It’s been a bittersweet rollercoaster year for The Travelling Band with not one, but two founding band members leaving suddenly either side of a 17-date UK tour celebrating ten years on the road together. Having quite literally regrouped, the widely respected Manchester based band are now ready to launch their new line up at Band on the Wall.
With the band now focussed around the songwriting talents and production skills of Jo Dudderidge and Adam Gorman and the rhythmic driving force of enigmatic drummer Nick Vaal, they have entered a new collaborative phase in the band’s lifespan. The introduction of AMA UK instrumentalist of year Chris ‘CJ’ Hillman (pedal steel and guitar), Harry Fausing Smith (sax, fiddle, guitar and clarinet) and newest recruit Sam Quinn (bass), the new live experience reveals an exciting new chapter for the band’s harmony drenched eclectic mix of Alt-folk, Rock and Americana.
Presented by Sideways Saloon Records and longtime collaborators Hey! Manchester, this special one-off evening will see the band playing new songs from their forthcoming (inevitably delayed) 4th studio album, due for release in the summer. This stellar line up includes performances from newly recruited Sideways Saloon artist Elle Mary (of Elle Mary & The Bad Men) as well as the equally hotly tipped South Island Son who have been recording their new single ‘Down the slopes’ with Adam Gorman at The Travelling Band’s recently established Pinhole Sound Studios in Ancoats, Manchester.
The party won’t stop there with special guest DJ’s sets seeing this incredible night through until 2am.
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The Travelling Band
With a formidable live reputation and a career of over 500+ shows spanning the globe and three studio albums behind them, 2016 started with a bang for The Travelling Band. Hand picked by American starlet Lissie (https://www.facebook.com/lissiemusic/) they began the year touring across the UK and Europe opening for and also and backing Lissie on her ‘My Wild West’ album campaign. Playing a mixture of older festival crowd pleasers like ‘Sundial’, ‘Only Waiting’ and ‘Passing Ships’ and as well as blooding new material, The Travelling Band made thousands of new fans and ended the spring with two sold out 300 cap shows in Manchester and London, before heading back to Scandinavia for the majority of the summer to perform and record with Lissie.
September saw the band head to the Americana Music Festival in Nashville before returning to the UK in October for the ‘Close your eyes and count to ten’ 17-date anniversary tour, with praise pouring through the roof of The Travelling Band’s new material and live shows. The tour coincided with the release of ‘Pinhole Sounds Volume One’, a collaborative project featuring bands on the Sideway Saloon Records roster including label buddy A. Dyjecinksi who also opened for them on the tour with members of TTB backing.
Their hotly anticipated fourth album is due for release in summer 2017.
South Island Son
Beginning life in a rehearsal room floating three floors above Manchester’s Northern Quarter, frontman Jonny Woodhead brought together other like-minded stooges to create the quartet, South Island Son.
“Today we are delighted to bring you the first fruits from new Manchester-based band South Island Son, a collective of exciting young musicians that are ready to make their mark on the city’s music scene and also further afield (revealing to us that they already have plans scheduled to tour France and the UK, early 2017).
The debut release ‘One Year At Sea’ delivers a tropical energy and a richness of americana, as if to say it was Vance Joy flirting with Jack Johnson but instead finds comfort in dancing the night away with Paul Simon.
The accompanying visuals for ‘One Year At Sea’ reveal the group’s natural dynamics as they jam out a harmonious and earthy performance of the song. Seeming at once spontaneous and measured, refined and relaxed, whilst remaining indefinitely genuine. At the heart of South Island Son lies a fondness for the storytelling of folk coupled with a real hunger for a bluesier funk of upbeat grooves and an embrace of jubilant rock.” (Charlotte Holroyd, Bittersweet Symphonies)
Elle Mary
Drawn to the communicative and bonding qualities of ‘folk’ but explorative beyond its stylistic connotations; enough of a pack member to want a band yet also keen to imbue a sense of solitude through her music, Elle Mary is an artist who operates best when balancing conflicting instincts. It’s what lies beneath the subtle tension that slightly tugs at the heart of her and The Bad Men’s acoustically-webbed slowcore minimalism.
This is a standing show.