Mountain Man: Live in St Augustine’s Tower, July 10, 2010.

by Kieran Evans.

I think I witnessed one of the best gigs of my life last Thursday night. I say I think, not because I’m still in two minds or doubt what I saw or heard…but because I’m still thinking about what I felt just being ‘there’. I can’t remember most of the songs that were performed and I can’t even remember where I stood. But I was 40 ft up in a church clock tower in Hackney and where people placed themselves was not exactly that important. There were only thirty of us present and the band stood a foot away from us at the best of times. The band in question was a three-piece called Mountain Man who hail from Bennington in Vermont and comprise of Molly, Alex and Amelia. Their record is called ‘Made The Harbor’ and you definitely won’t hear anything else so haunting and beautiful this year. If you want a roadmap, take the next left for Appalachian folk songs, then a sharp right in to ‘that song’ by Krauss, Harris and Welch in ‘O’ Brother Where Art Thou’ and then continue for five hundred yards with some Judee Sill and you’ve got a vague idea of where I’m going.

I saw Mountain Man the previous week at the Union Chapel as part of a Bella Union label night. There they sang without microphones, just three voices and a guitar yet the sound they created filled the space. It was magical. But still, nothing prepared me for Thursday night.

Congregating outside St Augustine’s Tower at the allotted time, we were ushered in to the small ground floor for a cup of orange juice and just about enough time to learn that the tower is Hackney’s oldest building, dating back to the thirteenth century. At a given point, we filed up the narrow winding staircase to the first floor where the band stood in front of a stained glass window, awaiting our arrival. In that awkward silence, we shuffled into the small space, and waited. There were a few asides and some nervous laughter…and then there was a glance, a plucked note and they began. Their voices soared above us and their harmonies enveloped us but they didn’t look at us. They just looked at each other, staring deeply into themselves, an almost psychic musical connection keeping their vocal inflections and rhythms in perfect harmony. At the end of the first song, there was an audible intake of breath followed by ripples of applause. This was something special.

A few songs later and as we shuffled out of the room and climbed single file up the spiral stairs, the band, in amongst us, sang their song ‘Babylon’, building a haunting three part harmony around three different sets of lyrics and phrases repeated separately over and over, until slowly the words “We remember, we remember we remember thee Zion” came together and echoed all around us. It sent shivers down my spine as we kept heading up.

We squeezed into a smaller room, which held the clock mechanism and we waited. Someone loaned Alex a knee to rest her leg on whilst she tuned her guitar. She found the note and the voices soared above us again, their simple yet effective words transporting us to the far corners of the American Plains. I kept looking around at other people’s faces, trying to gauge whether they were feeling the same thing I was beginning to feel. Hard as it was in the dull light, the hushed silence and atmosphere seemed to confirm we were all on the same journey.

“Follow, follow, follow, follow the Buffalo. In my eyes I saw the great black hills and the mighty Mississippi River swells…”

They finished in this room with an astonishing song called ‘River’ which combined a chiming, birdlike ‘coo-ing’ melody with lyrics that seem to indicate an impending tragedy; “Down to the river by boat and oar, give the word to my mother, tell my sister and my father, that on the shore lay my brother, and it’s all that I remember”. A possible clue to what happened in the story lay in how the song ended as we were left with just the sound of Molly, Amelia and Alex exhaling sharp, deep pants in a rhythm that slowed and slowed till finally all we could hear was just Molly and her breathy exhales diminishing into silence.

So we continued up the steep narrow steps to the next floor and another set of songs, this time performed around a large bell. Despite the stark beauty of their voices, the murky light of our surroundings and the charged atmosphere brought a darker heart into play with the songs they sang in this room. As the words “Broken wings won’t bring you home, soft white tendons robe hollow bones, you hung those feathers from your ceiling, so the women you bring home lay down” hung heavy in the air, we could’ve almost been in a scene cut from Twin Peaks.

As we milled around, Molly, Alex and Amelia chatted between themselves or with us, sharing anecdotes of their lives back in the States. Sometimes the tales they told were as stark and fascinating as the songs that they sang …including one about singing to a raging schizophrenic who’d followed Molly and her friend home and burst into their house with tales of conspiracy and hatred. Others no doubt would have fled, yet Molly chose to stay and sing. Looking into his fiery, wild eyes, she sang lullabies to him in her softest, gentlest voice, calming him down long enough for them to get help.

