Leeds Brudenell Social Club Archives - Page 3 of 4

January 15, 2022January 25, 2022

More Things To Do in York and beyond, from floor-burning Kevin Clifton to Frankenstein. List No. 65 from The Press

*Kevin Clifton in Burn The Floor, returning to the Grand Opera House, York*

FEEL the heat, despite the chill, as Charles Hutchinson’s calendar starts to hot up like a burst of tango.

Return of the week: Kevin Clifton in Burn The Floor, Grand Opera House, York, January 21, 7.30pm

STRICTLY champ Kevin Clifton returns to York to lead an international ballroom dance company in the fiery, rebellious tango, waltz and rhumba show Burn The Floor.

“Kevin from Grimsby”, who left BBC1’s Strictly Come Dancing professional roster after seven seasons at the end of 2019, last scorched the Grand Opera House boards in May 2019.

“Burn The Floor is the show that ignited a spark in me and changed me forever as a performer,” he says. “Through Broadway, West End and touring all over the world, this show has ripped apart the rule book, revolutionised our genre and inspired and shaped me as the dancer I am today.” Box office: 0844 871 3024 or at atgtickets.com/york.

*Alfie Moore: Front-line copper-turned-comic. Picture: Tony Briggs*

Offbeat police procedural: Alfie Moore, Fair Cop Unleashed, Helmsley Arts Centre, today, 7.30pm

FAIR Cop Unleashed, Alfie Moore’s latest stand-up tour show, is based on a dramatic real-life incident from the cop-turned-comic’s police casebook.

Re-live the thrilling ups and downs of the night when a mysterious clown came to town and more than one life ended up in the balance, as recalled with insightful humour by the BBC Radio 4 presenter. Box office: 01439 771700 or helmsleyarts.co.uk.

*Teddy Thompson: Rearranged gigs in Pocklington and Leeds*

Heartbreaker of the week: Teddy Thompson, supported by Roseanne Reid, Pocklington Arts Centre, January 22, 8pm; Leeds Brudenell Social Club, January 23, 8pm

TEDDY Thompson, an Englishman in New York since his 20s, heads home to play his tour rearranged from last year, showcasing his 2020 album Heartbreaker Please.

Famously the son of songwriters Richard and Linda Thompson, he was influenced heavily by Buddy Holly, Chuck Berry, Elvis Presley and the Everly Brothers, rather than his family folk roots, claiming he listened only to early rock’n’roll and country until he was 16. Box office: Pocklington, 01759 301547 or pocklingtonartscentre.co.uk; Leeds, brudenellsocialclub.seetickets.com.

*Vintage performance: Pasadena Roof Orchestra, revelling in the music of the Twenties and Thirties*

Nostalgia on tap: Pasadena Roof Orchestra, York Theatre Royal, January 28, 7.30pm

LED by suave singer and band leader Duncan Galloway, the Pasadena Roof Orchestra invite you to “pack up your troubles, come on get happy, and experience an evening of superlative live music with more than a dash of wit and humour”.

For more than 50 years, they have put on top hat and tails to re-create the golden era of the 1920s and 1930s, performing the songs of Irving Berlin, Ray Noble, Cole Porter and their contemporaries, complemented by the hot jazz of Fletcher Henderson and Duke Ellington. Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.

*One of York artist Ian Cameron’s works on show at Helmsley Arts Centre*

Never too late to start: Ian Cameron exhibition, Helmsley Arts Centre, until February 25

IAN Cameron became interested in art “quite late in life”, aged 50 in 2003, when he enrolled for an GCSE evening class. Art and design foundation course studies at York Art College ensued, since when he has taken part eight times in York Open Studios.

In his garden studio, he starts his paintings by doing a wax crayon rubbing on a manhole cover, then covering the rubbing with a vibrant watercolour wash called Brusho that causes a wax-resist result. “On to that I draw my image with a dip pen and Indian ink,” he says. “I embellish the artwork with collage and watercolours.”

*Theatre Of The Macabre’s artwork for their Frankenstein premiere at Theatre@41, Monkgate*

The horror, the horror: Theatre Of The Macabre in Frankenstein, Theatre@41, Monkgate, York, February 2 to 5, 7.30pm plus 2.30pm Saturday matinee

“IF you think you know everything about this story then come along and be pleasantly surprised about how little you really know,” say Theatre Of The Macabre, introducing the twisted fantasies and grotesque dreamscapes of their adaptation of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.

“Join us as we discover his innermost fears and misgivings which haunt his troubled mind and how his ungodly experiments defied the Laws of Nature.”

What dreadful secret does he keep hidden? Who is the mysterious stranger he can only refer to as “It”. All will be revealed in this disturbing premiere. Box office: tickets.41monkgate.co.uk.

*My Darling Clementine: Delving into Costello country in Selby*

Off to the country: My Darling Clementine, Selby Town Hall, February 3, 8pm

MY Darling Clementine, a labour of love for spouses Michael Weston King and Lou Dalgleish, began as a homage to the Sixties and Seventies’ country duets of George Jones & Tammy Wynette and Johnny Cash & June Carter Cash.

