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RAGGED UNION
BLUEGRASS (Colorado, USA) 7 - 23 October 2016 Ragged Union’s hard-driving
bluegrass, with a tinge of the traditional and a healthy dose
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Ragged Union
Bluegrass
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Ragged Union’s hard-driving bluegrass, with a tinge of the
traditional and a healthy dose of the blues is infectious and mesmerising. And
since their inception a couple of years ago are becoming a firm favourite with
music lovers up and down the land!
“This is your grandfather’s
bluegrass music but NOT his lyrics or subject matter. These tunes are
‘traditional’ in their approach and in RU’s presentation, but the subject matter
of the lyrics is wholly modern; that is, they deal with modern angst, problems,
even fixations in both a literal and metaphorical way. And this is the crux:
that’s entirely different than how bluegrass music has been ‘updated’ to date.
It is beyond appropriate; it is fresh and innovative while preserving through
their instruments the things one likes about bluegrass music.”
Some pretty powerful words for a band who is just now releasing their
first album. The music coming from this six-piece Colorado based ensemble, lead
by husband and wife Geoff and Christina Union, is memorable and provides a
platform for players performing original tunes and off-the-beaten path
standards, winning fans in the process.
There is an intimacy and tightness surrounding the vocals, with
award-winning instrumental work, a powerful rhythmic drive, and up tempo
arrangements giving way to the edgy, outsider songwriting that has become an
earmark of their style.
'Hard Row to Hoe' was
recorded in the fall/winter months of 2014 in Ft. Collins, Colorado. Former
Rebecca Frazier/Hit and Run banjoist, and current player for Finnders and
Youngberg, Aaron Youngberg, engineered and mixed the project consisting of
thirteen tunes, eleven singers, two instrumentals, ten originals and three
covers.
Band members Christina Union (lead and tenor vocals), Jordan Ramsey
(mandolin, vocal), Chris C-Bob Elliot (Banjo), Pat Hoeper (fiddle), and Michael
Sivcovich (upright bass), have created a sound that is masterful in the hands of
seasoned musicians and with an appeal that is infectious.
BOOKING
NOW FOR A SHORT UK & IRELAND TOUR 7 - 23 OCTOBER 2016
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MAIA
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The eagerly anticipated new album by MAIA will be out in the new year
and it's a corker as you'd imagine. MAIA are self-proclaimed sci-fi folk
evangelists and have spent the last 3 years touring and playing festivals and as
a result have morphed and matured into what has been described as "Harmonic
psychedelic sci-fi folk and disco rock....". Winners of the Yorkshire Gig Guide
award for ‘Outstanding Live Band’ in 2014, MAIA are taking a break from
recording to play a string of dates to showcase some of the new material from
their forthcoming album to be released in the Autumn. Their genre busting mix
glides easily from sweet stunning vocal harmonies to complex blissed out
grooves; punctuated by echoing banjo, shimmering mandolin, spooky brass and
captivating vocal melodramas.
Tour
dates available in Spring 2016
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Guy Davis & Brooks
Williams
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A special debut and UK 'Inside the Delta' tour for New York blues
legend GUY
DAVIS and Statesboro, Georgia born roots and americana
singer-songwriter BROOKS WILLIAMS,
ranked one for the top Acoustic Guitarists of all time.
Two beautiful guitarists displaying a level of skill and humanity
that makes audiences smile wherever they perform.
GUY
DAVIS
Whether Guy Davis is appearing on “Late Night With Conan O’Brien” or
nationally syndicated radio programs such as Garrison Keillor’s, “A Prairie Home
Campanion”, “Mountain Stage” or David Dye’s,“World Café”., in front of 15,000
people on the Main Stage of a major festival, or teaching an intimate gathering
of students at a Music Camp, Guy feels the instinctive desire to give each
listener his ‘all’.
