Teenage Mancunian indie gang Callow Youth has released their debut single “Did It Really Matter?” through all digital channels. The track is currently XS Manchester Radio‘s Record of the Week on their “XS Evening show”, so is played every night for the next week.
“The song is a reflection on tricky teenage relationships in a world captivated by mobile devices and social media, with two young teenagers going out for a night, with high expectations, only for it to end in a messy argument” explains frontman Alfie Turner.
Callow Youth is arguably the most hotly tipped young band to emerge out of Manchester in the past year and hail from the city’s suburbs of Ashton-Under-Lyne and Failsworth. Their catchy, melodic, original songs belie their age and time together – and the fact that most of them couldn’t play their instrument and had never attempted to write a song when the band formed less than 2 years ago.
The band are currently recording new tracks with Gavin Monaghan (respected industry veteran and acclaimed producer of The Blinders “Columbia” album as well as records by Robert Plant and JAWS) – they have material lined up for release throughout 2019, and plan a debut album release before the end of the year.
Callow Youth is:
- Alfie Turner – Vocals, Guitar
- Tom Hilton – Lead Guitar, Backing Vocals
- Nathan Wrigley – Bass Guitar, Backing Vocals
- Connor Wilkinson – Drums, Backing Vocals
LINKS:
https://www.facebook.com/callowyouth.band
https://twitter.com/Callow_Youth
https://distrokid.com/hyperfollow/callowyouth/dmpy
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Jammerzine’s The Week in #Indie for 9/23/2019
Jammerzine’s The Week in #Indie for the week of September 23rd, 2019 includes exclusive interviews with Holy Wars frontwoman Kat Leon, 50FOOTWAVE and Kristin Hersh drummer Rob Ahlers, musician, Ragdoll guitarist, and YouTuber Leon Todd, Dalton Dexchain from Dalton Deschain & the Traveling Show, and Diamond Shake. Also are premieres from Cellista, Nigel Thomas, Tony Volker, and Sebastian Straw.
About Kat Leon
Holy Wars is a band that is as diverse as it is determined. That is ever more evident in this exclusive interview with Holy Wars’ frontwoman Kat Leon. Kat survives by thriving from her life and putting into her craft. That is a talent I wish everyone had. We would be in a much better world, I think.
And what we learn in this interview is how the music of Holy Wars, as well as Kat’s solo work, are part of an anthology of life. Some of it is dark, some of it light, but all of it real. And what we get in the end is a life in progress. We are all in our own personal holy war, whatever that may be, and what we get through Kat’s voice and the music of her and collaborator Nicolas Perez is a reflection of progression through originality and creativity. This is the very definition of what music is, or at least what it is at its best.
LINKS:
https://www.holywarsmusic.com
https://www.facebook.com/HolyWarsMusic
https://holywars.bigcartel.com
https://open.spotify.com/artist/2dTOWcCL0cYviin0Uz1lj4?si=g4oe1jMzQA67awHSFaBa6Q
https://music.apple.com/us/artist/holy-wars/987826411
https://instagram.com/holywarsmusic
https://twitter.com/holywarsmusic
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCKpgMRG6ocgGYRS750lo0LA
https://www.iamkatleon.com
https://www.instagram.com/iamkatleon
https://www.facebook.com/iamkatleon
https://twitter.com/iamkatleon
https://soundcloud.com/iamkatleonAbout Rob Ahlers
Currently, on tour as part of Kristin Hersh’s Electric Trio, we got a rare glimpse of 50FOOTWAVE drummer Rob Ahlers, who actually talked with us from the road. In the middle of the current tour featuring himself, Kristin, and multi-instrumentalist Fred Abong, Rob was gracious enough to call us and give us the latest information on the current tour with Kristin, his beginnings in the music industry, and how he manages to juggle the life of a touring musician as well as husband and father. Consider this interview a life lesson and guide for all of you musicians out there thinking of making the transition into fulltime.
LINKS:
http://www.kristinhersh.com/
http://www.facebook.com/50footwave/
http://www.facebook.com/strangeangels
http://50footwave.cashmusic.org/
http://twitter.com/kristinhersh
http://www.youtube.com/user/throwingmusic/videosAbout Leon Todd
Leon Todd is more than a musician in my opinion. He’s a mentor, a tutor, a reviewer, and a magician of sorts. Also, he’s a Youtuber. And a pretty stellar one at that. He has taken his passion for music and found roughly 5,610,970 (as of 9/12/2019) views from people looking to better their guitar playing or looking for new gear to better their sound. And among those 5 million+ is me. He has introduced me to so many different types of gear and, not just that, ways to experiment with my tone and setup as to make me sound better. To me, this is the very essence of Youtube. To all of you who think it’s a website to find all the funny little things that cats do can go over to Instagram and see what everyone’s having for lunch.