These stories I think, provided some form of cover to the nervousness they felt performing so up close and personal but as they finished one of their most evocative songs ‘Sewee Sewee’, we were left in no doubt about the hardships and struggles they’ve faced. The lines ‘We travelled far on this road run, from the great plains there, the tall green grasses of the low range’ seem to linger longer than normal in Amelia’s head. A fact we all acknowledged as her voice trembled and cracked as she recounted how much they’ve criss-crossed America performing their songs and the comfort they draw from each other when times get hard.

And then, when the time was right – and we all knew when it was right – silence descended upon the room and those voices drifted up and over us again. For the song ‘Animal Tracks’, we were corralled into the middle of the room whilst each of the band took up position in one of the corners. And as we stood looking inwards at each other, they sang around us…their vocal harmonies triangulating and immersing us. “And the sweat will roll down our backs as we follow animal tracks, to dream of the woods and the holes in the leaves where you see, the bright baby eyes of the chickadee”. I closed my eyes and let the sound and words roll over me and for one brief moment, I was there with them.

Finally we got to the roof, London around and beyond us, a beautiful antique weather vane above. As the sun set in the distance, Alex, Amelia and Molly sang us a final three songs including a new one they’d prepared just a few days earlier. As the final note disappeared into the air, there was an awkward silence. Somehow we didn’t want this to end. We clapped yet we were all paralyzed. The band slipped away quietly whilst we milled around on top of that roof, unable to speak. A few couples hugged each other and looked into the horizon. Friends, acquaintances and strangers just blew the air out of their cheeks. Nothing needed to be said. I knew. They knew. We all knew.

Afterwards, when we had all finally made the descent back down to the ground floor we sang Happy Birthday to Amelia and celebrated with some cake, cut up and dispensed using a Billy Bragg CD. The band was clearly happy. They jumped and piggy backed around the small space and smiled a lot. I smiled too, and as I looked on at this simple and childlike yet ecstatic release I realized that it encapsulated everything I love about music…that yes, music is powerful, it can overcome you, it can immerse you, it can hurt you, it can even destroy you…yet it can lift you, it can help you, it can heal you but most importantly it can be this simple and this beautiful.

And now as I sit here and think about what music really means to me, I realize it isn’t just about a listening experience. It’s something that transcends the communal, collective experience. It’s a spiritual journey that takes you to a place inside yourself, a place where you truly immerse yourself and let go, a place where you free your doubts and fears and trust in the judgment and experience of others. I found that place again on Thursday night. That it took place in a 13th century clock tower in the middle of Hackney with 30 other people somehow makes it feel just that little bit more magical. For me, I consider myself to be lucky, because I truly believe angels sang for me last Thursday night, and I got closer to God.
For one night only…

‘Mouthwings’ recorded live at St Augustine’s Tower. The original version of this song can be found on the Bella Union album, ‘Made The Harbor, which is out now and available from Rough Trade.
For a chance to win a copy of ‘Made in Harbor’ see this Friday’s newsletter.

Kieran Evans is a documentary film-maker. His cv includes, ‘Vashti Bunyan: From Here To Before’ and ‘Finisterre’. At the moment he is developing, ‘Down by the River’, a music film feature for Caught by the River, that will launch at the end of August.

Larry Jon Wilson. songwriter, singer, guitar player. Born October 7, 1940, died June 21, 2010.

Remembered by Ross Allen.

I hate things like this. It seems that nearly every week of doing my radio show some legend has gone and died. You want to doff your cap and pay tribute, so you play a track or two, recount what you know (or have looked up) and they go by… and I clichedly say – “but the music lives on…”

Well with the passing of Larry Jon Wilson, I can say more than that. The music will live and build to a place where his music was truly meant to be, as happens with all great artists. You see, Larry Jon may be known to you but really he is unknown, far from known. When you put together the cumulative parts of what he had, said and recorded, you realise that that is a tragedy. Then, aside from that you had him as person. Thats a double blow.