Their latest album, 2020’s Country Darkness, reinterpreted Elvis Costello’s country songs in a collaboration with Steve Nieve, Costello’s stalwart keyboardist in The Attractions and The Imposters. Box office for their first gig of 2022: 01757 708449 or selbytownhall.co.uk.

*What’s the Buzz? Buzzard Buzzard Buzzard can be spotted flying high in Leeds in April*

Bird song: Buzzard Buzzard Buzzard, Leeds Brudenell Social Club, April 23

BUZZARD Buzzard Buzzard, “the most exciting new band to break out of Wales”, promote their February 25 debut album in Leeds on the closing night of their 18-date spring tour.

The Cardiff indie glam rockers’ front man, Tom Rees, says: “Backhand Deals is a practice in subverting the ideology of rock music as something that needs to be ‘brought back from the dead’.

“Rock should be about enjoying yourself honestly, whether that’s washing the dishes, sweeping the yard, or complaining about whoever got elected.” Box office: brudenellsocialclub.co.uk.

November 17, 2021November 17, 2021

Off in March, This Is The Kit’s gig promoting Off Off On is on – on Friday – at The Citadel

THIS Is The Kit, Kate Stables’ experimental folk quartet, return to York on Friday for a special show at The Citadel, the former Salvation Army HQ in Gillygate, York.

Rearranged from March by promoters by Please Please You, The Crescent and Brudenell Presents, this will be a standing gig with balcony seating above at the home of the York City Church .

At the heart of the gig will be This Is The Kit’s fifth album, October 2020’s Off Off On, and its June offshoot of offcuts, the seven-track Off Off Oddities EP.

For her follow-up to 2017’s Moonshine Freeze, Stables decided to work with producer Josh Kaufman, New York musician, Hold Steady collaborator and member of Bonny Light Horseman and Muzz. Stables had first met him when working with Anaïs Mitchell on a cover of Osibisa’s Woyaya, their paths later crossing at the People residencies in Berlin and Brooklyn.

“We were on the same page about a lot of musical ideas, as well as doing things I wouldn’t do musically,” says Kate. “It was a lovely mixture of ‘you’re exactly in my brain and exactly at the opposite end of my brain’.”

The artwork for This Is The Kit’s fifth album, Off Off On, released in October 2020

After the band – completed by Rozi Plain, bass/vocals, Neil Smith, guitar, Jesse D Vernon, guitar/keyboards, Jamie Whitby-Coles, drum/vox – reunited for cold-water rehearsals in Wales, they headed to Wiltshire’s Real World Studios, finishing just in time for everyone to head home for lockdown.

Kate explains the meaning behind the album’s stand-out song, This Is What You Did. “It’s a bit of a panic attack song. The negative voices of other people that are your own voice. Or are they? Hard to say when you’re in this kind of a place. How to get out of this place? Needing to get outside more,” she says.

“Cosmically topical, what with these recent days of being inside all the time. Knowing the things, you should do because they’re good for you and make you feel better but for some reason you still stay inside and fester in your own self-doubt and regret and self-loathing. Fun times!

“We all get into negative mind loops sometimes. Especially when you’re not getting the fresh air and outside time you need to stay healthy.”

Since 2008’s debut, Krulle Bol, This Is the Kit have unpicked emotional knots and woven intriguing stories, with Off Off On being a beautifully clear distillation of Stables’ song-writing gifts. By the end of 2018, This Is The Kit had finished touring Moonshine Freeze, but Stables’ natural impulse to start the next record was diverted when she was invited to join The National on tour in a continuation of the role she took on the Cincinnati band’s album I Am Easy To Find.

“I think it did me loads of good,” says Kate. “It was so brilliant when I was writing to be away from my songs and the responsibility of overseeing a band or a project – just to forget about that for a while and be a minion in someone else’s band was brilliant. I loved it. I think it really helped my writing and my getting through whatever I needed to get through.”

Off Off On ensued, followed this summer by Off Off Oddities, an EP on Rough Trade made up of Recommencer, featuring Mina Tindle; Was Magician (Live at L’Épicerie Moderne); Found Out (Horns Version); Coming To Get You Nowhere (Joe’s Garage Version) Keep Going (Desert Island Version); Slider (Lorenzo Saxophone Dub) and a cover of New York City supergroup Muzz’s Bad Feeling.

“In the making of an album, there are inevitably bits and bobs that don’t get used,” says Kate. “And sometimes you feel like sharing them with folks to kind of show a bit the story and geology and important people who played a part in the album’s making and releasing.”

Will even newer material feature in Friday’s concert? Wait and see.

This Is The Kit play The Citadel, York on Friday, supported by Nuala Honan and Pavey Ark; doors, 7pm. Box office: brudenellsocialclub.seetickets.com.

NEW Kind Of Neighbourhood, a new festival curated by and featuring This Is The Kit at Leeds Brudenell Social Club on Sunday, has sold out. Doors open at 3pm for a bill of The Brackish, The Magic Lantern, Masi Masi, Nuala Honan, Rachael Dadd, Rozi Plain, Yusuf Yellow and headliners This Is The Kit.

