Shaparak Khorsandi: “Letting you back into her mind after ADHD diagnosis”
AFTER reassessing her life through the prism of an ADHD diagnosis in last year’s Fringe show, ShapChat, and her Scatter Brain memoir, Shaparak Khorsandi lets you back into her mind in her new show at Scarborough’s Stephen Joseph Theatre on October 2.
“Warning: it’s cluttered in there,” says the 51-year-old British Comedy Award-nominated comedian, raconteur, I’m A Celebrity contestant and author of fiction and non-fiction.
Among other things, her Scatterbrain show will be a love letter to letter-writing, a trip back through Khorsandi’s early years as a comic and woman-about-town, and a whirlwind tour of her “hilarious and sometimes frantic brain”. At least, it might be, given the promise of “delightfully shambolic” comedy.
As the tour publicity puts it: “Although it might not be remembered by Shaparak herself, that’s part of how ADHD works. And actually, we’ll probably check in with her in case she’s decided to start a career as an antique furniture expert instead.
“The diagnosis has helped Shaparak make sense of many aspects of her behaviour and personality, as movingly chronicled in Scatter Brain (subtitled How I Finally Got Off The ADHD Rollercoaster To Become The Owner Of A Very Tidy Sock Drawer, published by Penguin Books).
“In this national tour of the same name, a woman who deserves the tag of national treasure uses her newly liberated mind as a springboard for a comedic rollercoaster ride.”
Impatient Productions present Shaparak Khorsandi: Scatterbrain, Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough, October 2, 7.45pm. Box office: 01723 370541or sjt.uk.com. Khorsandi’s 23-date September 11 to December 3 tour also visits Hull Truck Theatre, October 3, 7.30pm, and Old Woollen, Farsley, Leeds, October 16, 8pm. Box office: Hull, 01482 323638 or hulltruck.co.uk; Farsley, oldwoollen.co.uk.
FOLK renovator and innovator Sam Lee showcases his fourth studio album, songdreaming, at The Old Woollen, Farsley, Leeds, tonight, on his 17-date tour.
Released on March 15 on Cooking Vinyl, songdreaming represents the latest stage in the development of Londoner Lee’s music, from its roots in curating ancient song to a new way of imagining and performing reworked old songs, making them relevant anew.
The follow-up to 2020’s Old Wow was recorded throughout 2023, when Sam continued his work with producer Bernard Butler and long-term collaborator, arranger, and composer James Keay in creating an album rich in musicality and invention.
In taking songs directly related to the nature of the British Isles, he reinvents and contemporises a tradition of communion with the land through song. “songdreaming is a mosaic of the emotions felt in my time outdoors, that artistically emerge in reflective moments when I’m permitted to recount and articulate the complexity of all I witness and thus feel responsible for,” he says.
Explaining the album title, Sam says: “’songdreaming is a neogilism [a newly coined word or expression], that came out of the work that I do rooted in nature, through the idea of how we can connect with the land, and our relationship with nature through music. It goes back to the Aboriginal idea of songlines…”
…Songlines, Sam? “The short answer is I will never truly understand it, as you have to live in that culture, but from my time spent with Aborogines and from reading [English travel writer] Bruce Chatin’s book [Songlines], it’s to do with map orientation to our sense of not just place but ancestry, identity, sovereignty, all wrapped in feelings of adoration and commitment,” he says.
“That’s something we’ve had in this country, working with the landscape to chart who we are, but our experiences have severed that relationship. The concept of this album is to reinvigorate that idea, hence I’ve borrowed old folk songs, our ancient narratives, reworking them to tell of our beautiful relationship, our enchantment, our illicit joy, in nature.”
Illicit joy, Sam? “I’m so involved with the Right To Roam movement, but I didn’t want to make a protest album. I wanted to create a vision,” he says.
“Music can be such a bridge builder into a new sense of possibilities. I don’t think what we have in this age, unlike what we had for thousands of years, is an adoration of nature. Music was inspired by nature for so many years, and yet we’ve now become like a barren land in our attitude.
“How have we ended up with poisoned rivers, barren lands that are so depleted? Most important to that is the severance of connection to nature in our children, who find it more difficult to make that connection because of the urban lives we live.”
Sam regrets the loss of stewardship, grandparents no longer passing on knowledge of nature to grandchildren. “We don’t know the names of our rivers, our fungi, our flowers, anymore,” he says. “Nature has become an exiled realm. What we see is a war of attrition and nature is not winning that war.”
What role can music play to change that? “Where we are completely cut off, music can conjure the emotion of what it’s like to walk in a field, to be in a canoe, and that’s always been the purpose of music: to connect with the visceral sense of place. In my case, to distil all my work in nature to be something that is shared.”
