Tuesday, April 25, 2017

New pop duo Little Reader channels The Pretenders on latest single from upcoming debut produced by Mark Watrous of The Shins.

Nashville meets L.A. as veteran songwriters Kate Tucker, Ross Flournoy make “The Big Score,” out May 19th. Hear “Burn Eternal” now.

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Little Reader (L-R): Kate Tucker, Ross Flournoy. Photo credit: Dan Long.

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Listen to the latest Little Reader single “Burn Eternal” at Popdust or the links below!




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Go to Iceland with Shan Turner-Carroll in the video for “Speed of Light” by Little Reader at Team Coco!






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“Put on your dancing shoes and go on the trip of a lifetime.” — Conan O’Brien Presents: Team Coco

“Little Reader have laboriously cemented their sun-bleached version of pop.” — Popdust

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“You know the phrase ‘It was a messy breakup’? Well that’s what hit me when Ross brought the beginnings of ‘Burn Eternal,’ says Nashville-based singer-songwriter Kate Tucker of the inspiration behind the latest single from the upcoming debut album by Little Reader, Tucker’s new and unexpected pop music collaboration with Los Angeles-based songwriter and guitarist, Ross Flournoy, late of Merge Records bands The Broken West and Apex Manor.

The duo’s debut album The Big Score (out May 19th) was produced by Mark Watrous of The Shins.

For his part, Flournoy explains, “This is a song I had started eight or nine years ago but never finished. When Kate and I started writing together, I dusted it off and we finished it. I love her singing on this one — especially all her harmonies on the choruses. We were going for an early 80s Pretenders kind of thing.”

Also out now is the music video for the first Little Reader single “Speed of Light,” featuring the life-affirming dance moves of visual artist Shan Turner-Carroll. The clip, shot in Iceland, streaming now via Team Coco or YouTube, and the song already available via the usual streaming providers, as well.

In addition to working on their own projects, Tucker and Flournoy have both found success writing for others in recent years. If you’ve watched Jake Tapper’s CNN show, then you’ve heard Flournoy’s theme music, and Tucker has found herself on stage at the Sundance Film Festival for her work in film scoring and soundtracks. Between the two of them, dozens of television shows have used Tucker and Flournoy’s songs.

So, when these two met for the first time, in the hills over Los Angeles, it was merely to try writing together at the request of their publisher Rough Trade, or as Tucker jokes, “It was basically as blind a date as a co-write can be.” But, as we now know, the pair ultimately decided to take it all the way, and soon, Flournoy was in Nashville recording with Kate and her mates.

The Big Score by Little Reader arrives May 19th, preceded by the single “Burn Eternal,” and the single and music video “Speed of Light.” Little Reader is available for interviews. Contact Josh Bloom at Fanatic for more information.

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Little Reader
The Big Score
May 19th, 2017
  

Track Listing:

01. Speed of Light (SOUNDCLOUD | SPOTIFY | MP3 | VIDEO)
02. Running Toward the Sun
03. Burn Eternal (SOUNDCLOUD | MP3)
04. Give It
05. Light as a Feather
06. Disappearing One
07. Love Lust Life
08. Strange Lightning
09. Best Regret
10. Here Forever
11. Point of No Return (Bonus Track)

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Little Reader Links


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Contact Josh Bloom at Fanatic Promotion


Thursday, April 20, 2017

Songwriter, author, painter, tennis & ping-pong player, John Andrew Fredrick to release 15th full-length in 30 years as the black watch tomorrow!

L.A.-based renaissance man’s new novel out now, non-fiction title about Wes Anderson out July 11th. Hear new album at Austin Town Hall.

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John Andrew Fredrick of the black watch as photographed by Brendan Holmes.

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Hear The Gospel According To John streaming in its entirety via Austin Town Hall or the link below!



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the black watch – In The Press

“Should’ve become a household name a long time ago.” — USA Today
“Sounds like the holy union of Guided By Voices, The Wedding Present and any number of New Zealand pop heroes.” — Buzzbands.la
“A prime example of Fredrick’s knack for clever and extremely catchy songs.” — Popmatters
 “Salutes the great DIY pop canon and trophy hallways of heroes with an illustrious array of pepped up jangle pop.” — Impose

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Hear the black watch songs “Satellite” via The Big Takeover and “The All-Right Side of Just OK” at Slicing UpEyeballs!

John Andrew Fredrick, a man that has been making music, writing books, professionally professing about both (that’s what professors do?), and generally being a ceaseless creative entity forever, has threatened to quit releasing music and concentrate on his other careers and hobbies (Dr. Fredrick also holds a Ph.D, plays tennis or ping-pong five days a week, and paints) for years.