Leon is a full time working musician with his band Ragdoll as well as a teacher of music who has literally taken the career he loves and has made a Youtube channel dedicated to helping those guitarists out there who wish to better their tone and playing. And he does this in such an entertaining way as to not only NOT make you feel stupid (believe me I have felt stupid enough in this life
) but in a way that makes it entertaining. All good teachers teach their students in a way that is best for them and that way usually is done with a combination of information, determination, and with interest and enthusiasm.LINKS:
https://www.youtube.com/user/kingcrimsonscourt
https://www.facebook.com/Leontoddmusic
https://instagram.com/leon_ragdoll
https://www.facebook.com/ragdollrock
https://ragdollrock.bandcamp.comAbout Dalton Deschain
Dalton Deschain is someone who I hold in high regard when it comes to #indie music. And now, after discovering said music in 2015, I finally get to speak with him. He is a very unique multi-talent, to say the least. In addition to his band, Dalton Deschain & the Traveling Show, he also has a comic book series titled MONOCUL, which has a unique and dark blend of pulp stylings in Dalton’s now-signature appearance.
Dalton and his band also bring that blend and influence, which they describe as ‘pulp-punk’. That style is never more evident in their new single titled ‘Man/Thing’ above. In this interview, we talk about the new single as well as the upcoming album titled ‘Casey’ and the connection between their previous EPs, ‘Casey’, and their future album slated for release. With Dalton and the band, you get a continuation within the music, as you will learn in this interview, which can create a lasting relationship between band and fans.
LINKS:
http://www.daltondeschain.com
https://www.facebook.com/daltondeschainmusic
https://instagram.com/daltondeschain
https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/the-collateral-vignettes-ep/id934670609
https://soundcloud.com/daltondeschain
https://patreon.com/monoculAbout Diamond Shake
In this Jammerzine Exclusive is about survival. Not only survival but coming out the other side a better person. That person is Diamond Shake, aka Matthew Hitchens. Matthew has that enviable ability to take the bad aspects of life and make them work for you. You will hear about that in this interview, and it is something you want to listen to because Matthew is sharing his life lesson. And the result is his project Diamond Shake.
His new album titled ‘From Method to Madness ‘ drops November 15 and his new single/video ‘Let it Die’ drops tomorrow. That being said, this is a perfect time to get to know the wizard behind the curtain and learn about him as a person as well as a musician. After that listen, you will be a new fan of both Diamond Shake and Matthew Hitchens.
LINKS:
http://www.diamondshake.com
https://www.instagram.com/thediamondshake
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUT0cqzCanrCsAlqgaZRqhQ
http://www.soundcloud.com/diamond-shakeAbout Cellista
Cellista brings the listener into her dark, almost cinematic musical universe with her new single titled ‘Confessions’. Starting almost like somewhat of a proclamation, Cellista brings forth her lyrically lucid, musically ethereal and haunting score with a poetically dissonant yet beautiful musical piece that says as much with the music as it does with the words. ‘Confessions’ may be indescribably dark, but the more you listen to it, you begin to see a faint light, and that light brings new meaning to the lyrics, which can be a revelation in the form of a confession.
The album, ‘Transfigurations’, is available now on limited edition CD and at shows and comes with a full-length book and download code. It can be found everywhere digitally, including Bandcamp, where the book is downloadable as a PDF for anyone purchasing the album there. The book is also being released separately via online retail sites like Amazon.
LINKS:
http://www.cellista.net
https://www.facebook.com/cellista.music
https://twitter.com/xcellistax
https://www.instagram.com/xcellistax
https://www.soundcloud.com/xcellistax
https://cellista.bandcamp.com
https://www.youtube.com/user/xcellistax/videos
https://open.spotify.com/artist/3sZ132TtThqqirlRB9BjFpAbout Nigel Thomas
Nigel Thomas is back and better than ever with his new album titled ‘Well Well’. Ever since our interview with him back in 2015 I’ve thought that Nigel is one of those rare talents that not only continuously grow musically, but is not afraid to grow. That is actually not all that common in the music industry. An artist might have some major success with a single or an album and finds it difficult to move forward stylistically because of fear of losing that audience. But Nigel embraces the change with 10 tracks of hook-filled original tracks that are as diverse within the album as the album is diverse within Nigel’s catalog.