October 30, 2021October 30, 2021

REVIEW: Paul Rhodes’s verdict on Courtney Marie Andrews, Leeds Brudenell Social Club, 28/10/2021

*Courtney Marie Andrews performing under the Leeds Brudenell Social Club glitterball on Thursday night. Picture: Paul Rhodes*

IN a more just world, one of Courtney Marie Andrews’ songs would always be playing on a country radio station or what passes for a digital jukebox. Blessed with a beautiful, powerful voice and a bent for aching tunes, her Grammy award nomination for Old Flowers, her 2020 album, feels both just deserts and a career kick-starter.

While crossover success may still be ahead of her, she charmed the sold-out crowd with a solo set. The Arizona native has a soft spot for Leeds, even obliging a pushy celebrant with a few bars of Happy Birthday.

Without a band (too expensive if COVID calls while on tour), Andrews’ material sounded rather samey when stripped down. New tunes also ran in a similar vein, including a number inspired by Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window. Wire-thin support band Memorial provided light backing vocals to pleasing effect.

*Courtney Marie Andrews, when joined by support act Memorial on backing vocals. Picture: Paul Rhodes*

Andrews’ break-up clearly inspired her, as there are some wonderful songs on Old Flowers. To see her, eyes closed, really enunciating the words to How You Get Hurt, was to witness greatness – far more than a pretty voice, but someone with remarkable control to channel all that strength of feeling.

The elements, particularly the moon, loom large in her writing. Prefacing If I Told with a story about how the record’s cover photo came to be taken high on a full-moon Arizona hill, her off-mic vocalising provided the musical highlight to the set. Andrews perhaps leaned a little too much on the heartache button, but it clearly felt good. On record, Carnival Dream drags, but live she made it both shorter and sweeter.

While the newest album took centre stage, Andrews also wisely drew from her back catalogue throughout. The 75-minute set ended with a lovely version of Rough Around The Edges. Dinner For One, always a standout in her sets, showed her at her best; singularly sad and hummable.

Review by Paul Rhodes

October 28, 2021October 29, 2021

The Howl & The Hum’s thumbs-up to talking about mental health, masculinity, Arnie and feeling vulnerable on new single

*The Howl & The Hum: New single and Leeds Brudenell Social Club finale to autumn tour*

FOR the first time, York band The Howl & The Hum are at last taking the “miserable disco” of their debut album, Human Contact, on the road, climaxing with a sold-out two-night residency at Leeds Brudenell Social Club this weekend.

Released in the dark shadows of the Stay At Home first lockdown on May 29 2020, the prescient songs were denied exactly that human contact.

What ensued for Sam Griffiths, Conor Hirons, Bradley Blackwell and Jack Williams was, if not an annus horribilis, then certainly very challenging months of doubt, disillusion and disconnection.

Months that led to the release of one-off single Thumbs Up, two days ahead of their first tour date at Gorilla, Manchester, and, with perfect timing, World Mental Health Day.

“The way we can talk about it is to say the band have struggled with mental health over the past few years, especially over lockdown, to the extent there was doubt we would even continue,” says principal songwriter, singer, guitarist and keyboards player Sam.

“We were very much presented with two roads: one where we could celebrate releasing an album, end it there and find work in hospitality or whatever direction studying ancient Greek and Latin at school can lead to.

*The artwork for The Howl & The Hum’s debut album, released amid the lockdown blues of May 2020*

“Or there was the other route, one that was terrifying, with strange noises down the road, that involved continuing but with me [temporarily] going back to work at a pub at Leeds and being hopeless at it.

“Then going to Europe made me realise how much I hated social media, and how much I love talking with people, and if our music can help people express how they feel, if we can go out and tour these songs, it’s such a ridiculous life, these weird little indie boys…but it’s the only thing we’re good at: better than I could ever pour a pint.”

Imagine Radiohead’s High And Dry, if it were written by the late Jeff Buckley – “that wasn’t me that said that, but I’m honoured,” says Sam – and the resulting Thumbs Up emerges as a “cathartic confessional from an artist in search of deeper connections in the wake of personal tragedy”.

“Thumbs Up is the confession that us men don’t know how to talk to other men about important stuff,” reflects Sam, who was striving to find silver linings in the darkest of days.

“This song was written in the silence after suicides of friends, during depressive episodes, and over non-existent conversations about how we communicate our feelings: our highs, our lows, our loves and losses. It also references 80s’ movie icons Bruce Willis and Arnold Schwarzenegger, a brief admittance of vulnerability in the face of what we call masculinity.”

Sam, why won’t men talk? “It’s an odd one, isn’t it? But then I went to an all-boys school , where there’s so much silence and you only talk about objective truths, football, but not the emotional flow of feelings,” he says.

*The cover artwork for The Howl & The Hum’s new single, Thumbs Up*

“It’s that masculinity; that thing of pride. But now we’re in age where masculinity can take a different guise and suffering is a huge part of that, and it feels such a shame that we can’t talk about it.

“The main thing that people don’t realise is that everybody has connections with the issue of mental health, be it your family, friends or yourself, and we need to address how we can’t talk about how we feel.

“There are still so many places today where people aren’t aware of it, so I’m trying to find a different language for it, which is why I mention the masculinity of Bruce Willis and Arnold Schwarzenegger in Thumbs Up, because you can’t imagine them ever discussing doubts and feelings about making their next film.

