but it was a real pleasure to have M.G. Boulter bring the seaside to town last night playing songs from his latest album Clifftown with his fabulous band. Big thanks to them and E.R. Thorpe for a wonderful opening set. We hope those of you who joined us at The Greystones enjoyed it as much as we did.
It’s a little while until our next show as we ease back in to a more normal schedule. WagonWheel Presents… will return on Thursday June 30th when we welcome Rod Picott for his rearranged UK tour. Support comes from Paul Handyside. Tickets are on sale here, as always they’re cheaper in advance than on the door.
All incoming show updates can be found here, we’ll hopefully see you at one of them.
a rainy day in the UK, but things certainly brightened up at The Greystones last night in the company of John Statz and M&J Blues who opened our first show of 2022.
It was great to see some friendly faces too, thanks to everybody that joined us. We hope you enjoyed it as much as we did.
Hopefully it’s the start of things moving back in the right direction. If no cursed songs strike, and John did successfully close the portal, then WagonWheel Presents… will be back again on Friday April 8th when we’re joined by M.G. Boulter and E.R. Thorpe. After singular shows in 2020 and 2021, two in a year will be something of a novelty. Full details for this show can be found here or you can head straight to our WeGotTickets page to secure your place.
On Friday April 8th, WagonWheel Presents… welcomes M G Boulter back to The Greystones following the release of latest album Clifftown.
M G’s songwriting creates vignettes of ordinary life often set in the seaside location of his hometown. This writing form is crystallised in his latest work Clifftown, an album based on a fictional town which closely resembles that of Southend-on-Sea. Working again with producer Andy Bell and a host of friends from bands as diverse as Bellowhead and Spritiualised, M G has created an all encompassing personal history of growing up in seaside suburbia which is both affecting and observant.
Support comes from E.R. Thorpe. Doors 7.45pm. Advance tickets priced at £9 are available from http://www.wegottickets.com/event/533677 or entry on the night will be £12. Doors open 7.45pm. Please note we can only accept cash payment on the night for entry to the show.
***M G BOULTER***
M G Boulter is a songwriter and musician living on the Thames coast in Essex, UK. Serving his apprenticeship in numerous bands in the hotbed of the Southed-on-Sea pub rock scene (the precursors of which were household names such as Procol Harem, Dr Feelgood and Eddie and the Hotrods), M G came to lead, as singer and guitarist, the popular country rock band The Lucky Strikes, who Q Magazine once likened to “The Waterboys on trucker pills”.
During the Lucky Strikes’s tenure (which produced 5 studio albums) M G met New York native and songwriter Simone Felice (The Felice Brothers) and formed a close collaborative working relationship with him from 2012 to 2015. M G featured on the lap steel and mandolin for the majority of Felice’s UK and US tours and became a fixture in the touring incarnation of Felice’s band project The Duke and the King. In 2013 M G released his debut album The Water or the Wave, which saw him fulfil a personal ambition to record with the legendary drummer, Pick Withers (Dire Straits, Bob Dylan & Bert Jansch).
2014-2017 saw a busy collaborative period for M G – he worked on long term projects with Scottish artists Blue Rose Code and Samantha Whates, as well as BBC Folk Award winner Emily Portman (as part of the Coracle Band). In 2015 he formed part of a new ‘supergroup’ featuring fellow songwriters Lucy Farrell (the Furrow Collective) and Neil McSweeney, contributing the song ‘Lulu the Bear’ to the subsequent EP Lulu the Bear and Other Songs. He also found time to contribute to projects by Rosalie Deighton, Vera Van Heeringen and wyrd folk luminaries, The Owl Service. In 2016 he was one of eight artists picked to join the Estuary Songwriting Project which sought to create a show’s worth of material inspired by the Thames Estuary.
Often touted as an ‘artist’s artist’ M G set about releasing his second solo album, With Wolves the Lamb will Lie, in 2016. Produced by Andy Bell the album drew upon the pastoral Sheffield setting where it was recorded to create a sublime mixture of classic singer songwriter material with a rich chamber folk backdrop. The album was picked as one of the top folk albums of the year in it’s end of year round up by The Daily Telegraph and R2 magazine referring to M G as “a weapon’s grade songwriter”.
The success of With Wolves led to M G signing with folk and roots label Hudson Records, which led to the collaborative EP Blood Moon, recorded with Birmingham string quartet, The Froe. The EP was recorded in a Methodist fishermen’s chapel in the old seaside town of Leigh-on-Sea, Essex over just four days. The EP was hailed as a chamber folk masterpiece.
M G’s songwriting creates vignettes of ordinary life often set in the seaside location of his hometown. This writing form is crystallised in his latest work Clifftown, an album based on a fictional town which closely resembles that of Southend-on-Sea. Working again with producer Andy Bell and a host of friends from bands as diverse as Bellowhead and Spritiualised, M G has created an all encompassing personal history of growing up in seaside suburbia which is both affecting and observant.
E.R. Thorpe was born into music – her mother taught her to finger-pick, introducing her to the music of PJ Harvey, Sandy Denny, Susan Vega, Roy Harper and Bob Dylan along the way; Her father Kevin was well respected on the blues scene for his albums with Out Of The Blue; And her aunt managed Welsh psychedelic legends Man.