Across songdreaming’s ten tracks, Sam delivers an album that ranges from acoustic songs to drone soundscapes through to the electric guitar and gospel choir-propelled lead single Meeting Is A Pleasant Place, featuring the recording debut of transgender London choir Trans Voices.
songdreaming incorporates the balladry of Sweet Girl McRee alongside the gospel tinges of Leaves Of Life, while also housing the whiteout noise of Bushes And Briars, a song that details Sam’s rage at the treatment and condition of the natural world.
Summing up his bond with nature in song, Sam says: “Those people who are and were singing the old songs here at home were also looking after the land. When we stop singing to the land, the land stops singing back.”
Sam Lee’s songdreaming tour visits plays The Old Woollen, Sunny Bank Mills, Town Street, Farsley, Leeds, tonight (24/3/2024), 8pm; doors, 7pm. Box office: samleesong.co.uk or oldwoollen.co.uk. songdreaming is available on Cooking Vinyl on vinyl, CD and digital download.
Folk musician Sam Lee at Stonehenge. Picture: Andre Pattenden
FOLK renovator Sam Lee will showcase his fourth studio album, songdreaming, on a 17-date tour with Yorkshire gigs at Hebden Bridge Trades Club on March 17, Crookes Social Club, Sheffield, on March 20 and Old Woollen, Farsley, on March 24.
Released on March 15 on Cooking Vinyl, songdreaming represents the latest stage in the development of Londoner Lee’s music, from its roots in curating ancient song to a new way of imagining and performing reworked old songs, making them relevant for a modern audience.
The follow-up to 2020’s Old Wow was recorded throughout 2023, when Lee continued his work with producer Bernard Butler and long-term collaborator, arranger, and composer James Keay in creating an album rich in musicality and invention.
songdreaming may be built on the backbone of double bass, percussion, and violin but is infused with pan-global instrumentation, taking in the Arabic Qanun, Swedish Nyckelharpa, small pipes and more.
Across the ten tracks, Lee delivers an album that ranges from more immediately identifiable acoustic songs to drone soundscapes through to the electric guitar and gospel choir-propelled lead single Meeting Is A Pleasant Place, featuring the recording debut of transgender London choir Trans Voices.
The cover artwork for Sam Lee’s new album, songdreaming
songdreaming incorporates the balladry of Sweet Girl McRee alongside the gospel tinges of Leaves Of Life, while also housing the whiteout noise of Bushes And Briars, a song that details Lee’s rage at the treatment and condition of the natural world.
In taking songs directly related to the nature of the British Isles, he continues to reinvent and contemporise a tradition of communion with the land through song. He duly characterises songdreaming as: “A mosaic of the emotions felt in my time outdoors, that artistically emerge in reflective moments when I’m permitted to recount and articulate the complexity of all I witness and thus feel responsible for”.
Taking an “evocative journey through the complex emotions created for Sam by his engagement with nature and his deep-felt affinity for it”, the album draws on sources as diverse as the sacred music of European and global mystic traditions, the work of neo-classical contemporary composers and the simple effectiveness of a well-delivered vocal melody.
Summing up his connection with nature in song, Lee says: “Those people who are and were singing the old songs here at home were also looking after the land. When we stop singing to the land, the land stops singing back.”
Tour tickets are on sale samleesong.co.uk. songdreaming will be released on Cooking Vinyl on March 15 on vinyl, CD and digital download. Pre-order link: https://SLee.lnk.to/songdreamingPR
Suits you, ‘”sir”: Grace Petrie in Butch Ado About Nothing, her debut stand-up comedy show
FOLK singer, lesbian and checked-shirt collector Grace Petrie has been incorrectly called “Sir” every day of her adult life, she says.
Now, after finally running out of subject matter for her “whiny songs”, she is putting down the guitar at the age of 36 to work out why in her debut stand-up show, Butch Ado About Nothing, as she returns to The Crescent in York on September 17.
Before then, her tour brings Grace to Old Woollen, in Farsley, Leeds, tonight (31/8/2023) and The Leadmill, Sheffield, on September 10.
“I’m definitely out of my comfort zone. Check in with me before the first show for how my nerves are!” she said on the eve of the tour kicking off. “The great thing with songs is that whether they’re good or not, people will clap, but if they don’t find a joke funny, they won’t laugh.
“I have to be honest and say that I’m bricking it much more than with my folk gigs, but it’s good to challenge myself.”
What’s more, Grace has “had a front-row seat for a masterclass in comedy”, from supporting comedians on tour. “I’ve learnt to develop that between-song patter, which I came to enjoy, and as those introductions got longer and longer, I thought, ‘well, I better put my money where my mouth is’ [by doing stand-up].
