Coming to The Musician in June 2018

Whilst today’s popular music world seems to be based around the idea of style over substance, Scottish Hard Rock trio, the Amorettes, have a very simple plan; to take over the world, one show at a time! No fuss! No gimmicks! Just good, old-fashioned hard work, and great songs.

Anyone who has experienced an Amorettes live show can easily testify to the buzz of expectation that kicks in as soon the lights go down, and the intro rolls. Never has the Slade track, We’ll bring the house down been so prophetic in its meaning.

Relentless touring across the UK and Europe has turned The Amorettes into a lean, mean, Rock and Roll machine, leading them to be described as “Like Airbourne
fronted by Joan Jett”. Reviews for both live shows, and the albums, only reinforce the fact that The Amorettes star is still very much in ascendance, and, as long as there are stages to play, and records to make, there is no sign of this “Female Motorhead” attempting to take the easy road to the top.

Straighten Out are the premier Stranglers tribute band out there, with an extensive set-list that spans two solid hours as they re-create the 'early years' sound of The Stranglers, complete with a keyboard rig that is the same model as the original used by Dave Greenfield himself in the 1970s.

The growling bass sound and the quirky guitar riffs are all there to be heard as is the dual vocal 'attack' from the two frontmen a la Burnel-Cornwell as they rip through all the classics: 'Peaches', 'Hanging Around', 'No More Heroes', '5 Minutes', 'The Raven', 'Walk On By', 'Straighten Out', 'Down In The Sewer' and many more.

Straighten Out will take you on a nostalgia trip that transports you back to those raw, powerful, exhilarating times when The Stranglers emerged through the quagmire of mediocrity to produce some of the finest tunes ever written!

Shine the leading four-piece tribute to Britain’s best loved man band pay a first visit to the venue.

A rare treat to see Aynsley Lister play his exclusive stripped down show

Multi award winning artiste - "Best Songwriter" and "Best Song (for Home)" in the British Blues Awards and runner up for three more; "Best Guitarist", "Best Male Vocalist" and "Best Album

"There’s no young English blues guitarist with more vivid musical ideas than Lister… with this album, mostly electric and entirely electrifying, Lister challenges anyone to keep up with him… His guitar playing on tracks like ‘Say Goodbye’ or ‘Balls Of Steel’ is a fire hazard! 4/5 stars MOJO

Making a long overdue return to Leicester is Gaelic Americana singer-songwriter Kyle Carey. Her latest album, The Art Of Forgetting, featured the likes of Rhiannon Giddins and John McCusker and is attracting rave reviews. Her live shows are intimate and emotional, whether she's singing traditional Gaelic songs or her own compositions,and each one is a night to treasure and remember.

"A voice to die for" - Mike Harding

Prepare yourself for a night of furious, sweaty,
upbeat gypsy music, soaked in alcohol and infected with unrelenting baltic rhythms. Three groups of psychedelic harlequins are gracing the stage at The Musician this June, for a mardi gras of astronomic proportions, and it would be a sin to miss it!!

The Whiskey Rebellion are an eight-piece group of ragamuffins from the darkest depths
of Leicestershire, hell-pent on a warpath straight to your bleeding eardrums. Featuring a line-up of banjos, accordions, mandolins, violins and more, these hair-brained misfits perform a non-stop maelstrom of folk punk and gypsy-style dance tunes, guaranteed
to whip any audience into a frenzy of dance and decadence. Following the release of their debut album "Funeral Songs", they are returning again to the lost city of Leicester to host this evening, and put on a spectacle like no other: The Alcohocalypse!! And
they've brought some friends with them...

Buffo's Wake are a twelve-legged beast hatched in the murky backwaters of Brighton.
Armed with accordions, violins, and a bucket full of gusto they waltz, tango, and kolo their way through various influences from Eastern European, Balkan and Russian folk, to punk rock and cabaret, telling tales of debauchery, deformity, zombies, incest and
anatomy - Making the audience dance into the night in the process. On Halloween 2014, Buffo's Wake recorded their debut album "Caniphobia". Recorded in an array of bedrooms, studios, and everywhere in between, they decided not to use any synthesized instruments
on their songs, instead opting for entirely acoustic instruments, effects and atmospherics. The album was created using singing saws, wine glasses, old rusty pipes, handmade percussion, and anything else they could get their grubby little hands on. The result
is the haunting sound of an abandoned circus flowing through the album, inspiring the title Carniphobia.