“Looking back, we may see our friends as being like superheroes at school, like my best mate at school, who killed himself a month after leaving. No-one No-one had taught us how to talk to each other.”

Thumbs Up has had a long gestation period. “It’s one I’ve been aching to write, probably from before the first album, but never got finished,” says Sam.

*The Howl & The Hum promoting their York Minster concert ahead of its digital streaming on May 25*

“But then we went into lockdown and things became very relevant. As a band, we lost out on a lot of promises, a lot of things that never flourished, from every angle, from tours and financial support to sales and merchandise backing the record company promised.”

Inevitably, that took its toll, but The Howl & The Hum re-surfaced, first for their York Minster concert in May and now for a dozen English, Scottish and Welsh dates that conclude on Saturday and Sunday at Leeds Brudenell Social Club, near where Sam now lives.

The Howl & The Hum are touring with Rory Welbrock deputising for Bradley, alongside Sam, Conor and Jack. “Rory is a wonderful singer-songwriter in the Elliott Smith mould, who used to play bass for Bull, and whenever he couldn’t play with them, I’d fill in,” says Sam. “That’s the beauty of the York music scene; it has that lovely village feeling and it’s good that we can be that fluid.”

Jack is not listed as a band member on the press release for Thumbs Up, but Sam clarifies that situation. “Jack still fills in as a session drummer, but he eventually wants to do other things. He doesn’t enjoy the creative element as much as Conor and I do, but he’s basically one of the best drummers around. He’s our clock at the back,” he says.

“At the end of the day, the band has always been a ‘fuzzy’ project. It’s my songs but it wouldn’t ever be complete without Conor’s guitar or his fantastic artwork, which is increasingly important.”

*“Maybe the 2000s will have an impact on the next album,” says The Howl & The Hum’s Sam Griffiths*

Meanwhile, discussions are on-going with Please Please You promoter Joe Coates for “something in York in the New Year”. Watch this space.

Looking ahead to the weekend in Leeds, Sam says: “This tour is the chance to play the songs for the first time on the road that we should have been playing 18 months ago, so it’s our chance to both welcome and say goodbye to Human Contact, as we’re about to start working on the next album. I guess we’ll be both celebrating our debut and giving it a Viking funeral, setting fire to it.”

Where might Sam’s song-writing take him next? “I’ve been utterly caught up in the 1990s, having been born in 1992. I was a huge Radiohead fan from my teens, Jeff Buckley and Oasis too, and as I’m from Colchester, Blur,” he says. “Thumbs Up came out of that.

“I was born in Swindon, where my mum knew members of XTC, so I’ve been listening to them too, and since this summer I’ve been taking a geographical and chronological approach, starting with Scotland: Arab Strap and Frightened Rabbit, who have set up a foundation for suicide prevention and mental wellbeing after singer Scott Hutchinson died, having written the song Floating In The Forth about planning his suicide and then doing it.

“I was listening to The Smiths, Joy Division and New Order when we were making Human Contact, and people say there were a lot of Eighties’ influences on there, so, after Thumbs Up and the Nineties, maybe the 2000s will have an impact on the next album.”

The Howl & The Hum play Leeds Brudenell Social Club on October 30 and 31, supported by Martha Gunn and Elkyn; both nights sold out; doors, 7.30pm.

October 28, 2021October 28, 2021

More Things To Do in York as film festival goes hybrid and a spaceman comes travelling. List No. 55, courtesy of The Press

*Aesthetica Short Film Festival: York’s trendiest fest returns*

YORK’S annual short film festival keeps growing longer as Charles Hutchinson surveys a week ahead of multiple choices.

Festival of the week and beyond: Aesthetica Short Film Festival, York, from Tuesday

THE 11th edition of the Aesthetica Short Film Festival runs in York from November 2 to 7 and online from November 2 to 30 in a new hybrid format that combines in-person events and the virtual platform.

ASFF 2021 offers six carefully curated film programmes, such as animation, drama, family friendly and dance, along with industry sessions and marketplace, masterclasses, guest screenings, the VR Lab, social events and an awards ceremony in this showcase for a new wave of cinematic talent. Full details can be found at asff.co.uk.

*They Cud be so good for you: Leeds band pop over to York tonight*

Heritage gig of the week: Mr H presents Cud, plus Percy, The Crescent, York, tonight, 7.30pm

HERE’S the history bit: Leeds art students form band in 1985, create cult indie-pop and funk sensation, tour with the Pixies and record sessions with John Peel.

Emerging from the same art/design cauldron that produced fellow Leeds legends Soft Cell, Scritti Politti and The Mekons, Cud were the pre-Britpop answer to sad-eyed shoegaze, reckons promoter Tim Hornsby. Here come Carl Puttnam and co with the still infectious indie rock of Rich And Strange and Purple Love Balloon. Box office: thecrescentyork.com.

Comedy gig of the week: David Baddiel, Trolls: Not The Dolls, Grand Opera House, York, Monday, 7.30pm

IN his follow-up to My Family: Not The Sitcom and Euro 2020 return to number one with Three Lions, comedian David Baddiel turns his quizzical gaze to trolls: “the terrible people who spend all day insulting and abusing strangers for no other reason than to fill the huge gaps in their souls”.