But this product of 25 years of Los Angeles living continues to find songs and riffs and lyrics wandering into his head as he’s traversing the city’s traffic to California Lutheran University, forty-five miles north of Los Angeles, where he lectures in the English department.

The latest collection of wandering riffs and lyrics by Fredrick’s band the black watch, the latest in a line so long it’s like the painful reveal of an over-the-hill age (except this number represents an actual accomplishment), is Christened (emphasis on Christ) with a title wholly (holy) befitting Fredrick’s sense of humor and sense of artistic entitlement.

Put the puns away, it’s The Gospel According To John.

The new album, arriving April 21st, 2017, is the band’s 15th in 30 years of music-making (leaving out EPs, singles, wax cylinders), a pretty impressive feat, especially for a band that has “put the frosting,” as Fredrick puts it sweet, on its career more than once. The Gospel According To John follows-up 2015’s Highs & Lows, and was recorded over the course of eleven months with Rob Campanella of The Brian Jonestown Massacre producing.


On the heels of the release of Fredrick’s latest novel Your Caius Aquilla, and The Gospel According To John on April 21st, Fredrick will follow-up four well-received novels with the release of a non-fiction title about Wes Anderson, who Fredrick previously taught a course on at The University of Southern California. Fucking Innocent: The Early Films of Wes Anderson will be released on July 11th, 2017.

“This book makes film criticism fun,” Fredrick says. “It’s very ‘Lester Bangs goes to the movies.’”

The Gospel According To John, the 15th full-length album by the black watch arrives on April 21st, 2017. John Andrew Fredrick is available for interviews.  Contact Josh Bloom at Fanatic for more information.

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the black watch
The Gospel According To John
(The Eskimo Record Label)
April 21st, 2017
  

Track Listing:

01. Whence (STREAM | MP3)
02. Way Strange World (STREAM | MP3 | VIDEO)
03. The All-Right Side of Just OK (STREAM | MP3)
04. A Story
05. Jealously
06. Orange Kicks
07. Oscillating Redux
08. Satellite (STREAM | MP3)

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the black watch Links


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Contact Josh Bloom at Fanatic Promotion


20 Minute Loop drops music video for its dark, Low-inspired song “Drowning,” one of many stripped-down reworks from band’s 20-year history.

Arrangements on San Francisco-based duo’s first album in eight years spotlight two voices “born to sing together.” See “Drowning” at Stereo Embers.

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20 Minute Loop (L-R): Kelly Atkins, Greg Giles. Photo credit: Teresa Miller.

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See the music video for “Drowning” by 20 Minute Loop now via Stereo Embers!



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“Intertwining voices and perhaps a bit too much drama.” – Kelly Atkins of 20 Minute Loop on “Drowning.”

“This song was inspired by bands like Low who were on my radar at the time in the late ‘90s, especially the use of intersecting monophonic lines rather than big chords,” says Greg Giles of 20 Minute Loop about “Drowning,” a favorite from the 20 Minute Loop catalog that appears on the band’s new album in a stripped-down, re-worked version.

The song is just one of an album full that were re-recorded with new arrangements for the first 20 Minute Loop album in eight years, Songs Praising The Mutant Race, out now.

Kelly (Atkins) was there at the inception, co-writing the vocal melodies, and she wrote all the lyrics,” says Giles.

Atkins is the co-founder of 20 Minute Loop, with Giles, and the band now includes avowed 20 Minute Loop loyalist, Kevin Seal, who initially sat in on the duo’s living room reunion shows in 2014, and then joined full-time for the reinvention of these 20 Minute Loop tunes in the studio.

‘Drowning’ was written during a very intimate songwriting period with Greg,” says Atkins. “Intertwining voices and perhaps a bit too much drama. It did make for a beautiful song, though."

About the music video for “Drowning,” Seal explains, “I wanted the visuals to answer the text of Kelly’s words. It’s morbid, but when I was a little kid, one of the older kids in our neighborhood found his mom deceased. It freaked us all out and the thought of it still flashes into my mind occasionally.”

Seal continues, “In the decades since, I’ve had a persistent fear that I would discover a dead body. That feeling of walking around the woods, trying to quell burgeoning panic, has been in my nightmares for years.”

Regardless of its darkness, Seal admires the song.

“The melody and harmony are so delicate and lovely,” Seal explains. “Kelly and Greg wrote ‘Drowning’ long before I joined 20 Minute Loop, and I’d always found it haunting and pretty.  It’s slowcore, really, like 23, maybe 24 beats per minute. It took me a while to get that piano and Rhodes feeling normal. I had to drink some cough syrup first!”