“Billy Bragg is a huge inspiration, and so was Billy Connolly, who set out to be a folk musician. Victoria Wood too.”
Finding herself mired in an age of incessantly and increasingly fraught gender politics, the Norwich-based Leicester native set about exploring what butch identity means in a world moving beyond labels, pondering where both that identity and she belong in the new frontline of queer liberation.
“I first did the show at the Edinburgh Fringe last year and was really passionate that I wanted to do it in a different way, with no music, over a month of shows,” says Grace.
“I’ve been writing in the months since then because of the need to update it, though it’s basically an autobiographical show, so I guess the bare bones don’t change as it’s about my experiences as a butch woman moving in a patriarchal world and how it treats women who don’t fit into that world.”
In her suits, her hair cropped with a neat side parting, the daily occurrence of being called “Sir” troubled Grace when she was younger, but “I have got used to it,” she says. “It made a change being greeted with ‘monsieur’ at the airport when I was in Canada recently!” she says.
That put a smile on her face, and her show has been doing likewise for her audiences. “I would hope it’s a show for anybody. All kinds of people came to see it in Edinburgh, though there is the draw for queer audiences and especially butch audiences, but I’ve also had messages from straight blokes saying, ‘you gave me something to think about’,” says Grace,
“The best comedy is the comedy that stays with you and makes you think. That’s always what I want to do, whether in concerts or comedy, when you’re trying to put across ideas, you could lecture someone with facts, but if you move someone emotionally, that’s far more powerful.”
Freed from her guitar, reliant on the spoken word, Grace has found her performing style changing too after 15 years on the folk circuit in her transition to comedy. “It’s not only the voice, but also the body, and how you use it on stage, when you’re not playing the guitar,” she says.
“It’s funny how there are a million things that affect how a show will be before you’ve even set foot on stage – and it’s also been amazing how different comedy audiences are, just in terms of expectations, in terms of calling out.
“At a music show, you’re encouraging them to sing along, but at a comedy gig, noise can be derailing, so I have to think about how I use my body, how I use the microphone, and I’ve learned a huge amount being in front of audiences about to control the show.”
For the tour, Grace has chosen to play smaller rooms than she would for her concerts. “That’s deliberate, because comedy is a more intimate artform, where you need people to see your face and your mannerisms,” she reasons.
“Performing the Edinburgh shows last year, the biggest benefit was in facing my fear of doing stand-up. At the end of the day, the worst thing people can do is not laugh. That can happen and it can feel brutal, but you just have to get up and do it again. You just have to go back to the same room, the same stage, and do it again.”
John-Luke Roberts, Grace’s comedian friend, gave her a piece of advice. ” He said that making people laugh is an emotion and it’s no different to any other emotion in that way,” she says.
How Grace triggers that emotion, in a show directed by her partner, fellow performer and writer Molly Naylor, is through a combination of long-form stories and gag-heavy sections.
Over 15 years, she has enjoyed “many wonderful gigs in York”, from the smallest room at the Black Swan Inn to The Crescent and York Barbican. “I would say my favourite visit was when I did a tour of Labour marginal seats in 2019 and we did one for York Outer with York spoken-word performer Henry Raby at the Crescent,” says Grace. “That was was a really barnstorming, fist-pumping night!”
Butch Ado About Nothing presents her in a different guise on her return there, but looking ahead, she will not be putting her guitar to bed for good. Far from it. “I’ll be recording a new album in October,” she reveals.
Her transition to stand-up is not the only move that Grace has been making. “I’ve bought a house in Sheffield,” she says. “I love Sheffield! I managed one term of studying a course to do with youth work and counselling but it was a bit of Mickey Mouse degree, so I sacked it off, but got a job and stayed there for three years. Now I’m back.”
Burning Duck Comedy Club presents Grace Petrie: Butch Ado About Nothing, The Crescent, York, September 17, 7.30pm, SOLD OUT. Also plays Old Woollen, Farsley, Leeds, August 31, 8pm, and The Leadmill, Sheffield, September 10 7.30pm. Box office: gracepetrie.com; York, thecrescentyork.com; Leeds, oldwoollen.co.uk; Sheffield, leadmill.co.uk.
Grace Petrie’s trinity of checked shirt, guitar and sea
Did you know?
GRACE Petrie is a swimming enthusiast, swimming each day during last year’s Edinburgh Fringe run, for example. Her sea water publicity photos were shot at Happisburgh, on the Norfolk coast.
Did you know too?
GRACE appeared on The Guilty Feminist bill, a live offshoot from the irreverent podcast series, hosted by Deborah Frances-White at York Barbican in May 2022. Part comedy, part deep-dive discussion and part activism, the show “examined our noble goals as 21st-century feminists and our hypocrisies and insecurities that undermine those goals”.
