BRITISH musician Teddy Thompson and American singer Kelly Jones will support their April 1 debut collaboration, Little Windows, with a 14-date spring tour featuring two Yorkshire shows.
Teddy and Kelly, or TT and KJ, as they affectionately call each other, will play the Howard Assembly Room at Leeds Grand Theatre on May 12 and Pocklington Arts Centre on May 21. On their first national tour together, American singer-songwriter Sunny Ozell will open the shows.
The long-time mutual admirers first sang together in 2011 at Club Largo in Los Angeles, where they chose a George Jones song and the harmony blend was so goosebump good that it seemed only natural to do more.
There began a two-year, bi-coastal, multi-seasonal outpouring of creativity. Some songs were penned in summertime in a West Hollywood bungalow, surrounded by palm trees and cactuses; the others arrived during autumn and winter in a Greenwich Village high-rise with a skyline view.
No matter the setting or season, Teddy, Kelly and writing partner Bill DeMain were concerned only with capturing complex emotions with simple honesty and writing songs that would measure up to the timeless classics of the Everly Brothers, Buddy Holly and Sam Cooke.
Produced by Mike Viola, the album was cut quickly and decisively, live to a 16-track tape machine. Standing side by side in the vocal booth, Thompson and Jones sang to the accompaniment of drummer Pete Thomas, bass player Davey Faragher, guitarist Stevie Elliott and keyboard player Daniel Clarke.
“Life is full of little windows that open now and then," say Thompson and Jones, whose albums offers ten engaging views of the joys and sorrows of love and the vagaries of the human heart. These range from wide-eyed wonderment on Wondering to lingering nostalgia on I Thought That We Said Goodbye; from promises on Make A Wish On Me to pleas on Don’t Remind Me and sad self-deception on Better At Lying.
Tickets are on sale at serious.org.uk/thompson, cityvarieties.co.uk and pocklingtonartcentre.co.uk or on 0113 243 0808 and 01759 301547.
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