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20 Minute Loop album + poster art by Sara Lautman (The New Yorker, The Believer, The Pitchfork Review).

Twenty years of 20 Minute Loop is celebrated with the release of Songs Praising The Mutant Race, the San Francisco-based band’s first album in over eight years. The album features stripped-down re-workings of favorites from the band’s catalog.

Formed by Greg Giles (vocals, guitar) in 1997, and joined by Kelly Atkins (vocals, keyboards, flute) shortly thereafter, the core duo of 20 Minute Loop follows-up the release of five albums, with this, their sixth, and arguably most passionate, recording yet.  The seemingly permanent shelving of 20 Minute Loop has now given way to a record that proves that bands may die, but songs don’t. The collection breathes with both the wisdom of age, and renewal.

Inspired by the reactions of longtime fans at a series of intimate house concerts that 20 Minute Loop performed upon initially reforming in 2014, Songs Praising The Mutant Race finds the group recording as a trio in very similar circumstances: live in the room at Ninth Street Opus studios in Berkeley with producer, Jim Greer.

In re-imagining and re-arranging this material, the band wanted the songs to shine without being burdened by too much production. Here the songs and singers are laid bare, and the result is a perfect depiction of the vibe from one of the living room concerts that inspired the record, with the band’s visceral lyrics and accompanying tempos taking on a woozy, syrupy overtone that focuses on the vocal interplay between Giles and Atkins, who sound more like they were born to sing together than ever before.

As a band that came about and went away in the age of the Compact Disc, 20 Minute Loop is very excited for Songs Praising The Mutant Race to be its first album issued on vinyl, and they are doing it with style. Fans can purchase a beautiful vinyl edition of the album with a jacket illustrated by Sara Lautman, whose work has previously appeared in The New Yorker, The Believer, The Pitchfork Review, The Awl, and other publications.

Songs Praising The Mutant Race by 20 Minute Loop is out now. Members of 20 Minute Loop are available for interviews. Contact Josh Bloom at Fanatic for more information.

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20 Minute Loop
Songs Praising The Mutant Race
(S/R) – Out Now
  

Track Listing:

01. Mercury Vapor (STREAM | SPOTIFY | MP3 | VIDEO)
02. English As A Second Language
03. Empire
04. Giftgas (STREAM | SPOTIFY | MP3)
05. Elephant
06. Hell In A Handbasket
07. Parking Lot
08. Drowning (SPOTIFY | VIDEO)
09. Aquarium
10. Carlos The Jackal
11. Windsor McKay
12. Never My Love

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20 Minute Loop Links


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Contact Josh Bloom at Fanatic Promotion


Friday, April 7, 2017

Songwriters Kate Tucker, Ross Flournoy team up as new pop duo Little Reader. Upcoming debut album produced by Mark Watrous of The Shins.

Take a trip to Iceland with artist Shan Turner-Carroll in music video for “Speed of Light” single at Team Coco now! “The Big Score” arrives May 19th.

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Little Reader (L-R): Kate Tucker, Ross Flournoy. Photo credit: Dan Long.

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Check out “Speed of Light” by Little Reader at Team Coco or the links below!



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“It’s an accidental love child,” says Nashville-based singer-songwriter Kate Tucker of Little Reader, her new and unexpected pop music collaboration with Los Angeles-based songwriter and guitarist, Ross Flournoy, late of Merge Records bands The Broken West and Apex Manor. The duo’s debut album The Big Score (out May 19th) was produced by Mark Watrous of The Shins.

The music video for the first Little Reader single “Speed of Light,” featuring the life-affirming dance moves of visual artist Shan Turner-Carroll, is streaming now via Team Coco or YouTube now. The song is also available today via the usual streaming providers.

In addition to working on their own projects, Tucker and Flournoy have both found success writing for others in recent years. If you’ve watched Jake Tapper’s CNN show, then you’ve heard Flournoy’s theme music, and Tucker has found herself on stage at the Sundance Film Festival for her work in film scoring and soundtracks. Between the two of them, dozens of television shows have used Tucker and Flournoy’s songs.

So, when these two met for the first time, in the hills over Los Angeles, it was merely to try writing together at the request of their publisher Rough Trade, or as Tucker jokes, “It was basically as blind a date as a co-write can be.” But, as we now know, the pair ultimately decided to take it all the way, and soon, Flournoy was in Nashville recording with Kate and her mates.

From The Big Score’s opener and first single “Speed of Light,” listeners will feel like they are taken into a John Hughes film, namely “Pretty In Pink,” specifically right into Trax, the record store where Molly Ringwald’s “Andie” worked, and where Annie Potts asked for “applause, applause, applause!”

