Amsterdamned Posted December 21, 2010 Share Posted December 21, 2010 WagonWheel Presents… returns on Wednesday February 2nd 2011. Continuing the spirit of the great shows we brought you at The Grapes over the last 4 years, we make our first venture to The Greystones where we’ll be welcoming US singer/songwriter Ben Weaver back to Sheffield. Ben will be in the UK promoting his latest album on Bloodshot Records ‘Mirepoix and Smoke‘. Support comes from Quiet Loner who hits the road again in support of new album ‘Spectrology‘ which has been drawing rave reviews. Doors 7.45pm, show starts 8pm. Advance tickets priced at £7 are available from Wegottickets.com and behind the bar at The Greystones. For a limited time only you can purchase ‘early bird’ tickets priced at £6 here. Entry on the night will be £9. A 10% booking fee applies to all purchases from Wegottickets. http://www.wegottickets.com/wagonwheelpresents ***BEN WEAVER*** “Spent almost a year writing songs that didn’t feel real. Started working in a kitchen. First job in nearly seven years besides touring. Cut buckets of mirepoix. Two parts onion, one part carrot, one part celery. A significant component to stock, which I learned is the backbone to much of the alchemy that takes place in the kitchen. Fell asleep with the smell of it on my hands” For 31-year-old Minnesota-native Ben Weaver, the follow-up to his lauded 2008 album, The Ax in the Oak, came from a somewhat unexpected series of life choices and experiences. In the spring of 2009 Weaver decided to take some time away from touring to pursue his interest in food and cooking. It was while working as a prep and garde manger cook at a farm-totable restaurant in Minneapolis, that the songs on his latest album, Mirepoix and Smoke, started to take shape: “Eventually the good songs started to come. Ones that felt real, had their own legs. They came like all good things do. When I ceased looking. Connected to my surroundings, my past, my life, for what it all was, without romanticizing what I thought it should or could be. I found a new perspective. Let the birds in my head fly free.” While The Ax in the Oak was more complex in its sound—the result of a collaboration between Weaver and Brian Deck (Califone, Iron and Wine)—Mirepoix and Smoke is a decidely more bucolic affair; its songs are barely accompanied by more than Weaver’s guitar or banjo and his voice, allowing for a more sensory experience of Weaver’s signature lyrical poetics. You just don’t hear Mirepoix and Smoke—you smell it, taste it, feel it and see it. “I got divorced, was taking care of my kids, walking the dog in the woods, planning a garden. Grateful to be home, to be in the Midwest. The space. The rivers. The tall grass. Went back to the folk and blues, back to Townes and Dylan, Jim Harrison and Sam Shepard, driving instead of flying. Still holding tightly to the torch I have always felt compelled to carry. The responsibility to the story, to the song. Myself as a doorway, a fisherman. So many others have said this same thing before me. You do it because you have to, because it is coming through you. Because you believe the voices in the dark. If it’s cliché, its because its true. The songs had lives of their own, inspired by what was most important to me in my life. Animals, Food, Kids, the woods, relationships, the wild. The wild. It is always about the wild. Covered in earth.” In a way, Mirepoix and Smoke is a coming-of-age album for Weaver. He’d gone through a divorce, was working his first job in nearly seven years, and found that life for what it was, rather than the romanticized version of it he had written about on past albums, was worth exploring: “I’d rather have scars from the life I lived / than have none from the one I missed,” Weaver sings on the sparse folk song, “Drag The Hills.” “I spent three days in Chicago recording and mixing with Neil. Erica sat across from me in the room and we did all the songs live in one or two takes, after practicing for the first time the night before. I overdubbed some bass and drums.” As with Weaver’s previous two releases, Mirepoix and Smoke was recorded at Chicago’s Engine Studios, and was engineered by Neil Strauch (Bonnie “Prince” Billy, Iron and Wine, Margot and the Nuclear So and So’s). Erica Froman, formerly of the dream-pop collective Anathallo, joins Ben on vocals and piano. “Left the songs alone for the most part. Wanted them to be like unbroken horses that had never known a saddle, with burrs and river water in their