One constant that I found in ‘Well Well’ is the ‘go left when I thought it would go right’ twists and turns musically that I found pleasantly unexpecting. Right down to the chord changes there are bits and pieces that I would have never expected but they are there and they fit perfectly. Not only outside of the box but, at times, all around it.
LINKS:
https://www.nigelsongs.com
https://www.facebook.com/nigelsongs
https://twitter.com/nigelsongs
https://play.spotify.com/album/1gsC7y3s98eAg4CKk0STFb
https://soundcloud.com/nigelthomas
https://itunes.apple.com/gb/album/travelling-man/id1078458895About Tony Volker
Tony Volker gives another stellar performance with his new album titled ‘Where The Light Gets In’. His stylings have always been a bit eclectic, which is something I love, but his pop and hook writing skills really shine on this latest outing. I compare him somewhat to Michael Penn because of that unique blend of endearing quirkiness, originality, and use of instruments from, not only different stylings but different cultures. And they blend so well.
‘Where The Light Gets In’ is out now on all digital platforms.
LINKS:
https://www.tonyvolker.co.uk
https://www.facebook.com/musictonyv
https://twitter.com/tony_volker
https://soundcloud.com/tonyvolkerAbout Sebastian Straw
Sebastian Straw proves that he is a consummate songwriter with his new video for the track titled ‘My Friend’. The song starts off with a brilliant hook that captivates with its beautiful acoustic guitar and vocal melody but then reality kicks in with an out-of-left-field chorus in the style of Radiohead that really takes the song to a different level than expected. Added brilliance with the cello accompaniment and the walking bassline that chugs along and keeps the song anchored.
The album ‘Welcome Yesterday’ will be released on October 18 and will be available across digital stores and streaming platforms.
LINKS:
https://www.facebook.com/sebastianstrawofficial
https://soundcloud.com/sebastianstraw
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZgElWHFjCG9gCjXBCQcFbA
https://www.instagram.com/sebastianstrawofficial
https://twitter.com/SebastianStrawPoster photo by Heather Koepp Photography.
Click HERE to watch Season 5 of Jammerzine’s ‘The Week in #Indie’.
Click HERE to watch Season 4 of Jammerzine’s ‘The Week in #Indie’.
Click HERE to watch Season 3 of Jammerzine’s ‘The Week in #Indie’.
Click HERE to watch Season 2 of Jammerzine’s ‘The Week in #Indie’.
Click HERE to watch Season 1 of Jammerzine’s ‘The Week in #Indie’.LINK:
https://jammerzine.com -
An Interview with Blur’s Dave Rowntree
Jammerzine has an exclusive interview with the multi talent and Blur drummer known as Dave Rowntree. His new album titled ‘Radio Songs’ is out as of today and features a gamut of styles and genre hopping contained within songs straight from the heart of a musician that wears that heart on his sleeve.
‘Radio Songs‘ (playlist below) is one of those albums that you could say is truly diverse. Sometimes subtly, and sometimes genre bending. But, what I find really endearing about it is that feeling you get when each song was created out of that certain passion that comes from artists that stay late and work until that sense of completion is present.
And, in this interview, we get that sense between the words as well as a peek into how an album such as ‘Radio Songs’ comes to be. We also get to know Dave the person as well as the artist.
About Dave Rowntree & ‘Radio Songs’
As a kid growing up in Colchester, Dave Rowntree would often sit with his dad at the family’s kitchen table, building radio kits together. Then, using an antenna situated in their garden, they’d tune into stations from around the world, picking up exotic languages and music while wondering what life was like in these faraway places.
“Radio has been a constant for me,” Rowntree reflects. “It’s been one of the steadying factors in my life.”
Hence the title of Radio Songs, Dave Rowntree’s debut solo album. Many of the songs on it began life with his recordings of the weird and wonderful sounds of atmospheric static in-between stations, using them as the foundations upon which he built the tracks.“The idea of Radio Songs is me spinning through the dial,” he explains. “It sounds like you’ve got a radio tuned to some static and you spin the dial, and the song pops out of it. And then you spin the dial again, and the song dissolves back into the static.” Moreover, each of the songs on the record finds Rowntree exploring significant turning points in his life.
