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Seasick Steve strives for lockdown path to Love & Peace en route to July 24 album

Seasick Steve seeks a road to Love & Peace

CALIFORNIAN blues tornado Seasick Steve is keeping busy in lockdown as he builds anticipation for the July 24 release of his tenth studio album, Love & Peace.

“Since we all locked up, I was thinking about music,” says the 69-year-old singer, songwriter and builder of customised scrap guitars.

“I was supposed to be going on tour, but now I can’t do it. For me, music is all about y’all … it’s about playing for people. I surely miss you all and wish I could be out there playing for you.”

Seasick by the sea: Seasick Steve takes in the view

Instead, Seasick has taken to plugging in and blasting out his veteran boogie blues from his kitchen live on Facebook every Sunday night.

What’s more, he has released the homemade Live To An Empty Room concert video, available to watch at youtube.com/watch?v=5k3_-Iu0iGg&feature=youtu.be.

Seasick Steve’s blend of DIY inventiveness and dogged determination is present too in the video for his new album taster, Clock Is Running. Setting Seasick’s raw riffage to Dan Magnusson’s rollicking rhythms, the song’s message chimes with our lockdown times as he looks forward once more to  hitting the road and seeing the world, while urging you to take a chance while you still can. 

The artwork for Seasick Steve’s July 24 album Love & Peace

The video plays on that concept of making the most of things, in Seasick’s case when faced with trying to make a compelling visual in lockdown.  Seasick – real name Steven Gene Wold – filmed himself jamming the song on the porch and sent the footage to New Beach to work their magic in creating an imaginative animated video.  

It surely will be the only time he will be seen playing an imaginary guitar, as you can witness at youtube.com/watch?v=H9G2JSuvPIU&feature=youtu.be

Both Clock Is Running and the title track are available as instant downloads for those who pre-order the album from Seasick’s official store at seasicksteve.tmstor.es/, as well as on all streaming platforms.

Seasick note: Seasick Steve plucks his guitar

Seasick, who played a sold-out show at York Barbican in April 2015, has written an album full of hope for the future, against the tide of these troubled times, combining boogie, blues, rock, Americana and folk.

The track listing will be:  Love And Peace; Regular Man; I Will Do For You; Clock Is Running; Carni Days; Church Of Me; Toes In The Mud; My Woman; Ain’t Nothin’ Like The Boogie; Travelling Man; Ready Or Not and Mercy.

Released on the Contagious label, Love & Peace’s various formats will include a heavyweight clear vinyl, packaged with a signed print of the cover.

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Expect peak performance from Sir Ranulph Fiennes at York Barbican next March

SIR Ranulph Fiennes’s destination on March 24 2021 will be York Barbican, his mission to deliver his live show Living Dangerously for the third time in the city. 

Named by the Guinness Book of Records as “the world’s greatest living explorer” and in Burke’s Peerage as Sir Ranulph Twistleton-Wykeham-Fiennes, 3rd Baronet of Banbury,  he has spent his life in pursuit of extreme adventure, risking life and limb in “some of the most ambitious private expeditions ever undertaken”.

Among his many record-breaking achievements, he was the first explorer to reach both the North and South Poles, the first to cross the Antarctic and the Arctic Ocean, and the first to circumnavigate the Earth’s surface along its polar axis.

In Living Dangerously, Sir Ranulph, takes a journey through his life, from his early years to the present day. Both light-hearted and poignant, the show revisits the 76-year-old explorer’s childhood and school misdemeanours, his army life and early expeditions.

He will share insights into his transglobal expedition and his present global reach challenge:  his goal to become the first person in the world to cross both polar ice caps and climb the highest mountain on each of the seven continents.

Sir Ranulph presented Living Dangerously previously in York at the Grand Opera House in July 2018 and June 2019.

Tickets for his 2021 return go on sale on Friday, April 24 at 10am at yorkbarbican.co.uk.

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Rufus Wainwright unfollows the rules on new album ahead of York Barbican gig

The tour poster for Rufus Wainwright’s Unfollow The Rules show at York Barbican

RUFUS Wainwright will follow the summer release of his new album Unfollow The Rules with an autumn tour booked into York Barbican for October 27.

