SAT 7TH, NOVEMBER
JAMES YORKSTON & BIG EYES FAMILY PLAYERS PLUS ALASDAIR ROBERTS PLUS MARRY WATERSON PLUS SPECIAL GUESTS
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VENUE / THE TABERNACLE POWIS SQUARE,
LONDON, W11 2AY
TIME / 7PM
TUBE / LADBROKE GROVE
TEL / 0207 520 9305
TICKET INFO / £16.50
Eat Your Own Ears presents
JAMES YORKSTON AND THE BIG EYES FAMILY PLAYERS
ALASDAIR ROBERTS
MARRY WATERSON & OLIVER KNIGHT
MARY HAMPTON
DAVID A JAYCOCK
Plus guests
Saturday 7 November 2009
Tickets from:
JAMES YORKSTON, resident of the East Neuk of Fife, returns for a special day of folk music at London’s historic Tabernacle venue in the company of The Big Eyes Family Players.
James plays in support of his new album Folk Songs - out on Domino on the 10th of August – which features traditional songs from the length and breadth of the Great Britain & Ireland and one tune from Galicia in Spain. After a decade which has seen folk music morph into nu-folk, mobile phone-ad folk, mortgage-folk, smoothie-folk and so on, Yorkston has reached back into the tradition of song and place and drawn a line in the sand.
ALASDAIR ROBERTS will offer up his ancient song in support. Long-time collaborator of Will Oldham, Robert’s songs revive the tradition song and balladry of the British Isles to tell tales of sweetly melodic tragedy.
MARRY WATERSON & OLIVER KNIGHT
Maria Gilhooley (nee Waterson) and Oliver Knight are brother and sister who have grown up immersed in traditional song. As part of the Waterson Family musical dynasty, the siblings have thrived on communal music making whilst developing highly original and distinctly English performance styles of their own, style that owes much to the folk tradition, but isn’t beholden to it.
Maria Gilhooley is a singer best known for her rich, striking vocal contributions to numerous recordings and live performances by various members of the Waterson family. Her younger brother Oliver Knight is probably best known as collaborator with their mother, Lal Waterson, on landmark albums Once in a Blue Moon (TSCD478) and A Bed of Roses (TSCD505). Oliver is a sought after guitarist, composer, arranger and has been record producer and engineer on a series of influential albums including those by his cousin, Eliza Carthy.
The children of the luminous singing talent, Lal Waterson and George Knight, Maria and Oliver were born in Yorkshire and both have long since made their respective homes in Robin Hood’s Bay, a fishing village perched on the edge of the dramatic East Coast.
PLUS SPECIAL GUESTS
More on Folk Songs and the Big Eyes Family Players:
“The idea behind this album of folk songs first surfaced around 2000 / 2001: To record an album of traditional songs for Fence Records of St. Andrews, to sell as a companion piece to my own work which they were then punting out to unsuspecting golfers. So I set to it, learning songs from cassettes and CDs by Anne Briggs and Shirley Collins, Jean Ritchie and Nic Jones, Eliza Carthy & Nancy Kerr; recording them to various states of success and undress. I also tackled a few Lal Waterson tracks – Scarecrow & Fine Horseman. Lal’s songwriting of course I’ve revisited since. Alas, it ended up unreleased – Domino Records, in a rare lapse of good judgement, decided to offer me a record contract and the folk album got put on the back burner. Being miserly, the songs I’d recorded already, or had marked for that original traditional album, were mostly put on subsequent albums or EPs. So, this album here consists of 11 “new” tunes. New as in chosen and recorded especially for this record. But they’re not new songs, by any means.
I picked up The Big Eyes Family Players somewhere along the way. Any touring musician will tell you – CDs from punters and fellow musicians seem to end up in your pockets at the end of every gig. At the end of every tour there’s a least half a dozen CDs, CDrs, etc. One such CD I discovered was by Big Eyes; and lo-and-behold, I loved what I heard. I contacted the main guy, James Green, and we’ve been in touch ever since. When I decided to resurrect this traditional album idea, he was an obvious choice of partner in crime. I didn’t want to work with my usual band The Athletes, but there was no slur there, they’ll be back on board for the next James Yorkston album proper – I just fancied trying something different.”