I was introduced to this music, his world, by default. Growing up a South London soul boy ( though with a slight heavy metal deviation at the ages of 11 to 13 – God, grief will make you fess up the wierdest things !), I had parameters in my musical life. Open to most things but country was way beyond my city limits.

Then there was one magical day in Peckham (surely those words cant be put together in a sentence !). I owe the opening of the door into this extraordinary world to one Jeb Loy Nichols, and it is a debt, a big one ! As not only did Travis Wammack’s version of ‘You Better Move On’, open my mind to what became known as Country Got Soul and thus the music of Larry Jon Wilson and Tony Joe White, Dann Penn and Donnie Fritts – funky and soulful, with that country narrative. The story telling ability was remarkable. It oozes out of all good country (all good songs in reality) but it, and subsequently they, opened me up in turn to their influences. I was aware of a lot of the soulful side of those but not the real country – the soul music of the white south. True stories.

It was not just the music that was amazing but the whole vibe of these guys, and Larry Jon Wilson was pivotal in opening me up to all this. He was the first guy we visited in the States, whilst making in-roads in to recording The Country Soul Revue record. On a trip to Augusta, Georgia, we were met by that voice – the one off the record and the one from down the phone – there he was – a bear of a man, as aimiable and chatty as ever. And he lived next to James Brown !! Happy that we had come to see him, happy to tell us more stories, (at points we thought they would never end, you now wish that they hadn’t !) Always keen to show you things, play you things, tell you about gigs with Mickey Newbury, Guy Clarke, Tony Joe White or Townes Van Zandt. Travelling around the states these troubadors were on ‘Heartworn Highways’, hobo’s with guitars and songs recounting the tales of their lives and stories that they had picked up along the way. These guys, and Larry in particular, were fighting the real fight for music and if not being too over dramatic, life. They were Outlaws. I had never heard the like of it. These were not my usual musical heroes – city slickers but Country, out and out Country, and they were cool. It, they, he, blew my mind. I was in another world and I loved it

You may know the music, you should know the music. No shame if you don’t but after reading this look him up you won’t be disappointed – you will be rejuvinated. But my dealings with LJW are more than absolute next level lyricism, melody, playing and vocals – and that, as i said earlier, is enough. To me LJW was the ultimate southern gent. And that was something that I loved meeting and finding out about. The south of the states is a mass of contradictions, beautiful beyond belief in parts, full of history and tales of misdemeanours and glories, and a tradition that was exemplified by LJW. Upright, forthright, downright straight ahead – no punches pulled, if you were good you were good, if you were wrong, rude or stupid – you’d soon know about it and should watch out. I think the word I am looking for is a timeless one, he was REAL, even though some of the stories were a little too tall at times, he was real. What you hear in those songs were the tales he had been drawn to, the lifestyle that he loved, the way he lived his life. The music is great because he was, the lifestyle was, the mindset was. It seemed to echo a different time and place, part Gone With The Wind part Sam Peckinpah.

He will always remind me of balmy southern evenings, southern history, southern ways, being a true gent and great, great southern music. And the music will live on and grow and a whole world will exist in my head that will forever be stamped “LJW Was Here”. For that I will always be in his debt.

JB adds; Ross and Jeb Loy Nichols have done a lot to bring Larry Jon’s music to a wider audience. After that fortuitous night when a young soul boy had his mind expanded the pair of them embarked, with fan-boy enthusiasm, on a mission to spread the word. They compiled and released two albums, both of them full of lost treasure – Country Got Soul, Volumes 1 & 2 – that are ‘must have’ records for anyones collection. As Ross mentions in his heartfelt remembrance, him and Jeb upped and went over to meet these heroes. Whilst there, and with help from the mighty Dan Penn, they got the survivors in the studio to cut new tracks for a compilation titled ‘Testifying’ which was launched with a show at London’s Barbican. For more information I recommend a visit to Jeb’s website
Honorable mention must go to James Endeacott of 1965 Records for bringing LJW over here to play some shows a couple of years back and released an album of new material to coincide. more on that HERE.