The American-Canadian baroque, operatic and indie pop singer-songwriter was the first guest for the Royal Albert Hall’s free special isolation sessions, #RoyalAlbertHome, last night.

Out on BMG on July 10, the typically fearless, mischievous and honest Unfollow The Rules will be Wainwright’s ninth studio album and his first set of new compositions since Out Of The Game in 2012.

“I consider Unfollow The Rules my first fully mature album,” says Rufus, 46-year-old son of Loudon Wainwright III and Kate McGarrigle. “It is like a bookend to the beginning of my career.”

“I consider Unfollow The Rules my first fully mature album,” says Rufus Wainwright. Picture: Tony Hauser

Wainwright will be joined on the road by a new band, featuring Los Angeles guitarist and producer Brian Green, who has worked previously with John Legend, and Phoenix singer-songwriter and keyboardist Rachel Eckroth, erstwhile collaborator with KT Tunstall.

Looking forward to performing a setlist of Wainwright old and new post-Lockdown, Rufus says: “For me, thinking about this tour is like a light at the end of this dark tunnel that we are all in together. It gives me hope and confidence that we will rise above this collectively.

“And while it might seem that we are not moving forward swiftly in this dark long tunnel, I know that we will reach the light again and be able to be together. I cannot wait to be part of that moment for my fans and share this music live with them.”

Tickets for Rufus Wainwright: Unfollow The Rules at York Barbican go on sale on April 17 at 10am at yorkbarbican.co.uk. 

No Joker: York Barbican’s film screening with an orchestra has been cancelled

MEANWHILE, York Barbican has announced that Joker: Live In Concert on May 17 is off.

“It is with great disappointment that we can confirm our Joker: Live in Concert performance will no longer go ahead due to the COVID-19 outbreak,” the Barbican statement said. “All tickets will be refunded, and please contact your point of purchase if you have any questions.”

The show would have have featured Todd Phillips’s award-laden film being accompanied by an orchestra performing Hildur Guðnadóttir’s score live to build a “vivid, visceral and entirely new Joker viewing experience”.

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Exit Bake Off, re-enter Sandi Toksvig in tour two of National Trevor at York Barbican

Goodbye to Bake Off but back on the road for Sandi Toksvig on her National Trevor travels

AFTER her back-out from Bake Off to “focus on other work projects”, Sandi Toksvig will return to York Barbican on September 22 on her second National Trevor tour.

In January, the Danish-born presenter, 61, announced she would be leaving The Great British Bake Off after three years of co-hosting Channel 4’s cookery contest with The Mighty Boosh comedian Noel Fielding.

Filmed last September, Sandi’s last episode of The Great Celebrity Bake Off for Stand Up To Cancer was broadcast on Tuesday night.

She first performed National Trevor at York Barbican on January 28 2019 as part of a sold-out winter tour, when the News Quiz, QI and Bake Off host brought her trademark warmth, grounded nous and authority to a show that was part stand-up, part lecture as she discussed what unites us in a Toksvigian celebration of all that is weird and wonderful in the everyday.

Back on the road this autumn, the show’s publicity talks of “Sandi realising some people harbour an ambition to be a National Treasure, but following a misunderstanding with a friend, she has decided to become a National Trevor: half misprint, half Danish comedian”.

“Expect tall stories, fascinating and funny facts, silly jokes, a quick-fire Q&A and even a little quiz,” says Sandi of a show that embraces anecdotes, potted histories, family connections and darker topics handled with levity. “You certainly won’t be getting tap-dancing, leotards or a forward roll,” she promises.

Sandi launched her career in 1982 on Number 73, a long-running children’s Saturday morning show, since when her CV has taken in such shows as Call My Bluff and Whose Line Is It Anyway? and hosting BBC Radio 4’s The News Quiz.

In 2016, she took over Stephen Fry’s seat as host of BBC2 quiz show QI, followed by her joining The Great British Bake Off team on its switch to Channel 4 in 2017.

Exit Sandi from Bake Off. Re-enter Sandi Toksvig: The National Trevor Tour, a show whose parting wisdom last time was a plea to “enjoy life and seize the day”. Oh, and to seize the biscuit too. “Did you know eating biscuits was dangerous,” she said. “And you still do it, you wonderful risk-takers.”

