9th December 2015 (SCE #4)

The Details

Date: Wednesday, 9th December, 2015

Venue: St Margaret's House, Bethnal Green E2 9PL

Time: 7.30pm

Entry: £5.00

Travel: Bethnal Green Tube, 254, 388 and others

The Performers

Adam Beattie has been active since 2003 and has recorded three studio albums. He is about to release his fourth. Career highlights include supporting Bert Jansch and Jolie Holland, as well as touring in Germany, Ukraine, France, Italy and Cyprus. His distinctive voice ties together an eclectic mix of 'folk stews and dirty blues'. He performs varied, emotional shows including philosophical musings of the modern life of a Scotsman living in London. His popular song 'A Song of One Hundred Years' is a ballad written for his grandfather who lived to that age. 

Website

Jack Harris was a South by South-West showcasing artist at 17. He was also the youngest, as well as the only non-American person ever to win the New Folk song-writing award at the Kerrville Folk Festival, Texas. Previous winners included Gillian Welch, Steve Earle and Devon Sproule. Those days are gone, along with most of Jack’s youth and vigour, but he’s still pleased to find himself in such company. And he still writes literate, compassionate songs, about subjects as disparate as Caribbean drinking festivals, the colour of a potato flower and the lives of great poets like Elizabeth Bishop. His live show is a riveting mix of song-craft and theatrical story-telling, delivered with warm voice, dry humour and nimble, string-picking fingers. Come on out. You'll see. 

Website

Simon Hopper is the founder and host of Song Club East. See earlier posts in this blog.

Website

Compelling stories, angst and lovely London folk songs

Harry Harris and Theo Bard are testament to the vibrancy of the London singer-songwriter scene. Troubadors both, they inject their own knowledge of the history of their craft into the songs they write. They perform and tell tales of life in the capital city, whales in rivers, love and what it means to live in this particular here and now.

To see life from another's point of view and communicate that to an audience through song is a special talent and Harry Harris does this. Families at war, a little boy's most memorable day and a footballer's greatest hour are all grist to his mill. And it's lovely stuff.

Theo Bard busks the street markets of east London and writes about his life in the capital. He sang songs from his new CD, You Give, and demonstrated his own take on bluesy, urban folk-style guitar playing.

Together with the host of Song Club East, Simon Hopper (that's me), Harry and Theo discussed the pros and cons of writing in the first person, seeing through a stranger's eyes and the difficulties of the bearing of the soul in verse. Bert Jansch got a mention as an influence as did Ron Sexsmith and Warren Zevon. Folk songs were mentioned as was pop, blues and Appalachian mountain music. No narrow church, this.

SCE #3 was another lovely evening. Three singers, three guitars, three different ways of connecting with the great ongoing flow that is the history of singer-songwriting.

Come and join us on December 9th for SCE #4 with Adam Beattie and Harry's brother Jack.