Baddiel tells stories of the dark, dreadful and absurd cyber-paths that interacting with trolls has led him down. Box office: 0844 871 7615 or at atgtickets.com/York.

*Shobna Gulati’s Ray and Layton Williams’s Jamie New in Everybody’s Talking About Jamie at Leeds Grand Theatre*

Musical of the week: Everybody’s Talking About Jamie, Leeds Grand Theatre, Tuesday to Saturday.

EVERYBODY’S talking about Everybody’s Talking About Jamie, but stop talking and start rushing to the box office as tickets are hotter than a climate-changed world amid COP26 fever.

Jamie New, 16, lives on a Sheffield council estate, where he doesn’t fit it in and is terrified of the future, but he will be a sensation in this award-winning musical, “specially updated for the times we live in”.

Layton Williams reprises his West End role, starring alongside Shane Richie and Shobna Gulati. Box office: 0844 848 2700 or at leedsheritagetheatres.com.

*Heather Watts’s Queen of the Night and Alexandra Mather’s Pamina in York Opera’s The Magic Flute. Picture: John Saunders*

Nights at the opera: York Opera in The Magic Flute, York Theatre Royal, Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday, 7.15pm; Saturday (6/11/2021), 4pm

YORK Opera returns to York Theatre Royal after a pandemic-enforced two-year gap with Mozart’s The Magic Flute, sung in English to orchestral accompaniment.

The story follows Prince Tamino (Hamish Brown) on his quest to rescue Pamina (Alexandra Mather) from the grasp of her mother, the evil Queen of the Night (Heather Watts), and return with her to the world of light presided over by Sarastro (Mark Simmonds), the High Priest of Isis and Osiris.

David Valsamidis makes his York Opera debut as Papageno, the Queen of the Night’s bird catcher; John Soper is the stage director; Derek Chivers, the musical director. Box office: 01904 623568 or at yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.

*Feat of Peake: Tim Peake discusses the life of a British astronaut at York Barbican*

In space, no-one can hear you scream, but at York Barbican they can hear you talk: Tim Peake, My Journey To Space, Tuesday, 7.30pm

IN December 2015, Tim Peake became the first British astronaut to visit the International Space Station to conduct a spacewalk while orbiting Earth.

Back on terra firma, he is on his first British tour, sharing his passion for aviation, exploration and adventure as he brings unprecedented access, photographs and fresh footage to his guide to life in space, from European Space Agency astronaut training to launch, spacewalk to re-entry.

Peake will be revealing the secrets, the science and the everyday wonders of how and why humans journey into space. Box office: yorkbarbican.co.uk.

*The Battersea Poltergeist: From podcast to night terrors at the Grand Opera House, York*

Fright night of the week: The Battersea Poltergeist – Live, Grand Opera House, York, Tuesday, 7.30pm

FROM a BBC Radio 4 series, The Battersea Poltergeist became a multi-million, genre-busting download phenomenon, mixing documentary and drama to tell the terrifying true story of the 1956 haunting of the Hitchings family at 63 Wycliffe Road, London, at the hands of a poltergeist they nicknamed Donald.

Now, The Battersea Poltergeist goes live as writer, playwright and journalist Danny Robins, the show’s creator, and his podcast guest experts delve deeper into this paranormal cold case, bringing the investigation to life on stage, sharing exclusive footage of Shirley Hitchings and other witnesses and revealing chilling new evidence. Box office: 0844 871 7615 or at atgtickets.com/York.

*Off into the sunset: Clannad bid farewell on rearranged 2021 tour*

Long goodbye of the week: Clannad: In A Lifetime, The Farewell Tour, York Barbican, Wednesday, 8pm

CLANNAD were booked to play York Barbican on March 10, but you-know-what intervened, delaying Moya Brennan and co’s Farewell Tour to the autumn.

The tour takes its name from the career-spanning March 2020 anthology In A Lifetime, drawn from 16 studio albums since 1970 that fuse elements of traditional Irish music with more contemporary folk, new age and rock. Box office: yorkbarbican.co.uk.

*Duncan Honeybourne: Lockdown piano soundbites at Late Music concert*

York Late Music at the double: Duncan Honeybourne, 1pm to 2pm; Elysian Singers, 7.30pm to 9.30pm, St Saviourgate Unitarian Chapel, York, November 6

IN the afternoon, Duncan Honeybourne presents pieces from his collection Contemporary Piano Soundbites: Composers In Lockdown 2020, after commissioning more than 30 piano miniatures from distinguished senior figures and emerging composers alike. Works by John Casken, John McLeod, David Power, David Lancaster, Sadie Harrison and Adam Gorb feature.

For the evening concert, Elysian Singers director Sam Laughton has devised a programme of choral music where a contemporary work is paired with an earlier piece based on words from the same poet or source, such as Cheryl Frances-Hoad and Rachmaninov’s settings of All-Night Vigil. Box office: latemusic.org.

*Too late! Beth Hart’s York Barbican gig on Sunday has sold out*

Recommended but sold out already

FEMALE Gothic, tonight and tomorrow, and Nightwalkers storytellers Jan Blake and TUUP, Saturday, both at York Theatre Royal Studio; York band The Howl & The Hum, Leeds Brudenell Social Club, Saturday and Sunday; American singer-songwriter Beth Hart, York Barbican, Sunday.