Tickets for September 22 are newly on sale at yorkbarbican.co.uk.

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Christmas? Yes, Christmas is on its way as Kate Rusby confirms York Barbican concert

Kate Rusby in her Holly Headwear. Picture: David Lindsay

WHAT a relief to be able to mention another C-word in these Coronavirus-clouded times.  Christmas. Kate Rusby at Christmas, to be precise.

Tickets for the Barnsley nightingale’s now traditional York Barbican Christmas concert on December 20 go on sale tomorrow morning (April 10) at yorkbarbican.co.uk.

Kate’s sparkling Christmas shows draw on merry Christmas versions of carols, once banned from frowning Victorian churches for being too jolly, that instead found their home in the pubs of South Yorkshire (and North Derbyshire and Cornwall). 

“Christmas songs were seeping into our brains,” says Kate Rusby, recalling her childhood exposure to South Yorkshire ‘pub sings’. Picture: David Angel

For 200 years, those South Yorkshire communities have congregated on Sunday lunchtimes from late-November to belt out, for example, variations on While Shepherds Watched.

“The Christmas side of things began for me in the ‘pub sings’ around South Yorkshire,” Kate told CharlesHutchPress last winter ahead of her York Barbican concert with her regular folk band and “brass boys” quintet on December 18.

“We were taken along as kids; our parents would be in the main room singing away, while us kids were sat with the other kids in the tap room, colouring [pictures] and drinking pop, unaware that the carols and Christmas songs were seeping into our brains!

“I decided anyone who adores Christmas music is called a ‘Holly Head’, ” says Kate Rusby, explaining her album title

“They’re mostly songs thrown out of the churches by the Victorians as they were thought to be far too happy! Ha! Those who loved singing them took them to the pubs, where you could combine a good old sing with beer and a natter, and there the songs have remained and been kept alive, being passed down the generations.”

So much so, Kate has released five albums of carols and original winter songs on her own Pure Records label: 2008’s Sweet Bells, 2011’s While Mortals Sleep, 2015’s The Frost Is All Over, 2017’s Angels And Men and last year’s Holly Head

“Well, I decided anyone who adores Christmas music is called a ‘Holly Head’,” she said, explaining the title. “You know, like car fanatics are petrol heads. I thought it was the perfect title for such people, and I’m a fully paid-up member of the Holly Head club.”

The album artwork for Kate Rusby’s 2019 album, Holly Head

Songs on Holly Head ranged from the Rusby original The Holly King, to a cover of John Rox’s novelty Christmas number Hippo For Christmas, via the carol Salute The Morn, a brace of God’s Own Country variations, Yorkshire Three Ships and Bleak Midwinter (Yorkshire) and Kate’s sixth iteration of While Shepherds Watched.

“There’s over 30 different versions of While Shepherds Watched that get sung in the pubs here in South Yorkshire, so I’ve still got a lot to go at,” said Kate last December. “This one is actually to the tune of a different song that I also love, but I wasn’t that keen on the words, then realised it went with the While Shepherds words, so yey, another has now been invented.” 

Picking the song most significant to her on Holly Head, Kate chose her own composition The Holly King. “It celebrates the more pagan side of Christmas. I wrote it after reading about the winter king, The Holly King, and the summer king, The Ivy King,” she said.

Kate Rusby: Writing for her next Christmas record. Picture: David Angel

“Legend has it that the two met twice a year and had almighty battles. Going into winter, the Holly King would win and reign for the winter months. Then the Ivy King would wake and overthrow the Holly King and reign through the summer months, and on they went in a perfect cycle.

“I just loved the images that it conjured up and a song came flowing out. I gave him a wife, The Queen of Frost, who creeps across the land to be with him for his time. In fact, I’m now writing her song, so she will appear on the next Christmas album, I’m sure.”

May The Queen of Frost glide her icy path to York Barbican come December 20.

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The Shires move York Barbican gig to autumn as Good Years album hits top three

The Shires’ Crissie Rhodes and Ben Earle

COUNTRY duo The Shires are moving their 25-date 2020 tour to the autumn, in response to the Coronavirus pandemic shutdown.