These peddlars of gypsy folk will be supported by none other than The Ginhouse Gypsies,
a collaboration of gypsy-jazz, blues, hip-hop, and world folk influences, all backed up with amazing three-part female vocal harmonies. A breath of fresh air with a soulful vibe, and packed with plenty of enthralling grooves, this band have a depth and originality
which will get your heart racing!

All this and more, await you on June 8th at The Musician, for the one, and the only...
The Alcohocalypse!!!

StillMarillion pay tribute to the classic Eighties "Fish era" of Marillion. Formed in 2008 from a love of the band's early material, the band is comprised of four talented and experienced musicians who accurately recreate the complex, intricate sounds of early Marillion. Together with a vocalist with an authentic Scottish accent who sings the songs with intense passion and emotion, it's a formidable combination.
Band
The band performs a broad selection of tracks from the first four Marillion albums, from the big hit singles such as 'Kayleigh', 'Lavender', 'Incommunicado' and 'Sugar Mice', all the way through to classic album tracks such as 'Script For A Jester's Tear', 'Fugazi' and other forgotten gems.

Performing the width of breadth of the UK, StillMarillion have garnered a loyal crowd, with some travelling the length of Europe to see the band. The band have, on occasion, shared the stage with Marillion's own Steve Rothery and Mark Kelly.

StillMarillion honour a much-heralded era of music, which is still today so warmly welcomed by prog-rock fans young and old, and will take you on a journey, back to a time of Jesters, Sugar Mice and your own Misplaced Childhood.

7Storeysoul played their first gig at The Musician in January 2006. 18 years on, with the core of that original line up in tact, the 9 piece band return for an evening of feelgood funk and smooth soul. Founder member and prolific songwriter Mark Poole first formed the band in 2005 whilst researching his PhD, which focused on the Leicester music scene!

Now fronted by the powerhouse soul voice of Chrissie Riedhofer, 7Storeysoul blend Mark's imaginative, smooth soul originals with classic funky 70s tunes from Stevie Wonder to George Benson, Quincy Jones and Earth Wind and Fire. For fans of feelgood funk and smooth soul this is a gig not to miss!

Following a number of studio releases with her band, folk-pop singer-songwriter Elizabeth Cornish returns to the Musician stage as a solo, acoustic artist for the UK release of her first home recorded album, “Where Were We Then”.

Elizabeth Cornish doesn’t tell stories. Instead she gives you a tantalizing glimpse into her world and invites you to fill in the gaps for yourself. Her cathartic songs, overflow unashamedly with raw emotion. They are simultaneously fragile and powerful, and although they touch on dark and painful subject matter, they are never melancholy. On the contrary, Cornish’s poetry, infectious choruses and waltzing guitar lines lift you up and leave you feeling hopeful.

While her debut album, “Displaced” dealt with her struggle to make sense of her nomadic upbringing, “Where Were We Then” is an expressive journey about enduring love, personal loss, and grief. Inspired by folk, country and indie-pop singer-songwriters including Laura Marling, Lucy Rose, Jason Isbell and John Moreland to name a few, Cornish effortlessly weaves elements of these genres into her delicately crafted songs while remaining undeniably true to her artistic origins as a through and through singer-songwriter.

Pennyless have been compared to Pentangle and The Incredible String Band, ranging wide and digging deep into folk rock and psychedelia. “..the sound of Vashti Bunyan meets Vaughan Williams, (makes) Pennyless a quirkily distinctive presence on the acoustic scene” states Rock n Reel magazine.
Multi-instrumentalist Graham Dale worked and recorded with Vicki Clayton before joining Pennyless along with founding members Penny Stevens and Les Woods. The band have produced five albums over a period of 6 years. A whirling dervish of traditional and exciting original songs served up on fiddle, flute, bouzouki, mandolin and guitar: it’s a tasty slice of English pie.
www.pennyless-music.co.uk
www.facebook.com/pennylessfolk/
Borders are for cartographers, not musicians. 5-piece Stamford-based ensemble PASPATOU actively seeks out the connections between world music traditions; sinuous Irish airs blend with angular Balkan rhythms, Cuban grooves mesh with Klezmer and Reggae, Mongolian stylings rub shoulders with Indian ragas and Minimalism, whilst Ethiopian Jazz consorts with Bach, Beethoven and Shostakovich.

