BBC Folk Award winner Sam Carter plays the Black Swan Folk Club, Peasholme Green, York, tonight on his Home Waters spring tour.
Rutland-born, narrative-driven songwriter Carter has been called the “finest English-style fingerpicking guitarist of his generation” by fellow folkie Jon Boden.
Over 15 years, he has toured the world, appeared on Later…with Jools Holland in 2012 and recorded and performed with folk luminaries Richard Thompson, Eliza Carthy, Martin Simpson and Nancy Kerr.
Now based in Sheffield, Carter released Home Waters on his own Captain Records label in May 2020, having earlier made the albums How The City Sings (2016), The No Testament (2012) and Keepsakes (2009) and two EPs, Live At The Union Chapel and his 2008 debut, Here In The Ground.
When Carter envisioned Home Waters as “a search for a sense of belonging and stability in unfamiliar territory”, he could not have known how prescient that would turn out to be.
Recorded pre-pandemic in a converted church in rural Northumberland by producer and multi-instrumentalist Ian Stephenson, Carter’s live acoustic guitar and vocals sit at the heart of the recordings.
Many of his performances were left unadorned, while Stephenson’s cinematic string arrangements created rich emotional landscapes on other numbers.
Carter embarked on the first leg of the Home Waters tour last autumn, accompanied by the specially assembled Home Waters String Quartet. The tour coincided with the release of the album Home Waters Live and the premiere of Carter’s accompanying lockdown concert film, Home Waters In Concert. For the tour’s spring second leg, he is in solo mode.
Doors open tonight (21/4/2022) at 7.45pm; tickets cost £12.10 on 01904 658338 or on the door.