Ben Earle and Crissie Rhodes have switched their York Barbican show from May 20 to November 1, when they will be joined by Texan country singer and songwriter Eric Paslay.

Tickets remain valid for the revised date – The Shires’ only Yorkshire gig on the itinerary – but those seeking a refund should contact their point of purchase.

The first Brits to win Best International Act in the American Country Music Association awards, Earle and Rhodes released their fourth album, Good Years, in this anything but good year on March 13, reaching number three in the charts.

As with their past albums, 2015’s Brave, 2016’s My Universe and 2018’s Accidentally On Purpose, the recording sessions took place in Nashville, Tennessee.

The album artwork for The Shires’ new album

“We are so excited to be releasing Good Years,” say Earle and Rhodes. “Honesty and storytelling have always been such an important part of our song-writing. We’ve poured some of the incredible experiences and life we’ve lived into these songs.

“We can’t wait to play these live across the country. The songs mean so much to us personally, but there really is nothing like looking out at our fans in the crowd and seeing how much of an impact they can have in someone else’s life. It’s truly a very special thing”.

The Shires last played York Barbican in May 2018 and performed a headline set at Pocklington’s Platform Festival at The Old Station last summer.

Only a smattering of seats remains on sale for their Barbican return on 0203 356 5441 or at yorkbarbican.co.uk.

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Elvis show The King Is Back will be back in the building in April 2021 at York Barbican

“The show I do is pretty much all of Elvis’s eras,” says The King Is Back tribute act Ben Portsmouth

ELVIS is making another comeback…in 2021.

The King Is Back, Ben Portsmouth’s tribute show, will be back at York Barbican on April 9 next year.

Berkshire singer Portsmouth was last in the building with his Elvis Presley act on December 20 2019. Tickets for his return are on sale at yorkbarbican.co.uk or on 0203 356 5441.

Portsmouth and his band Taking Care Of Elvis have been taking care of Elvis tribute business for a dozen years in a show built around “a little less conversation, a lot more action, please”.

“The show I do is pretty much all of Elvis’s eras,” he says. “So, from the Sun Studio to his movie years. Then I’ll do the 1968 comeback with the leather outfit.

Portsmouth to York: Ben Portsmouth confirms York Barbican concert next spring

“The first half is more like a story of Elvis’s life and what he was doing in his career at the time. The second half is just like an Elvis Seventies’ concert.”

In pursuit of authenticity to the maximum, all of Portsmouth’s Elvis outfits are flown over from the United States, with the peacock jumpsuit being his favourite.

In August 2012, Portsmouth made Elvis history when he became the first act from outside the United States to win the annual Elvis Presley Enterprises “Worldwide Ultimate Elvis Tribute Artist”, held in Memphis, Tennessee.

Portsmouth loves the Elvis voice, the look, the stage charisma, his humour, but more than that. “He was just a people person,” he says. “He was just a simple country boy who liked his cars, his food and all the rest of it.”

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Strictly’s Aljaž and Janette move Barbican show to 2021 and invite NHS heroes

Aljaž Škorjanec and Janette Manrara: Remembering The Oscars tour moves to Spring 2021

REMEMBER the new York Barbican date for Remembering The Oscars. Strictly Come Dancing couple Aljaž Škorjanec and Janette Manrara are rescheduling their postponed April 10 show for April 21 next year.

In keeping with all 38 dates, ten free VIP tickets will be made available to NHS staff “as a way of the producers and Aljaž and Janette showing their gratitude to these front-line heroes” caught in the eye of the Coronavirus pandemic storm.

This will include a meet & greet with the Strictly duo, and information on how to claim these tickets will be announced very soon “once normal services resume”. 

Aljaž and Janette say: “We know what we are offering is a relatively small gesture, but we want to acknowledge the amazing effort of the NHS staff who are facing unimaginable pressure on a daily basis as they treat patients across the UK affected by Coronavirus.

“We’ll be rolling out the proverbial red carpet for these heroes and we look forward to thanking them in person throughout the tour.”