Despite this heritage Thorpe has shaped her own evocative sound. Sometimes wilfully naive, sometimes considered and precise – her choice of chords is particular and unusual and her finger-picking weaves a strange atmosphere – the likes of which you’d more likely find in a Lynch film or a novel by Bolano than in the sculpted folk of her inspirations. And like those who inspire her – Nick Cave, Patti Smith, William Blake, she loves to muse on nature & religion: God, the devil, good and evil, and like the Pre Raphaelite Brotherhood she tries to tell it like it is – to reveal both the beauty and the devastation of life: Red Dust portrays human insignificance under darkening skies; Dinner For One traces the fading past of a destroyed relationship; You wouldn’t think that it took years for Thorpe to accept her own arresting voice and lyrical vision. Time well spent in distillation perhaps: This is music that is close to the source. These are songs, born of tradition, alive in the present day, revealing & fragile, executed spare and sharp.
Most recently Emma has been working alongside fellow singer/songwriters Huw Costin and Matt Hill as part of The Low Drift who released their debut album this March with a sold out launch show in Nottingham.
On Wednesday March 16th, WagonWheel Presents… welcomes US singer/songwriter John Statz back to The Greystones for our first show of 2022.
One of the more prolific thirty-something songwriters working in the Folk/Americana genre today, John Statz has released nine studio albums and performed all over North America and Europe over the course of his fourteen-year career. The Boston Globe has called John’s music “electric, urgent folk; aching, sweet country-rock”
Support comes from local favourites M&J Blues. Advance tickets priced at £9 are available from http://www.wegottickets.com/event/533676 or entry on the night will be £12. Doors open 7.45pm. Please note we can only accept cash payment on the night for entry to the show.
***JOHN STATZ***
It was somewhere in England while on tour in September of 2019 that Colorado songwriter John Statz – stressed out by rainy days, Brexit anxiety, and a disintegrating relationship back home – began to feel optimistic and plan his new record. Early Riser is a balancing act between the experiences in modern life that cause us worry or pain and those that bring us joy. The album is very much a product of the year 2019 and the cultural scene at the end of a decade, with songs referencing political divisions over Brexit, the destruction of Notre Dame, and the racist dog-whistles of a xenophobic president. John presents those weighty topics alongside more personal songs of reverence for travel and the outdoors, falling in and out of love, and his parents’ relationship. These songs are brought to life by an ace band featuring Billy Conway (Morphine) on drums, Jeremy Moses Curtis (Booker T) on bass, and Denver multi-instrumentalist Kate Hannington on keys, backing vocals, woodwinds, and guitars.
One of the more prolific thirty-something songwriters working in the Folk/Americana genre today, John Statz has released nine studio albums and performed all over North America and Europe over the course of his fifteen-year career. The Boston Globe has called John’s music electric, urgent folk; aching, sweet country-rock while American Songwriter has said that he writes the kind of songs that float through your mind and stay nestled in your thoughts long after listening. John has worked with some of the best producers in the genre, including Bo Ramsey (Lucinda Williams, Greg Brown) on his 2012 release Old Fashioned, Jeffrey Foucault (Kris Delmhorst, Caitlin Canty) on a 2015 album TULSA, and Denver songwriting friend Megan Burtt on 2017’s The Fire Sermon. He’s more recently taken a turn towards the production chair, self-producing 2018’s Darkness on the San Juans and co-producing 2020’s Early Riser, along with Kate Hannington, Billy Conway, and Jeremy Moses Curtis.
John Statz was given a guitar by his grandmother when he was fifteen, which turned out to be perfectly timed for an easily-distracted Wisconsin teenager who, after ten years of piano lessons, had lost interest in classical music and had taken to learning John Lennon and Elton John tunes. It wasn’t until Statz was nineteen and attending university in Oshkosh that he began writing songs. The spark lit after attending a show at the storied Café Carpe in Fort Atkinson, Wisconsin featuring Jeffrey Foucault and Peter Mulvey, who quickly became heroes, and, later on, friends and collaborators. John moved to Denver in 2010 where he escapes to the mountains as much as possible to hike and camp, cooks almost entirely in cast-iron cookware, and reads presidential biographies in chronological order.
“John Statz writes songs you can’t shake. They follow you around all day and run through your head at 3 a.m.” Jeffrey Foucault
M&J Blues are father and son Mark & Jeff Lyall. They’re regular performers at many Sheffield venues doing their bluesy country rock ‘n’ roll thing. They recorded and released live album In The Presence Of Friends in 2016 (now almost sold out) and continue to delight their ever growing army of fans. Whilst the gigs slowed down during the pandemic, they did release a limited edition 7″ single on Sheffield’s Steel & Wire Records during 2021 in support of the S6 Foodbank, a handful of copies remain at http://mjblues1.bandcamp.com
another “we’ve only had one show this year” Christmas post. Damned good one it was though.
The good news is we currently have FOUR shows on sale for next year, with more to follow. Take a look at the Gigs page for details of when you can catch Steve Dawson, The Fargo Railroad Co., John Statz, M&J Blues, M G Boulter, Rod Picott and Paul Handyside.
Here’s to 2022 being better, it was great to see so many of you a few weeks ago and hopefully we can do more of it soon.
Thanks to everybody that did join us in November. Have yourselves a Merry Christmas.
C x
p.s. This is Clarence. He’s used to greeting a lot of our out of town visitors at the top of our stairs when they stay over. He’s feeling a little lonely lately but looking forward to better days too.
RT @MGBoulter: We had a super time in Sheffield last night for @WagonWheelGigs. Thanks everyone who came down - it was a joy to play for yo… 1 month ago
WagonWheel Presents... 