Best known as the drummer in Blur, Dave Rowntree is also something of a polymath: film and TV composer, podcaster, light aircraft pilot (and instructor), lawyer, former Labour councillor. “I’ve always been a bit of a nomad,” he laughs. “Never quite satisfied. I suppose I’m endlessly ambitious, really.” Those ambitions have led him to the creation of Radio Songs, which he points out is “an album that I’ve been musing on and chipping away at for a few years now.”
It’s a record set to surprise many people, being an electronic-based album with orchestral fringes, filled with great, tuneful songs delivered by Rowntree’s assured and expressive vocal performances. While down the years he’s provided backing vocals on many of Blur’s albums and onstage during their live sets, this is the first time the drummer has stepped up to the microphone as a singer in his own right. He says he didn’t particularly find the prospect daunting.
“Less than you’d think, really,” he notes with a chuckle. “I’m kind of unselfconscious in the studio, having spent half my working life there. What really helped was I took trumpet lessons during lockdown. Absolute disaster. My trumpet-playing sounds like wild geese being murdered by a fox. But that really nailed the breathing aspect of singing for me. I’m still experimenting with my voice.”
Produced by Leo Abrahams (Brian Eno, Ghostpoet, Wild Beasts), featuring co-writers including Gary Go and Högni Egilsson and stirring orchestrations recorded in Budapest, Radio Songs is a sonically expansive, but also deeply personal record. Slow-burning ballad ‘1000 Miles’, for example, is a remote long song expressing the difficulties in sustaining a relationship as a world-travelling musician.
“I’d just had an argument with my girlfriend the morning when I set off for Iceland to work with Högni,” Rowntree recalls. “Which is just the wrong thing to do, isn’t it? Because then there’s no chance of making up ‘til you get back again. And so that’s what the song is about. It’s like, ‘Oh God, I’m 1000 miles from home.’ That’s been a real problem…on tour with Blur, trying to keep a relationship going from the other side of the world.”
At the opposite end of the spectrum, there’s the deceptively bright and upbeat ‘London Bridge’, with its staccato “la-la-la-la” hook line, which on closer listening reveals a lyrical sense of dread. Rowntree says the song has its roots in strange recognitions of patterns.
“When I was in my early 20s, in Colchester, I would start to see the number 126 everywhere,” he remembers. “I lived at a house that was 126, I’d get a bus that was 126. I knew this was confirmation bias. I’d read books about that kind of thing, but it was still happening. It felt to me that the universe was trying to alert my attention to 126 for some reason, even though the rational part of me knew that that was bollocks.
“So, ‘London Bridge’ was one of those,” he adds. “Things just started happening when I was near London Bridge, or going past on the bus, or on the tube going underneath London Bridge. I would just notice events occurring, and it was slightly unsettling. Bad shit started happening around London Bridge. I had to confront my London Bridge demons and that’s what the song is about (laughs).”
Elsewhere, the tumbling beats and dreamy instrumental layers of ‘Devil’s Island’ backdrop Rowntree’s lyric returning him to darker days back in the ‘90s, and ‘Downtown’ (with its references to ‘Bitterville’) is a commentary on the “negative and divisive” UK post-Brexit. “It just felt so much like my memory of Britain in the ‘70s and how toxic that all felt,” he says.
Further down the track list lie the syncopated rhythms of beautifully brooding pop song ‘Tape Measure’, the slow-moving synths of ‘Machines Like Me’ and the electronically-enhanced admissions of ‘Volcano’. Rowntree says the latter was inspired by a childhood photograph and describes the song as being about “a situation I’ve found myself in several times in life, where I can’t get any closer to something, but equally you don’t want to get any further away. And I’ve just found myself stuck.”
Meanwhile, two other tracks highlight more instrumental or abstract approaches. Closer ‘Who’s Asking’ began life as a choral piece for a film, that went unused, and was rearranged by Leo Abrahams. Similarly, Abrahams reconfigured ‘HK’ from an original track that featured cut-up recordings of radio broadcasts Rowntree had captured in Hong Kong while Blur were there making 2015’s The Magic Whip album.
“There’s something full on about Chinese commercial radio,” Rowntree enthuses. “If you think American radio is kind of pumping you the hard sell, you should listen to Chinese radio. It takes your breath away.”
Dave Rowntree is clearly an individual bursting with energy, and someone drawn to different fascinations. “I get grabbed by these random obsessions,” he says. In recent years, his film and TV composing work has included soundtracks for Netflix sci-fi series The One, the Bros documentary film After the Screaming Stops and BBC One’s technological crime thriller The Capture. Upcoming projects include a second series of The Capture and the third season of War of the Worlds through Disney+.
