We’re on tour for three one off concerts (ie not part of an album release tour – it’s more of a work in progress tour)…here’s the dates – come along!
Fri 16th March – Great Eaton Hall, Leicestershire https://www.wegottickets.com/event/427094 T. 01536 770309
Sat 17th March – Pound Arts Centre, Corsham, Wiltshire – www.poundarts.org.uk T. 01249 701628
Sun 18th March – Wagon Wheel Presents @ The Greystones, Sheffield – https://wagonwheelmedia.wordpress.com
And from the press release…
March sees Southern Tenant Folk Union back on the road and playing brand new ‘work in progress’ material from their current album project, ‘Willie Rough’. The record is being based around the renowned Bill Bryden theatre production from 1972. The play is set amongst Red Clydeside in the early part of the first world war and touches on the themes of patriotism, working class life, unions, war and loyalty.
New songs and tunes that the band are working on for Willie Rough will make up a large section of the first half of the show – songs about the era, some based on characters and settings from the play and others inspired by the text or the era and world in which it was set. Also the band’s percussionist Steve Fivey is hoping to include the industrial sounds of the shipyards themselves with echoes of the plating, rivetting and machine work being used.
The live shows will also be taking in music form across their ten year career and seven albums. The political folk protest of 2016’s ‘Join Forces’, the right wing talk radio challenging ‘The Chuck Norris Project’ with its look at US politics circa 2014 (using the outspoken right wing actor’s movie titles as starting points for more progressive left wing songwriting – eg The Octagon, Slaughter In San Francisco & Invasion USA) and the ‘modern horror’ themed ‘Hello Cold Goodbye Sun’ which saw the band invited to play live on Irish national TV (The Late Late Show) and on BBC One TV (The Andrew Marr Show).
Plus there’ll be plenty from the earlier albums, in particular the debut album which was out of print for several years but has now being reissued in a new remastered version with bonus studio and live tracks to celebrate its 10th anniversary. It was acclaimed at the time with reviews in Rock N Reel, Uncut, The Irish Times, Insurgent Country and Americana UK and the album reached No 5 on the Americana UK Chart (behind Lucinda Williams, Richmond Fontaine, The Damnwells & Redlands Palomino Company) and was supported on BBC national radio with airplay from Steve Lamacq, Ralph McLean, Sean Rowley and Mark Lamarr (on his late lamented Radio 2 God’s Jukebox Show).
What the press said about ‘Join Forces’
“…Join Forces brings old time protest into the modern world, asking positive questions for troubled times.”
Andy Fyfe, Mojo Magazine
“Written after last year’s General Election and recorded at the height of this year’s EU Referendum campaign and its aftermath, there’s a lyrically politically edge to Southern Tenant Folk Union’s seventh album Join Forces, but not so much that it overwhelms the air of gently capable bluegrass reverie soaked through the music.”
David Pollock, The List
“Outspoken and politically forthright, the seventh album from the Union is political-folk with feeling”
Dave Esson, Scottish Daily Express