manes. That’s how they felt truest to me. So that’s how I left them. Wild.” Weaver is also an accomplished artist and writer: You can find his short story “Humanesque” in ‘Amplified‘ a collection of fiction by songwriters including Rhett Miller, Robbie Fulks, and Jon Langford, while his art is often posted to his Tumblr. “The folk artist Leonard Cohen would have been if he’d have grown up a few Great Lakes away in the northern United States” -Daily Nebraskan “Rasps dark, knotty ballads in the vein of Midwestern folk lodestars from Bob Dylan to Greg Brown” -Chicago Sun-Times “Weaver remains a riveting lyricist and A-level student of the Tom Waits School of Gutter Bum Poetry” -Twin Cities Metromix “country-rooted Americana full of weary determination and aphoristic clarity, somewhere between The Band and Tom Waits” -The New York Times “an essential listen for all fans of Townes and Dylan” -Americana-UK “strange, skin-prickling tales picked up from the Moebius strip of a lost highway he’s been compelled to travel on, like a hillbilly Leonard Cohen” -Mojo “musical postcards that recall a rural Tom Waits, or Greg Brown in his dark, bluesy moments. He’s like that spooky old guy who lives in a trailer but tells amazing stories” -Utne Reader http://www.benweaver.net/ http://www.bloodshotrecords.com/artist/ben-weaver ***QUIET LONER*** Quiet Loner is the pen-name of songwriter Matt Hill. His recording and live work as Quiet Loner has won him many accolades, including Americana UK Album of the Year 2004 for his debut LP ‘Secret Ruler of the World’, and he has played with kindred spirits like Lambchop, Joe Pernice, Neko Case and Chris Mills. As Quiet Loner he sings songs about love, loss, infidelity, suicide, attempted murder, capital punishment, the database state, terrorism, religion, war, fallen angels, the secret rulers of the world and the redemptive power of country music. Hill is an accomplished raconteur and powerful live performer delivering a show that is emotional, often funny, usually political, occasionally angry, sometimes satirical but nearly always gentle and human. Inspired by the storytelling traditions of American folk and country music, Hill’s songs also have a distinctly British lyrical bite. His new album ‘Spectrology’ is a stark and honest collection of performances recorded deep in the English countryside during the big freeze of January 2010. Produced by Mat Martin (Kirsty McGee, The Brute Chorus) it contains eleven songs of experience and wisdom, and features contributions from Inge Thomson (Bonnie Prince Billy, Broken Family Band), Roy Dodds (Fairground Attraction,Hank Wangford) and long term collaborator Alan Cook (Jackie Leven). “The wordplay is pure Costello. Delicate songwriting, with hints of folk and Americana. Bleakly beautiful” Uncut Magazine (4 stars) “Somewhere between Raymond Carver and Alan Sillitoe. Hill paints with words dissecting heartbreak with surgical precision. Highly recommended.” Americana-Uk (8/10) http://www.quietloner.com/ Facebook Event page: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=175196499176033 Last.fm Event page: http://www.last.fm/event/1764400 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Amsterdamned Posted January 24, 2011 Author Share Posted January 24, 2011 This'll be next week then. Opening the show we now also have.... ***THE SILVER DARLINGS*** The Silver Darlings are a loose collective of musicians based around the duo of Andy Whitehouse (guitar/vocals) and Mike Howe (accordian). Roots music for stubborn romantics and hopeless optimists. Much of the last year has been spent recording with a new album in the pipeline, and with Andy concentrating on solo shows as tonight's will be. http://www.myspace.com/thesilverdarlings Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Amsterdamned Posted February 1, 2011 Author Share Posted February 1, 2011 Ben's track of the day at Q Magazines websites. You can listen here: http://news.qthemusic.com/2011/02/ben_weaver_-_drag_the_hills.html Greystones gig is tomorrow night. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lomaxkinesis Posted February 1, 2011 Share Posted February 1, 2011 Have you put on the Handsome Family show there? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Amsterdamned Posted February 2, 2011 Author Share Posted February 2, 2011 Not one of mine no. Ben Weaver show is tonight. Doors 7.45pm for an 8pm start. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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