While he still flies his part-owned Cirrus SR22 single-engine plane every week, touring commitments with the reformed Blur around The Magic Whip put a stop to his parallel life as a lawyer. Instead, when the band’s activities died down once again, he served as Labour councillor in Norfolk County Council from 2017 to 2021.
“That was great,” he says. “I believe in localism passionately. Knocking on doors and offering help I think is a really powerful and amazing thing to do.”
For the foreseeable future, however, Dave Rowntree’s focus will be back on music. He’s already thinking about a second album, along with the gigs he’s planning to perform the tracks from Radio Songs.
“It’s not a traditional album,” he points out. “So, the kind of mosh pit way of doing things isn’t going to work. The idea is for it to be a bit more of an interesting event – maybe doing it in the round, surrounded by a light show. So, watch this space.”
In the meantime, there is this surprising, moving and highly melodic album to enjoy. Radio Songs: spin the dial and tune in.
LINKS:
https://daver.lnk.to/RadioSongs
https://twitter.com/DaveRowntree
https://www.instagram.com/davidrowntree
https://www.facebook.com/rowntree.david
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwdB97JxmimClJXPDMrBEOg -
An Interview with Drew Davies (The Week in #Indie Segment)
This interview was a real treat for me. To become a fan of someone’s music that you get to review and to actually get to write about how that music stands out as it’s own is a true privilege. That artist is Drew Davies. I’ve gotten to review two of his tracks so far: ‘Man on the Run‘ and ‘Living the Dream‘. Both tracks stand out in their own individual ways, and each is a musical monster in their own creative right.
And now I get to talk with the mind behind the music and how those tracks came to be and much, much more. There are a few true surprises in this interview (I would have never guessed his origins in music). We also get a detailed glimpse of his views on the current music scene and what he has coming up next. I guarantee, Drew will be one of your next favorite artists.
About Drew Davies
Persistence is a word that’s rather easily thrown around in this era of the five-minute social media fad. But in this golden age of the hashtag Drew’s goals have always been keenly focussed on producing music close to his heart.Through friendships and loved ones come and gone, successes, setbacks and everything in between, Drew has poured himself into his musical labors, and now he’s produced his most personal work to date.
Whilst Drew hails from the North of England he is an adopted Londoner; he’s trod the boards of venues and festivals across the UK and Europe with various bands, worked in musical collaborations, written for other artists and sang in session gigs to get by. From cutting his teeth and paying his dues in some of the seediest venues you’ve ever likely to see to recording in some of the top studios on the planet; these experiences all played their part in his arrival at this vantage point, from which he brings forth his debut solo album.
Musically Drew pulls from a vast array of influences that stretch from 50s rock n’ roll to modern electronica. From the hook-filled, to-the-point numbers of Roy Orbison or Tom Petty, to the cinematic synth sounds of John Carpenter, Vangelis, and Kavinsky, the music is imbued with a heavy tenderness; wrapped up in the genre-bending timelessness of artists like Bowie, Queen or Eurythmics.
“When I wrote ‘Living The Dream’ I had recently removed myself from a number of unhealthy relationships and thrown myself into my work. Whilst I had become somewhat of a hermit in those days I also met a wonderful woman and started a love affair.
The song is about going your own way; but it’s also a snapshot of that period in my life; the lyrics were quite a tongue in cheek; centering on the rejection of the ‘rock n roll’ lifestyle that had been thrust upon me, the new love in my life and the scene from where I was writing the song…”
In preparation for the release of Living the Dream, Drew has readied a full backing band complete with dueling guitars, bass, synthesizers, drums and two backing singers; bringing the full sound of the songs to the stage as they can be heard on the record. Having debuted earlier this year at London’s iconic Troubadour club the band have gone on to play notable London venues and are preparing to tour the UK and beyond.
Self-produced by Drew, the album was recorded at Tileyard Studios in London, before arriving at the hands of mixing engineer Steve Honest (Oasis, Michael Jackson, Fleetwood Mac), with mastering by John Webber (George Michael, David Bowie, Super Furry Animals) at the legendary AIR Studios.
LINKS:
https://www.drewdaviesmusic.com
https://www.facebook.com/drewdaviesmusic
https://www.twitter.com/drewdaviesmusic
https://www.instagram.com/drewdaviesmusic
https://drewdaviesmusic.bandcamp.com