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.

11th November 2016 (SCE #3)

The Details

Date: Wednesday, 11th November, 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

Theo Bard is a man on a mission. Whether rocking late-night shows with his band, spellbinding listening audiences with his beautiful, heartfelt songs and storytelling to match, or singing his unique urban folk songs as a vagabond one-man-band busker, Theo always brings a music and a vibe that feels just right.

Website

 

Harry Harris has been writing songs for 10 years, influenced as much by English and American folk music as by indie-rock bands like Eels, Counting Crows, and The Hold Steady. Signed to Wild Sound Recordings, his latest album, Songs About Other People, is listed as one of the Telegraph's best folk albums of 2015, and is exactly what it says it is - 10 story songs about other people, some real, some made-up, some somewhere in between

Website

 

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

Website

The bar's been raised...

It was a night of lovely contrasts, beautiful songs and outstanding playing. Our guests Michael Garrett and Louis Brennan were both magnificent last Wednesday at our second SCE concert.

Michael Garrett

Michael's voice is light and  mellifluous; Louis' can make Tom Waits sound sweet. Michael draws us in with intriguing stories of historical characters and their devious deeds; Louis dares to tell the truth of his own heavyweight life experiences and challenges us not to look away. Both are consummate songwriters. Michael crafts his songs of others very finely, betraying a precise skill. Louis has an ear for a heart-skipping, 'did-he-really-sing-that?' line which demands a different kind of attention. They're both great artists and we were treated royally by their performances of the songs they've written.

Louis Brennan

We also found out a little about the what, why, when, how, where and who of their writing as they patiently responded to the host's (my) prompting. We learned that Louis likes to create in the prone position, that he listens to Leonard Cohen and that alcohol may play some part in the process. Michael is a fan of country music and loves writing as much as performing.

The host (me) played, too; a mixture of new and old, stories of London and California and sad songs with happy tunes (or 'Stealth Misery' as they're now known).

Our second evening was a top-quality affair. The bar's been set high.

Now for SCE#3: November 11th, 7.30 featuring Theo Bard - complete with recently released EP - a second guest TBC and yours truly.

If it's as good as SCE#2, it's going to be great.

14th October 2015 (SCE #2)

The Details

Date: Wednesday, 14th October, 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

Louis Brennan is a Singer Songwriter from Dublin, Ireland based in London. His songs deal with anxiety on public transport, dissatisfaction in the workplace and the minutiae of modern despair. He enjoys a cool drink on a warm evening as much as any man and his dulcet tones and mellifluous plucking have graced the stages of many notable watering holes. A long player record of his sad ballads has been mooted for 2016.

Website

Michael Garrett is new to the folk circuit, pairing soft, powerful melodies with a distinctly narrative songwriting style. With  influences from traditional Irish folk, and occasional hints at Americana, Michael is quickly gaining popularity in London's growing folk music scene. 

Website

Simon Hopper is your host.

Website

It was all about the songs

Congratulations, and celebrations - as someone once sang - to all who attended and performed at the inaugural Song Club East concert last night. It was a warm, intimate occasion, fitting for the playing and appreciating of original songs about people and the things they do. Three artists occupied the stage together for the evening, taking turns to sing and sometimes accompanying each other.

Black*Scarr sang their songs of life, strife and all its vicissitudes, and told us insightful tales of how they write together and why being a songwriter means 'you're not ordinary'.

Gabriel Moreno brought his poetic soul to the evening, singing and accompanying himself on Spanish guitar, explaining his choice of chord progressions and presenting to us a rarely sung song about his father.

Your host, Simon Hopper, spoke of how Bob Dylan uses rhyme to underpin the power of his songs ('Once upon a time / You dressed so fine / Threw the bums a dime / In your prime') and how he steals Dylan's ideas to incorporate them into his own songwriting and sung a song about Bethnal Green and its inhabitants.

The audience arrived curious and left having been royally entertained by artists who care about their stories and educated, just a little, about what songwriters think about and the tricks of the trade they employ to communicate more effectively through their songs.

It's the first of a series of monthly concerts - every second Wednesday. The next is on 14th October.

Your host as always will be Simon Hopper, the guests are:

Michael Garrett @mikegarrettfolk

Louis Joseph Brennan @loubrennanmusic

Join us!

The stage is set...

... only the audience is missing.

Songwriting masterclass with Gabriel Moreno, Black*Scarr and Simon Hopper (see older posts).

It's gonna be cool, it's gonna be songwriterly, it's gonna be a great evening of songs and song-craft.

You coming?

Date: Wednesday, 9th September, 2015

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

Time: 8.00pm

Entry: £5.00

Travel: Bethnal Green Tube, 254, 388 and others