The band’s instrumentation is suitably eclectic; violin, cello, piano and keyboard, acoustic guitar, octave mandola, two basses (electric and semi-acoustic), flutes, whistles, caval, soprano sax, melodica, djembe, hybrid drum kit, and voice.

Veterans of Glastonbury festival, PASPATOU aim to transport the listener on a seamless journey around the world and, even occasionally, off-planet (which is the future of mankind, after all).

https://en-gb.facebook.com/Paspatou-234103003273712

Rock'n'roll |boogie Party!
Triple bill with Leicester’s finest roadhouse rockers.

MOJOHAND playing classic sax driven rock & roll soul. Clive Osbourne on Sax, Al Sansome & Charlie Lewin on vocals & guitars.

MAMA DON'T ALLOW playing classic rock & roll boogie featuring Nigel don the 'Jerry Lee Lewis' piano along with guitars & vocals of Mike Pruden & Chris Armson

DAWSON & THE DISENTERS playing a classic Americana set.

Bop till you drop!

After five years,three albums and shows with Stereophonics,
Blackberry Smoke, Lynyrd Skynyrd and Airbourne, Fireroad are showing no signs of slowing down. The band have a lifetime of musical influences which shape their sound but bring something fresh,
something new.

Blue County"s Billboard Country hits include the iconic single 'Good Little Girls" and 'That's Cool". They received three CMA and ACM award nominations over a 5 year period for Duo of the Year (losing to Brooks & Dunn each time) and toured extensively with Rascal Flatts, Sugarland, Keith Urban and Tim McGraw. They were invited to be a two-time featured artist in the Chevrolet/Conde Naste Fashion Rocks campaign in People Magazine. Blue County are Aaron Benward ('Nashville Unplugged') and Scott Reeves (currently on CMT's 'Nashville' and former star of 'General Hospital' and 'Young & The Restless').

Multimorph, Maureen Anderson's (sax and flute) psychedelic space-rock and poetry outfit featuring Jim Tetlow on cajon, Kevin Hewick on guitar,Harley on Tennor Sax, Daron Bhacstair on bass, Helena McCleod on vocals, Alan Freeman on moog and Alan Flanders on drums.

Review 2019: "This was a solstice experience, a somewhat Druidical expression of the psychedelic seventies, Multimorph poured out colourful showers of sound with their orchestral levels of musicianship."

Plus Special Guests
Roger Pugh
Clouds by L'ku
Earth Beats

Ex Spocks Beard founder member and frontman Neal Morse visits The Musician with a unique setting and performance. Being involved with his solo material, plus The Neal Morse Band, Transatlantic, Flying Colors and Yellow Matter Custard, his latest release Life And Times says exactly what it is. A collection of songs with a acoustic guitar from Neal's early life to the present day. A great evening in the company of just Neal and a guitar, in many ways how many songs are constructed in the first place.

The best singer-songwriters serve the song. The songwriter’s songwriter, James Maddock, who has earned the respect of masterful writers such as Bruce Springsteen and Willie Nile, has built his acclaimed legacy on humbly honouring purity of expression. His 2009 album Sunrise On Avenue C won a New York Music Award for Best Americana Album, while the follow-up Wake Up And Dream ranked among the top albums of 2011 in WFUV's (NYC) Listener Poll. With the release of Another Life (2013) and The Green (2015) Maddock continued to demonstrate why many consider him to be one of the best singer/songwriters working today.

His status as a fixture on the Folk and Americana scene is confirmed with every listen of any song in his prodigious catalog. Relix Magazine put it this way: “James Maddock possesses the kind of lived-in craggy voice that would sound authoritative if he were singing the sports pages. Fortunately, he doesn't need to do that because his compositional skills are a match for his delivery."

A New York resident since 2003, James grew up in Countesthorpe, Leicester and ranks up there with the best of our musical exports. His new full-length studio album 'If It Ain't Fixed, Don't Break It' was released on September 28, 2018.

