PLEASE Please You gig promoter Joe Coates is promising “plenty of interesting stuff to come”, more of which he will reveal next week. In the meantime, he is presenting three shows in York and Leeds for starters.
Kicking off Joe’s 2014 will be The Wave Pictures, playing the Brudenell Social Club in Leeds for the second time in four months on Wednesday from 7.30pm.
“They had such a ball when they visited in September to celebrate the release of their double album City Forgiveness that a quick return was desired,” he says.
Last year, The Wave Pictures spent six weeks driving around America on tour in a small van. “We visited Hank Williams’ house and Billy The Kid’s grave, watched the Golden Gate bridge disappear into the clouds and had our frisbee confiscated by a cop,” says vocalist and lyricist Dave Tattersall.
“We drove and we drove and we drove and we drove, and while we drove, I scribbled anything that popped into my head in a notebook, and on my return home I found a few hundred crumpled, well-travelled pages at the bottom of my bag.”
These crumpled notes turned into 20 wry, observational songs in “a very jet-lagged and confused week” for Tattersall. The Wave Pictures duly had a double album on their hands; not a concept album about America so much as a testament to the way that travel excites the imagination.
Up next from Please Please You will be Mr. Gary Stewart and The Tin Foil Collective plus Boss Caine in The Basement at City Screen, York, on Thursday.
“Gary may be a Scot by birth, but having been resident of Leeds for many years, and being a lovely bloke, who hosts the Gaslight Club acoustic night, plays in local bands and makes a great folkie pop noise of his own, he’s certainly become an honorary Yorkshireman in our eyes,” says Joe.
“A couple of months ago, he released his second album, Mr. Gary Stewart & The Tin Foil Collective, a fine folk-pop record with added assistance from collaborators from Hope & Social and Ellen & The Escapades. So it seemed as good a time as any to welcome Gary back to York, along with his full troupe.”
Thursday’s 8pm bill also promises the full band version of Dan Lucas’s Boss Caine with cello, fiddle and double bass, plus David Lawrie and The Lungs.
Joe’s first overseas signing for 2014 will be The Deep Dark Woods, a five-piece from Saskatoon, north east Canada, on February 2 in The Basement.
“Since 2006’s self-titled debut, they’ve been delivering some of the finest country and harmony-folk this side of the late Byrds records, Gram Parsons and The Band,” says Joe.
“Their fifth record, Jubilee, was recorded almost entirely live and somehow manages to raise an already high bar. It’s a masterpiece and certainly one of my fave records of 2013. That’s why I’m delighted to have them come and play in The Basement.”
The 8pm concert will be opened by Scottish folkies Trembling Bells. “Lavinia Blackwall’s soaring vocals and a super-tight band set them apart,” says Joe. “It’s a very British sound, perhaps resembling psych-folkers The Trees at their most serene.”
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