October 21, 2021October 21, 2021

Not just another Manic Monday at York Barbican? Here’s why…

*Manic Street Preachers’ James Dean Bradfield at York Barbican. Picture: Simon Bartle*

AS arts and culture podcasters Graham Chalmers and Charles Hutchinson hit Episode 60 of Two Big Egos In A Small Car, they mull over Manic Street Preachers and The Waterboys’ big music nights at York Barbican.

What else? Field Music live in Leeds and the joy of Brudenell Social Club gigs. The Night Fever club culture exhibition and Kengo Kuma’s building design at the Dundee V&A exhibition.

And…now is the time to reflect on Daniel Craig’s Bond farewell in No Time To Die. After all, we’ve got all the time in the world…

To listen, head to: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1187561/9373085

September 24, 2021September 24, 2021

If you missed her secret Harrogate gig, catch Billie Marten at Brudenell Social Club

Billie Marten: Playing with a full band at Leeds Brudenell Social Club tonight

RIPON singer-songwriter Billie Marten plays Leeds Brudenell Social Club with a full band tonight, her career in full bloom with the May release of her third album, Flora Fauna.

Setting out on the road for an 18-date headline tour on September 16, she is promoting new single Liquid Love, a song accompanied by her latest video collaboration with Joe Wheatley, director of her Creature Of Mine and Human Replacement videos.

“This is my favourite of Joe’s visual trio,” says Billie. “Initially, I wanted the video to match the swirling, translucent watery-ness of Liquid Love, something meandering and dreamlike. I’d pictured blues and pinks, ripples, skin, wet hair and a visceral picture of real life.

“In the end, I think we – me and Joe – managed just that, through the sheer power of simplicity and understatement. It paints a natural tranquillity, using the tokens of community, friendship, family, love and warmth. All those things I was craving and pining for at the time of writing. It feels incredibly real to me as the song does too, and we weren’t acting, we were living.”

Born Isabella Sophie Tweddle on May 27 1999, she released her first EP, Ribbon, under the name of Billie Marten at the age of 15 in 2014, subsequently recording two albums for Sony/Chess Club Records, 2016’s Writing Of Blues And Yellows and 2019’s Feeding Seahorses By Hand.

Building on those minimalist acoustic folk foundations, she recorded her third album, Flora Fauna, with producer Rich Cooper in only ten days after picking up a bass guitar on a whim, duly creating a more mature record constructed on a backbone of bass and rhythm.

The artwork for Billie Marten’s Flora Fauna

Shedding the timidity of her past work in favour of more urgency, Billie’s latest songs mark a period of personal independence as she learned to nurture herself and break free from toxic relationships.

Returning to nature was important to her, in the wake of her move from North Yorkshire to London. “I wasn’t really treating myself very well; it was a bit of a disruptive time. All these songs are about getting myself out of that hole; they’re quite strong affirmations,” she says.

“The name Flora Fauna is like a green bath for my eyes. If the album was a painting, it would look like flora and fauna. It encompasses every organism, every corner of Earth, and a feeling of total abundance.”

Billie, 22, has lived in London for four years. “But Ripon still has a warm place in my heart; I miss it very much, and there’s family in Harrogate and Knaresborough, but the one thing it doesn’t have is a music scene, so it’s not very practical to be based there.

“Sadly too, Ripon Grammar School didn’t have a great music department, though it did have great science and engineering departments. I did study music at GCSE level; I got a B, I think, not that great! But I grew up in a musical family, so that was my start, listening to Bowie and Kate Bush, and my father played guitar.

“Bizarrely, my first gig was on a band stand when I was 12 or 13, when I borrowed my dad’s guitar that was far too large for me, and I just sang to my dad and the ice cream van.”

“After Fiction Records heard a couple of demos, they didn’t want to change anything about my songs,” says Billie Marten

That debut EP ensued at 15, released the day before she took her Maths GCSE. “For the photo they took, I smashed a glass because I was so nervous!” she recalls.

Billie signed to Sony at 16 but her subsequent experiences on the major label left her feeling like a “very small fish in a very large pool”. “I was never going to make the music they would have wanted me to make,” she says. “You’re not pushed, but maybe nudged, musically into areas you wouldn’t want to be: somewhere where I wouldn’t be comfortable, when I was the only old-school singer-songwriter, not deep pop or R&B act.

“All those people are trained up to scout for talent, but they see artists more as vessels for gradual change, rather than seeing you as yourself. But my father always said ‘take everything with a big bucket of salt’.”

Billie took the decision to seek new pastures. “The move to Fiction Records all came about deep into the first lockdown. Essentially, we met and signed on Zoom. All a bit mad,” she recalls. “Post Sony, I didn’t think anything would happen, but after Fiction Records heard a couple of demos, they didn’t want to change anything about my songs. I just felt accepted as I am and I feel very comfortable and natural working with this label.”

Cue Flora Fauna, an album with a delightfully alliterative title. “I’m very attracted to putting words together, and within those words, that is everything in the world: flora and fauna,” says Billie. “There you must accept who you are and find a place of solace.”

Billie Marten plays Leeds Brudenell Social Club tonight (24/9/2021), supported by Conchur; doors open at 7.30pm. Box office: brudenellsocialclub.co.uk.