In the 1980’s & 90’s, Steve Marriott played regular UK pub gigs with a variety of line ups, each one paying homage to his love of the blues and his musical past with bands such as The Small Faces & Humble Pie. Initially called Packet of Three, Marriott changed that
name to Steve Marriott & The Official Receivers, due to the fact the tax man was still chasing him for a large sum of unpaid tax! Later Steve would join forces with the now legendary Leicestershire based band The DT’s.
The Official Deceivers song list pays homage to this period of Steve Marriott’s musical career, focusing heavily on
numbers played with The DTs. Front man Malc Watson, a huge fan of both Steve Marriott and the DTs, has had the
pleasure of playing with members of Marriott’s bands on a number of occasions and considers himself fortunate to
have not only had the pleasure of witnessing him play live numerous times but also chatting to him after several gigs in the 1980’s.
Keeping the memory of Steve Marriott alive and bringing this part of his musical history to audiences across the UK is what The Official Deceivers is all about. No gig is complete without hearing the crowd singing along to All or Nothing,a high point of an evening and always performed with emotion and respect.
“If you like your RnB live, loud and full of energy then you need to see The Official Deceivers.”

For up to date info and news please join The City Acoustic Club Facebook group!

We are delighted to celebrate Vikki coming back to the UK with a headline gig. She will be playing with a band of top local musicians.

In the early 80'S the fun began. Invited to sing with Ragged Heroes , a cult Folk Rock band,. Vikki thrived. "Id found my forte . I'd always kicked around with rock bands and played in folk clubs but here was a chance to combine my two favourite musical loves." "Ragged Heroes Annual" was released to much acclaim and notice was taken of Vikki's lovely voice. They were invited to perform at one of the early Cropredy Festivals in 1984 and gigs started to escalate. However the band drifted apart and eventually called it a day because " we were eight in number and our bar tab usually came to more than our fee"

Then somebody sent Fairport Convention a copy of Vikki's album "Lost Lady Found". At the same time Jerry Donahue heard Vikki sing and was moved to tears because she sounded so much like Sandy Denny. What became of these two events was a long period of appearing with Fairport Convention, fronting the newly formed Fotheringhay - amusingly known as "The Nerve" and forming her own band featuring stellar performers Clive Bunker, Fred T Baker and Chris Conway.

So six solo albums later and many appearances on other recordings Vikki is proud to release "Messenger" .

New Generation Superstars first blazed onto the scene in 2005 with their no frills, no fuss rock music. Too punk for the rock crowd, and too rock for the punk crowd, NGS forged a sound that appealed to all. Speeding up the tempo and turning up the amps, it wasn’t long before NGS had attracted a local following with growing momentum that spread across the nation with both fans and music press alike....

Serving their time on the road, NGS have played headline shows, also being the support band of choice for acts such as Duff McKagan’s Loaded, The Wildhearts, The 69 Eyes, Supersuckers, Fun Lovin' Criminals, Hardcore Superstar and more. They have also played shows in Germany, New York, Finland and Sweden, as well as festivals such as Hard Rock Hell, Bulldog Bash, Rock and Blues and Trashfest in Finland.

Hailing from Leicester, the Midnight Dogs have evolved into a formidable rock outfit, delivering their own brand of down and dirty rock and roll. With a nod to the retro sounds of the 70s, their lyrical stories are punctuated with catchy riffs and killer basslines, all wrapped up tightly with a rhythmic bow.

Their self-titled debut album was released in 2016 to rave reviews and resulted in special guest appearances with the likes of The Quireboys, Stacie Collins, Dan Baird, Spear of Destiny and The Dogs D’Amour.

With a new album in the pipeline for 2018 along with the release of singles “I’m With You” and “Saving Grace”, recorded in aid of the charity NLC Rockin’ With The Children, the Midnight Dogs are excited to bring their own brand of rock all around the UK with festival appearances and supporting slots already confirmed.

When four lads with four very unique talents got together White Eskimo was born. With a love of music coursing through their veins they have been writing, performing and honing their craft. With the lead singer being blessed while in his mothers’ womb by the legend and self-proclaimed King of Rock ‘n’ Roll, Little Richard himself, his destiny was set. Growing up with a singular ambition to play music, Will became an accomplished drummer and song writer, then formed White Eskimo, with one clear ethos, ‘Enjoy what you do’.

With the line up of Will (21), lead vocals and guitar, Marcus (19), lead guitar, Rob(19), bass guitar and Alex (21) on drums, White Eskimo is a band with everything; they write their own music, play
their own instruments, exude charisma and sex appeal on and off stage and above all they have a pure passion for what they do. With influences ranging from Blink-182 to Beethoven this Manchester band have found their very own distinctive sound. Working with such producers as James Lewis (Sunset Sons, Artic Monkeys, Rudimental) White Eskimo have a catalogue of great music ready to be released.