (Fri 9th) at 7pm and tomorrow (Sat 10th) at 9am, 12 noon and 4pm on Sky Arts 1.
The hour-long programme was originally shown on Channel 5 last April. Definitely a “must see” if you have Sky.
A few more gig dates
January 1, 2009
A few more gig dates sneak in (some firmly in the ???? TBC category) including dates in Germany, the Chepstow Two Rivers festival in July, and a possible date with Tom McConville at the ‘Fiddles on Fire’ festival at the Sage Gateshead in April.
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