The 2020 tour of Škorjanec and Manrara’s new dance spectacular had been due to start earlier this month, but was postponed after theatres closed nationwide in response to the Covid-19 pandemic.

The tour now will run from March 20 to May 4 2021 and all tickets will remain valid for the rearranged dates of Remembering The Oscars, wherein Aljaž and Janette will give the red-carpet treatment to Oscar-winning songs, dances, movies and stars. 

Janette says: “We are so thrilled to have the opportunity to put on this magnificent show, which we are so proud of, in 2021. We hope that when these difficult times pass, we can bring joy and smiles to everyone’s hearts; nothing would make us happier.” 

Aljaž added: “It was heart-breaking to not be able to open with our show this year, but we are now so thrilled that our beautiful show will still be seen by the UK audiences next year. We cannot wait to be back on stage and perform for you all.”

York Barbican is the only Yorkshire date on the tour. Ticket holders unable to attend the April 21 2021 show should contact the Barbican box office, 0203 356 5441. 

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Postponed Friends! The Musical Parody will still play York Barbican…in a year’s time

Friends! The Musical Parody: new York Barbican date next March

FRIENDS! The Musical Parody has been rescheduled for March 3 2021 at York Barbican after the March 20 show was postponed under the Coronavirus strictures.

The lampooning show both celebrates and pokes fun at the misadventures of Manhattan 20-somethings Ross, Chandler, Monica, Phoebe, Joey and Rachel from the cherished 1990s’ American TV sitcom as they navigate the pitfalls of work, life and love.

Friends! The Musical Parody is a “good-hearted romp through our favourite moments in an uncensored, hilarious, fast-paced, music-filled show” that opens on a typical day at New York coffee shop Central Perk. When an unexpected runaway bride enters the picture, it kicks the whole gang out of second gear.

The show will play York Barbican as part of the off-Broadway and Las Vegas musical’s now extended first UK and Irish tour. Tickets for the revised date are on sale at yorkbarbican.co.uk.

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Nick Mason’s Saucerful Of Secrets rearrange Pink Floyd gig at York Barbican

The poster for the Nick Mason’s Saucerful Of Secrets spring tour, now moved to autumn

A GOOD journalist may never reveal his saucers, but the secret is out: Nick Mason’s Saucerful Of Secrets are moving their postponed-by-Coronavirus May 1 gig at York Barbican to October 4.

Pink Floyd drummer and percussionist Mason, 76, is joined in his Secrets operative by lead guitarist Gary Kemp, yes, that Gary Kemp, from New Romantic Islington pop dandies Spandau Ballet, now 60.

In the line-up too for The Echoes Tour are Pink Floyd touring and recording bassist Guy Pratt, guitarist Lee Harris, from The Blockheads, and The Orb’s Dom Beken on keyboards.

Together, they celebrate Pink Floyd’s earliest work “in all its psychedelic, freaked-out glory”, and the re-arranged 2020 tour will see the band further expand their repertoire to encompass songs from the early catalogue up to Floyd’s 1972 album Obscured By Clouds.

Nick Mason in performance with his Saucerful Of Secrets

Nick Mason’s Saucerful Of Secrets made their debut at four intimate London shows at Dingwalls on May 20 2018 and The Half Moon in Putney on May 21, 23 and 24. The Dingwalls date was his first show since Pink Floyd played at the 2005 Live 8 concert in London and the run of London gigs was his first since Floyd’s Division Bell Tour in 1994.

Mason’s band subsequently sold out theatres around the world, and memories came flooding back at three nights at London’s Roundhouse, where Pink Floyd had played some of their most revered early shows in the 1960s.

Last September, Mason was named Prog Magazine’s Prog God at the Progressive Music Awards at Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre, following in the footsteps of Peter Gabriel, Tony Banks, Jon Anderson, Rick Wakeman, Ian Anderson, Carl Palmer and Steve Howe.

Tickets remain valid for the new Barbican date. For bookings, go to yorkbarbican.co.uk.

Did you know?

BORN on January 27 1944, in Hampstead, London, drummer Nicholas Berkeley Mason CBE is a founder member of the progressive rock band Pink Floyd.

He is the only Pink Floyd musician to have played on all of their studio albums and their only constant member since their formation in London in 1965.