PRESS RELEASE – For Immediate Release - 12 May 2015
Sam Lee & The Out of Towners at the Hawks Well
Since bursting on to the folk scene at the end of the Noughties,Sam Leehas blazed a trail as anoutstanding singer and song collector, the driving force behind theeclectic, award-winning folk club The Nest Collective, which has brought traditional music to all kinds of new stages and venues, and founder of a burgeoning song collectors’ movement that inspires a new generation of performers to draw on living source singers rather than books and records.
How many traditional English folk singers do you know who come from North London, studied at Chelsea School of Art, worked as a forager and wilderness expert while moonlighting as a burlesque dancer – until a chance encounter led to the door of the great Scottish Traveller singer Stanley Robertson, and an extraordinary four-year apprenticeship into the arcane, living world of traditional songthat few outside theTraveller and Gypsy communities have ever experienced?
Sam Lee and his band comprisecellistFrancesca Ter-Berg,trumpeterSteve Chadwick,violinistFlora Curzon,percussionistJosh Greenandkoto player Jonah Brody.
“Sam Lee is one of very few to achieve a real emotional punch with moving simplicity”The Wire
"one of Britain's finest singers and the most cogent force of his generation in British folk music"The Observer
Lee is a 21st-century artist, collecting new versions of old songs on his iPhone and laptop, but his repertoire is steeped in the reek and smoke of folk history and lore, its tales of love, parting, exile and murder bound by a sympathetic magic still resonant today, parting the veil on vivid scenes from our islands’ deep history.
Awarded the2011 Arts Foundation prizeandnominated for the 2012 Mercury Awardfor his debut album,‘Ground Of Its Own’, he has taken his music worldwide to more than 20 countries, appeared in Peaky Blinders on TV, and joined The Unthanks to commemorate the Great War at the Barbican in London. Lee reached an even larger audience with his performance of ‘The Tan Yard Side’ to the accompaniment only of a nightingale on Radio 4 on 19 May 2014.
Sligo band TheOut of Townersare first up before Sam Lee and will take you down a sun scorched road through the desert of Australia. The songs written by singer and guitarist Ollie Alcorn are inspired by years of travelling his homeland of Australia in a campervan and are a journey of his own experiences of this time. Leap forward a few years... Now a smooth sounding 4 piece folk and blues band based in Sligo, Ollie started playing accompanied by fellow 'out of towner' Robert Naczas on harmonica and 'DaShtick' (electric hurley stick). Dominic Callaghan and Brian F Devaney both joined later to complete their sound with bass and cajon. The band have recently released their debut *EP calledDay Dreaming, Check out their new video "Setting Sun" on youtube.
Tickets for Sam Lee & The Out of Towners on Thursday 28th of May are €15 /7.50 with a special ‘Go See’ price for Under 18s of €7.50 and are available from the Hawk’s Well Theatre on 071 916 1518 or www.hawkswell.com.
For further information contact Maeve McGowan, Marketing Manager, Hawk’s Well Theatre, Sligo, 071 916 1518