It’s lighthearted fun for those who have fought-for perspective on what’s lighthearted and/or fun. Namely, it can take some heartbreak – a “heavy heart” – to know what feeling lighthearted even is.

The Big Score by Little Reader arrives May 19th, preceded by the single and music video “Speed of Light.” Little Reader is available for interviews. Contact Josh Bloom at Fanatic for more information.

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Little Reader
The Big Score
May 19th, 2017


Track Listing:

01. Speed of Light (YOUTUBE | SPOTIFY | SOUNDCLOUD | MP3)
02. Running Toward the Sun
03. Burn Eternal
04. Give It
05. Light as a Feather
06. Disappearing One
07. Love Lust Life
08. Strange Lightning
09. Best Regret
10. Here Forever
11. Point of No Return (Bonus Track)

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Little Reader Links


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Contact Josh Bloom at Fanatic Promotion


Thursday, April 6, 2017

Tree Machines counters mid-western malaise, Los Angeles loneliness with “an extended vocal-synth crescendo of hope and illumination.”

L.A. by way of Lawrence, Kansas-based band drops high-flying lyric video, :DFACE remix of anthemic “Waiting On The Sun” single.

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Tree Machines (L-R): Douglas Wooldridge, Patrick Aubry. Photo by Kasia Nawrocka.

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Listen to “Waiting On The Sun” via Popdust and see the lyric video at The Vinyl District or the links below!
  




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Hear the :DFACE remix of “Waiting On The Sun” via Last Day Deaf or the link below!



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Tree Machines – In The Press

“It’s some LA soul that indie pop needs.” — Popdust

“An extended vocal-synth crescendo of hope and illumination.” — The Vinyl District

“Immediately aiming for the anthemic.” — The Wild

“Emotionally staggering.” — Diffuser

“Best new rock song of the year so far.” — BULLETT

“I’ve been unable to stop listening.” — Gold Flake Paint (UK)

“Grips you in such a beautifully brutal way.” — Innocent Words

“Gleaming placidity.” — BlackBook

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“Los Angeles is a lonely city,” says Doug Wooldridge of Tree Machines.

After releasing a debut EP that contained the band’s hard-to-ignore, first-ever single “Fucking Off Today,” Wooldridge left Lawrence, Kansas behind in 2015 to move into a house in the tiny L.A. neighborhood of Canoga Park. There, with bandmate Patrick Aubry, and producer, engineer, and drummer, Mike Giffin (all three contribute to the various instrumentation and music of Tree Machines), Wooldridge turned the garage into a tracking room, and began creating the first full-length Tree Machines album Up For Air, scheduled for release in late 2017.

“We went down the rabbit hole building a studio here,” says Giffin. “We thought it would be quick, but it quickly became eight months.”

Regardless, the group was determined to create a room where they could make music that moved, was moving, and was much bigger than the space in which it was created. The initial result is the powerful single “Waiting On The Sun,” released last month, and now followed up by a manic lyric video which spotlights Wooldridge’s words about “naked cynicism mixed with a hint of hope and understanding.”

When the band visited L.A. before deciding to move there, Aubry says that the city “had a golden aura around it. This was the place dreams happened. This was the place where opportunity is just around the corner, waiting to jump out and surprise you.” But, like Wooldridge, Aubry eventually sensed a certain kind of loneliness that only comes with being ignored. “Los Angeles doesn’t care how much time or energy or effort or blood or sweat or anger you’ve spent to make your shitty music. It doesn’t care that you put together a band. It only cares about the result.”

Up For Air, the debut album by Los Angeles-based band Tree Machines, arrives in 2017, preceded by the singles “Waiting On The Sun,” “Weights and Stones,” and “Don’t Give Up.” Members of Tree Machines are available for interviews. Contact Josh Bloom at Fanatic for more information.

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Tree Machines Links


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Contact Josh Bloom at Fanatic Promotion


Wednesday, April 5, 2017

Traditional Welsh folk group Calan suggests that Accordion, Harp, Clogs could be next Guitar, Bass, Drums on “Solomon,” out May 12th.

Upcoming UK tour to be followed by runs in Australia, North America, China later this year. See the video for “Apparition” at Yahoo! now.

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Calan (L-R): Angharad Jenkins, Sam Humphreys, Bethan Rhiannon, Patrick Rimes, Alice French. Photo credit: Richard P Walton.

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See the video for “Apparition” at Yahoo! and read all about the song via Atwood.