BROOKS
WILLIAMS
Brooks writes groove-laden songs and delivers them with an easy-going
vocal style and monstrous guitar chops. Walking the line between blues and
Americana, Williams has worked stages worldwide for over 25 years, amassing a
staggering back-catalogue of songs, recordings and tales. With nearly 20 CDs to
his name – and more on the way – this Statesboro Georgia native is, according to
americanaUK, “impossible not to
like."
Click here to see Brooks performing 'Top of the
World' on his cigar box guitar at The Ram Club, Thames Ditton, England (November
2014).
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Curtis
Eller
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Lace up your dancing shoes here comes Curtis Eller! Banjo player,
songwriter and rock & roll singer..after beginning his show business career
at the age of seven as a juggler and acrobat, the Detroit native turned to the
banjo and headed for New York City where he rose to obscurity as "New York's
angriest yodeling banjo player". Siting Buster Keaton, Abraham Lincoln and Elvis
Presley as his primary musical influences, Eller became a staple of the beer
halls, burlesque houses and underground theaters of the eastern seaboard. Fame
proved elusive.
Having spent years toiling in the musical sweatshops
of the industrial north, Eller uprooted his family and resettled in some faded,
tobacco town in the North Carolina Piedmont to begin the arduous task of
assembling a new version of his band, The American Circus. The latest version of
the ensemble is a brutish and inelegant rock & roll outfit specializing in
banjo music for funerals, gospel tunes for atheists and novelty dance fads for
amputees. A lavish, Hollywood, dance sequence unfolding on the floor of a
Chicago meatpacking plant in 1894.
Eller's numerous compositions describe a dreamlike vision of American
history where all points in time have collapsed into one. Past recordings have
seen a ghastly parade of historical luminaries, from Abraham Lincoln and Buster
Keaton to Amelia Earhart and Joe Louis, sharing the spotlight with a host of
Civil War generals and corrupt 19th century politicians.
The group's latest phonographic recording, "How to Make It in
Hollywood", is a compact collection of glittery show tunes, sentimental
tear-jerkers and rock & roll rave-ups whose lyrics are populated with
two-bit prize fighters, Hollywood has-beens, lapsed gospel singers and forgotten
pop stars. Eller relentlessly tours the US and Europe with an expanding and
contracting cast of misfits. Coming to a UK town near you in April 2016 for 10
days only!
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Dave Formula & The
Finks
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Keith & Dave Angel, Andy Seward and Dave Formula have formidable
individual and collective musical backgrounds that they have brought together to
form their classic, groove organ outfit - Dave Formula & The Finks.
Influences on the band from New Orleans, Memphis, Chicago &
Philadelphia, are re-interpreted through the music of genuinely legendary
artists: The Meters, Booker T & The Mg’s, Curtis Mayfield & Jimmy
Smith.
When all this is mixed in together & combined with their storming
original tunes, they create uniquely exciting music & a psychedelic
soul-sound like no other band playing on the planet today. At a recent club show
the promoter had to ask the packed crowd to stop dancing and sit down, as the
whole floor of the Victorian warehouse-venue was moving so much he was afraid it
would fall through to the storey below.
Dave Formula is the keyboard player, songwriter and soundtrack
composer from Manchester, who is perhaps best known for his work with Magazine,
long regarded as one of the most significant & influential British bands. He
also played & wrote for New Romantic ensemble Visage as well as world music
band, The Angel Brothers. It was during the 1960’s in his first band, The St
Louis Union, that he developed his love for the Hammond organ and a great dance
groove.
Dave rejoined his Magazine colleagues for a run of sold-out shows in
February 2009 to great critical response and in summer 2009 Magazine played
European festivals and a sell- out show at London's Royal Festival Hall. The
band closed the year with a headline appearance on Later with Jools Holland and
BBC’s Electric Proms. They released an acclaimed new album & toured again in
2011.
Live
dates available in October / November / December 2015
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For all
enquiries, availability, interview requests, promo CDs etc please
contact:
GAIL
COOKE
LAUGHING DOG MUSIC
(UK)
gail@laughingdogmusic.co.uk
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Joanne Shaw Taylor