September 23, 2021September 29, 2021

More Things To Do in and around York as Dracula rises again for darker nights ahead. List No 50, courtesy of The Press, York

The vampire strikes back: Comedy troupe Le Navet Bete in Dracula: The Bloody Truth at York Theatre Royal

DRACULA at the double, Bull’s delayed album party, a burgeoning Ripon singer-songwriter, a talent showcase, a festival for the over-fifties, a Geordie podcast couple and a quick-witted Aussie catch Charles Hutchinson’s attention.

Family friendly Dracula? Yes, really, in Le Navet Bete’s Dracula: The Bloody Truth, York Theatre Royal, tomorrow and Saturday, 7.30pm

KINGS of comedy Le Navet Bete link up with Exeter’s Northcott Theatre to sink their teeth into Dracula: The Bloody Truth, mixing slapstick and crafted comedy with a healthy dose of things going wrong.

Penned and directed by Peepolykus’s John Nicholson, this “family friendly show” journeys from the sinister Transylvanian mountains to the awkwardly charming Yorkshire seaside town of Whitby.

Esteemed Professor Abraham Van Helsing and his three idiotic actors will try frantically to expose the truth behind Bram Stoker’s notorious novel and warn audiences of the real dangers of vampires. Box office: 01904 623568 or at yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.

What’s Mina Harker’s viewpoint? Find out in Imitating The Dog’s Dracula: The Untold Story at Leeds Playhouse

Like buses, no Dracula for ages, then two come along in quick succession: Imitating The Dog/Leeds Playhouse in Dracula: The Untold Story, Leeds Playhouse, tomorrow until October 9.

DIRECTED by Andrew Quick and Pete Brooks, this chilling new reimagining of the classic gothic vampire tale is set in the 1960s and told from Mina Harker’s viewpoint.

Unfolding on stage as a live graphic novel, Leeds company Imitating The Dog utilise cutting-edge digital technology to engage with the dark landscape of Bram Stoker’s original, injecting it with renewed energy and political insight.

Dracula: The Untold Story “flips the page on our fascination with the most enduring manifestation of evil in literature”. Box office: 0113 213 7700 or at leedsplayhouse.org.uk.

At last! Bull will hold their Covid-delayed album launch party at The Crescent tomorrow

Gig of the week in York: Bull, The Crescent, York, tomorrow, 7.30pm

THIS show is York band Bull’s debut album launch gig, and no bull.

Didn’t Discover Effortless Living have the misfortune to be released in the very early days of Lockdown 1 on March 26 2020? Indeed so, but casting the pandemic hiatus to one side, it is never too late to celebrate a York band signing to a major label – EMI Records – and so here comes the long-awaited party for Tom Beer, Dan Lucas, Tom Gabbatiss and Kai West.

Cue the York-grown joys of Disco Living, Green, Bonzo Please, Loo Goo, Eugene and plenty more bangers beside.

Billie Marten: Singer-songwriter will play with a full band at Leeds Brudenell Social Club

Gig of the week outside York: Billie Marten, Leeds Brudenell Social Club, tomorrow , doors at 7.30pm

RIPON singer-songwriter Billie Marten promotes her third album, Flora Fauna, and new single Liquid Love on tour in Leeds with a full band-line-up.

Built on her minimalist acoustic folk foundations, the London-based Marten’s first album for Fiction Records is fostered around a strong backbone of bass and rhythm as she sheds past timidity in favour of greater urgency.

Flora Fauna’s songs mark a period of personal independence for Marten as she learned to nurture herself and break free from toxic relationships, and a big part of that transition was returning to nature. Box office: brudenellsocialclub.co.uk.

After last year’s competition, here comes the celebration of Yorkshire’s blossoming acts

Showcase of the week: Yorkshire’s Got Talent – Live!, Joseph Rowntree Theatre, York, Sunday, 7pm

DANCE, comedy and a wide variety of music feature in this celebration of the best of Yorkshire’s young talent as judged by professionals and voted for by the public.

A thoroughly entertaining show bursting with joie de vivre is promised from these stars of the future in a fundraiser for the JoRo Theatre. Box office: 01904 501935 or at josephrowntreetheatre.co.uk.

Chris and Rosie Ramsey: From hit podcast to York Barbican live show

Visiting Geordies of the week in York: Chris & Rosie Ramsey, Shagged. Married. Annoyed, York Barbican, Tuesday, 8pm

FOR the first time ever, loveable Geordie duo Chris and Rosie Ramsey are bringing their hit podcast live to York for one show only, moved from June 16 to September 28.

Apparently, the only way the Ramseys can have a conversation without being interrupted by a small child or ending up staring at their phones is by doing a podcast, drawing 18 million downloads.

Now, comedian and 2019 Strictly competitor Chris and Rosie discuss life, relationships, arguments, annoyances, parenting, growing up and everything in between in front of a live audience.

Learning opportunity: An IT workshop at the York 50+ Festival

Festival of the week: York 50+ Festival, Saturday until October 3

The York 50+ Festival presents more than 80 events in a “fine way to shake off the gloom of Covid and join in either in person or by sharing online with people from all over the country and abroad”.