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“Grace, daring and sheer joy.” — The Daily Mirror (UK)

“Stunning. Gorgeously crafted songs, sprightly foot-tappers, verve and raw excitement.” — The Belfast Telegraph (UK)

The untraditionally traditional Cymru, Wales-based group Calan is the only Gwerin (translation: Folk) band to be held in a detainment cell at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport alongside a death metal band from Estonia. Calan is also the only band of any genre to follow-up that experience by performing alongside Sting at the Royal Albert Hall as part of the 50th birthday celebration of famed opera singer, Sir Bryn Terfel Jones.

These facts, even without listening to a note (or a foot stomp) from Calan, makes them rock stars, albeit rock stars on a mission to prove that traditional music, based on folklore and taught and performed through the generations, actually does rock. With 2017 performances in Australia and China following several months touring the US and UK supporting the new album Solomon (Sain Records, May 12th), Calan is on its way to accomplishing that.

Despite the ancient roots of Calan’s music, this brash, young group is comprised of a new generation of ambassadors, striving to take their sound to new audiences, raising some eyebrows with their deliberate presentation, while also raising the international profile of traditional Welsh music. Get used to this: Accordion, Fiddle, Pipes, Harp, and the percussive sound of Clogs are the new Guitar, Bass, and Drums.

To date, Calan has gone from busking in the streets of Cardiff to introducing Welsh traditional music to curious music fans in the UK, Belgium, Italy, France, and on several tours of North America, playing festival shows on huge stages to tens-of-thousands, as well as at local folk club shows, unrestricted by sound systems, while standing on tables and jumping off chairs.

The musicians making these old sounds new, blasting their way through the old reels, jigs and hornpipes, include Calan vocalist, accordionist, and wearer of the clogs, Bethan Williams-Jones, who sings in both English and Welsh, and learned her style of award-winning clog dancing from her father, who was also a champion.

Soloman’s first single is “Apparition,” a Calan original based on entries in the bizarre diaries of Rev. Edmund Jones, a minister and soothsayer living in Wales during the 18th century. The writings affirm Jones’s belief in fairies, and discuss the legend that claimed that when the coal and iron industries came to Wales, the fairies disappeared, as fairies don’t react well to metals. No word on how fairies react to Estonian death metal.

Solomon, the latest album by Calan, arrives via Sain Records on May 12th, 2017. The band launches a UK tour later this month (see dates below), with dates in Australia, North America, and China to be announced. Members of Calan are available for interviews. Contact Josh Bloom at Fanatic for more information.

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Calan
Solomon
May 12th, 2017
(Sain Records)
  

Track Listing:

01. Kân
02. Ryan Jigs
03. #DeportationSelfie
04. Apparition (SOUNDCLOUD | YOUTUBE | MP3)
05. Hayes and Quinn's
06. Madame Fromage
07. Pe Cawn I Hon (If She Were
Mine)
08. Yr Eneth Ga'dd Ei Gwrthod
(The Rejected Maiden)
09. Synnwyr Solomon
(Solomon's Wisdom)
10. Dennis, Polca!
11. Yr Hwiangerddi (The
Lullabies)
12. Big D

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Calan – Live

4/20/2017: Hereford, UK @ Courtyard Arts Centre
4/21/2017: Farnham, UK @ Maltings
4/22/2017: New Milton, UK @ Forest Arts Centre
4/23/2017: Hitchin, UK @ Folk Club
4/24/2017: Maldon, UK @ Blue Boar/Mac Theatre
4/25/2017: Norwich, UK @ Arts Centre
4/27/2017: Baston, UK @ Barn
4/28/2017: Bangor, UK @ Pontio
4/29/2017: Settle, UK @ Victoria Hall
4/30/2017: Gateshead, UK @ Sage
5/02/2017: Glasgow, UK @ Cottiers Theatre
5/03/2017: York, UK @ National Centre for Early Music
5/04/2017: Sheffield, UK @ Greystones
5/05/2017: Otley, UK @ Courthouse
5/06/2017: Bury, UK @ Met
5/07/2017: Liverpool, UK @ Philharmonic Hall Music Room
5/09/2017: Wavendon, UK @ Stables
5/10/2017: London, UK @ King's Place
5/12/2017: Ivybridge, UK @ Watermark
5/13/2017: Bridport, UK @ Arts Centre
5/14/2017: Horsham, UK @ Capitol Theatre
5/16/2017: Bristol, UK @ Colston Hall Lantern
5/18/2017: Swansea, UK @ Taliesin AC
5/19/2017: Brecon, UK @ Theatr Brycheiniog
5/20/2017: Cardigan, UK @ Theatr Mwldan
5/25/2017: Fareham, UK @ Ashcroft Arts Centre

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Calan Links


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Contact Josh Bloom at Fanatic Promotion