Ye Vagabonds

‘None The Wiser’

Nominated Best Original Song ‘None the Wiser’ BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards 2014

Folk Singer of the Year & Best Original Song ‘Hollow Point’ BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards 2011

Criticised by an art school lecturer as having “a remarkable eye for trivia” Chris Wood’s love of small things has made him one of England’s most vivid and arresting song writers. With gentle intelligence he weaves the tradition with his own contemporary parables. Hollow Point is his chilling ballad of the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezez and Wood’s feel for the sheer “one thing after another-ness” of life allows us, for the first time, to see the event through the eyes of the victim.

Joan Armatrading presented Chris with the 2011 BBC Radio Two Folk Singer Of The Year award before inviting him as special guest onto her Autumn 2012 tour. They played 51 cities and Wood found himself eavesdropping on conversations from pound shops to tea rooms, army recruiting centres to hotel saunas collecting the poetry of recession. His response is, None The Wiser, a fourth solo album released in Summer 2013. With humble hymns and sweeping statements from Alzheimers to William Blake, Wood lovingly takes the pulse of his homeland in what could be his best album yet.

Wood has worked and collaborated with a long list of artists, most recently Dizraeli, Billy Bragg, Eliza and Martin Carthy in Simon Emerson’s Imagined Village. His duet with Eliza added to the “Villager’s” winning another Folk Award for “Best Traditional Song”.

The Irish Times dubbed him ‘the renaissance man of English folk’ because his work extends beyond song writing into commissions for Radio 3 Between The Ears, Late Junction and The Essay. He has written for The Times and lectured at Newcastle and Limerick Universities. His setting of Blake’s Jerusalem features in Paul Gilroy’s lecture on poetry and music at Kings College London and Wood’s lyric Walk This World With Music is included in Michael Morpurgo’s latest collection.

Praise for ‘None The Wiser’: 

INDEPENDENT  ✰✰✰✰✰
“The title track alone is a masterpiece”

EXPRESS  ✰✰✰✰✰
“Wood has honed his songwriting to perfection here… heartbreaking purity.”

THE GUARDIAN  ✰✰✰✰
“Remarkable for the settings as much as the lyrics.”

THE IRISH TIMES ✰✰✰✰✰
“Nobody comes even close to equaling his bird’s-eye-view”

MOJO ✰✰✰✰
“a rarefied talent, both as writer and interpreter.”

SONGLINES
“a quietly powerful, astute and vivid set of songs…A folk–soul album”

£12 with £11 concessions.

Visit chriswoodmusic.co.uk

Anglo-American singer songwriter Sarah Gillespie has received critical acclaim for her 3 albums that mix elements of jazz, folk and blues with her trademark poetic lyricism. The Guardian’s jazz critique John Fordham describes Gillespie as “(joining) Bob Dylan’s lyrical bite and languid delivery to the forthrightness of Joni Mitchell, with a little rap-like percussiveness thrown in, she is an original.”

Playing tonight with renewed jazz composer Tom Cawley on piano and Ben Bastin on double bass, Gillespie will be performing a mix of songs from her new album ‘Glory Days’ as well as revisiting her back catalogue.

Tickets £9, £8

Visit Sarah’s website

‘Humorous impressionistic lyrics oscillate between the intimate and the infinite’
The Independent ★★★★
‘Vividly powerfully lyrics and  glorious melodies.
Rock n’ Real Magazine ★★★★★
‘Glory Days.. her best mix yet of hooky tunes and smart lyrics’.
Mojo ★★★★
‘Joni Mitchell/Melanie-esque voice, foot-tapping music, and captivating lyrics.’
BUZZ Magazine ★★★★★
‘The interplay between her acoustic guitar and Gilad Atzmon’s clarinet sparkles, and the words tumble out unstoppable and direct.’
The Financial Times ★★★★
‘Glory Days reveals Gillespie’s song writing to be as sharp and astute as ever and her poetic muse undimmed. It also charts her rise to prominence as an instrumentalist’.
The Jazz Mann ★★★★
Is she the new Joni Mitchell? PJ Harvey? Bob Dylan even? Mixing jazz-folk artistry and punk attitude, third album Glory Days (Pastiche) recalls all three in places but Gillespie’s spiky lyrical gift is utterly distinctive.
London METRO 

Coming to us straight from WOMAD, Steve Sogo and Hope Street. He is a young and very dynamic musician from Burundi who took to the guitar in the middle of the civil war to express his wish to live and to live a normal life.This music is pure, original blues. His songs are a cry for life; full of pain and hope.

Steve Sogo makes acoustic, hand made music that can be perfectly combined with African traditional sounds in a perfect reflection of his cultural identity and heritage.

Tickets £9, £8 Children £4

Hank Wangford is an authentic country singer/songwriter with a wide emotional range. Hank is renowned on both sides of the Atlantic for his originality and long years on the country music scene.

Reg Meuross is a modern day troubadour with some of the most beautifully disarming songs and lyrics ever written.

Together Hank and Reg have embarked on the ‘No Hall Too Small’ tour playing in two hundred and twenty village halls throughout England and Scotland.