This is the 16th annual festival organised by YOPA (York Older People’s Assembly) and a small team of volunteers, offering social events and open days, talks, walks, sport and active leisure, workshops, classes and “chatty benches”.

The full programme can be found at yorkassembly.org.uk/50-festival and copies are available in all York libraries, community centres and around the city centre, plus at the YOPA office at Spark: York and the Tourist Information Centre, Museum Street.

Tim Minchin’s back…and Tim Michin’s Back is back for the Back Encore Tour 2021 at York Barbican

Look who’s Back: Tim Michin, Back Encore Tour 2021, York Barbican, October 19, 7.30pm

TIM Minchin, Australian comedian, actor and composer, is back with a new set of dates for his Back show, taking in York Barbican.

Billed as “Old Songs, New Songs, F*** You Songs”, the set list draws on material from all corners of Minchin’s eclectic – and often iconoclastic – repertoire.

Back was first performed in Great Britain in 2019 on Minchin’s first tour over here in eight years. Last November, he released his debut solo album, Apart Together. Tickets for the Back Encore Tour 2021 show go on sale today at yorkbarbican.co.uk.

April 26, 2021April 26, 2021

Sir Tom Jones to play Brudenell Social Club…but tickets have sold out already!

The poster that announced Sir Tom Jones’s gig earlier today

SIR Tom Jones is to play Leeds hipster locale, the Brudenell Social Club in Hyde Park, on August 31 in a special launch show for his new album, Surrounded By Time.

And, why, why, why, didn’t you move more quickly to snap tickets for probably his most intimate Yorkshire show since his Batley Variety Club days well over half a century ago , because the 400-capacity gig has sold out already on the day of ticket release.

The concert coup to sign up 80-year-old Sir Tom has been pulled off by Crash Records, the Leeds independent record shop in The Headrow, whose owner, Ian De-Whytell, came up with a one-off deal whereby tickets could be ordered from Crash as part of a bundle with a copy of the new album.

This will be one of only two such album launch shows by Welshman Sir Tom. Please be aware, the gig going ahead without social distancing and Covid precautions will still be subject to the Government rolling out Step 4 of the roadmap as planned from June 21 this summer.

“This date is very much TBC until we have more info from the Government that shows are safe to take place,” says Crash Records’ website.

Doors will open at 7pm; Sir Tom will be on stage soon afterwards.

Track listing for Surrounded By Time, released on April 23:

I Won’t Crumble With You If You Fall (Bernice Johnson Reagon); The Windmills Of Your Mind (Michel Legrand/Alan & Marilyn Bergman); Popstar (Cat Stevens/Yusuf Islam); No Hole In My Head (Malvina Reynolds); Talking Reality Television Blues (Todd Snider); I Won’t Lie (Michael Kiwanuka & Paul Butler); This Is The Sea (Michael Scott); One More Cup Of Coffee (Bob Dylan); Samson And Delilah (Tom Jones, Ethan Johns, Mark Woodward); Mother Earth (Tony Jo White); I’m Growing Old (Bobby Cole) and Lazurus Man (Terry Callier).

Co-produced by Ethan Johns and Mark Woodward.

January 14, 2021January 14, 2021

Teddy Thompson moves Pocklington gig to January 2022. New album on its way too

Teddy Thompson: New tour dates, new album in 2022. Picture: Gary Waldman

TEDDY Thompson’s January 22 gig at Pocklington Arts Centre will now take place precisely one year later.

His rearranged January/February itinerary also will visit Leeds Brudenell Social Club on January 23 2022.

Thompson, 44, will be releasing an as-yet-unnamed new album to coincide with the tour. Had the pandemic not ruled out this month’s travels, he would have been showcasing Heartbreaker Please, his May 2020 break-up record, instead.

The relationship ended just as the English singer-songwriter with the New York City home address was finishing up penning the songs. “I tend to write sad songs, slow songs. It’s what comes naturally,” he says. “So I tried to make an effort here to set some of the misery to a nice beat! Let the listener bop their heads while they weep.”

The son of singer-songwriters Richard and Linda Thompson, Teddy emigrated to the United States at 18 to embark on a career of his own. He was influenced heavily not by folk music but by such artists as Buddy Holly, Chuck Berry, Elvis Presley and the Everly Brothers.

Richard Thompson: Playing the Platform Festival in Pocklington on July 21

Settling into New York at 23, he has released six albums and featured on the soundtrack of the Golden Globe and Bafta-winning film Brokeback Mountain, as well as collaborating on projects with Rufus and Martha Wainwright.

Teddy also recorded songs for the soundtrack to the Leonard Cohen tribute, I’m Your Man, and contributed songs to the Nick Drake retrospective, Way To Blue.

He will be supported on his 12-date tour by another artiste with a folk-roots heritage: Roseanne Reid, eldest daughter of The Proclaimers’ Craig Reid.

Father Richard, the 71-year-old English folk-rock luminary, songwriter and guitarist, will play next summer’s Platform Festival, run by Pocklington Arts Centre at The Old Station, on July 21.

Fairport Convention alumnus Richard now lives in Montclair, New Jersey, after three decades in Los Angeles.

Tickets for Thompson times two are on sale at pocklingtonartscentre.co.uk.