We’ll leave you with a clip of the great man doing his thing for the superb 1975 documentary film ‘Heartworn Highways’, another great entry point into the music and artists that Ross writes about above.

Listen to Ross Allen’s Meltdown radio show.

review by Frank Cottrell Boyce

The best definition of real creativity I’ve ever heard was given to me by Guy Garvey. He was talking to me about Sky at Night - the sublime new album from I Am Kloot, which he’d just finished producing alongside Craig Potter, when he suddenly tripped into an anecdote about his childhood, from the days when soft drinks were delivered to your door by the “pop man”. I remember bottles the size of gasometers full of lurid liquids with dodgy names – Kool Kola and Pina Koolada – appearing on our doorstep. The past is a foreign country alright. You couldn’t conceive of such a thing now. Anyway, one day the Guys’ pop man crashed his truck into a wall, scattering bottles everywhere. Kids from miles around ran out to look at this unexpected bounty, only to find the man still shaking in the cab, rolling himself a cigarette, trying to get a grip. Seeing the kids there, he told them to help themselves to the bottles which – by some providence – remained unbroken. The kids ran around grabbing bottles. “Sasparilla was worth two of everything else”. For weeks later everyone had a green tongue, dilated pupils and one unerasable ofmemory. Everything you need to know about the business creating something better than yourself is in there – the happy accident (not so happy for you but great for everyone else), the ability to embrace disaster, the luck / providence / Grace that allows the bottles to survive, and above all the reckless generosity (“go on, help yourselves”). It perfectly describes Sky at Night – a record which Peter Jobson said was an attempt to get “all of life onto one record – which can be tricky.”

Kloot have always been about performance rather than recording. Play Moolah Rouge and Natural History both had the swaggering immediacy of great live albums. You were listening to three musicians playing together – full pelt, unequal, unstable, overstretched. So it’s a bit of a surprise to find orchestras, choirs, saxophones and harps started pouring out of the speakers on Sky at Night. It’s lavish and nocturnal, reflective a “wee small hours” of the morning album. The soundtrack to a movie about a man walking back down the mean streets from his latest heart break, glancing up at the sky and realizing that Greater Manchester has somehow cut lose from Earth and is in a perilous orbit round the rings of Saturn.

Garvey says that when of producing Kloot’s first album, Natural History “I was just pressing the record button, then pressing the stop button”. This time he talks about white boards, brainstorming, harpists and, instead of a long weekend, eighteen months – on and off – in the studio. Garvey calls all this “that silk cushion”. But it doesn’t feel like the silk cushion to me. This is not a band trying to spend its way to genius. “That’s because in those circumstances,” says Garvey, “the producer is usually working for the record company. But this time Craig and I are the producers and we’re mates with the band.” You can hear on “I Still Do” that Marie Lionheardt the renowned harpist has not been brought in to guest, she’s playing like a member of the band. This is the same Kloot but painting with a lot more colours, because they’re painting on a much bigger canvas. Sky at Night in fact.

When I talked to Andy, Peter and John about this album, they could barely contain themselves. As if they can hardly believe they’ve done it. Happy memories, favorite lines and nominations for the best track pour out of them. They talked about influences and steals. I think I’m supposed to be doing something similar here but I don’t want to be the one to say “This is Sam Cooke meets the Electric Light Orchestra conducted by John Cooper Clarke with Frank Sinatra on the theramin”. I’m not going to talk about highlights because I don’t want you to skip. I think you should listen to it all That might sound like a pointless demand in the age of the download. But … well, here’s a true story: a friend of mine had a son who hated reading. I said well books sound better when someone reads them to you, so I put Treasure Island on his iPod for him, convinced that he’d be blown away by Long John and Blind Pugh. A few days later he said he just couldn’t follow it. It was too weird. One minute they were dead, one minute they weren’t. One minute they were friends. The next they were enemies. They were on an island. They were in England. They were on the island again. What was going on? I took a look at the iPod. I had to explain to him that you can’t really listen to Treasure Island on shuffle.

Some things were made for you to sit and listen to, in a particular order. Some stories have a begining, a middle and an end. Sit down and listen to Sky at Night. It has a story to tell you.

‘Sky at Night’ is released on Monday.
www.iamkloot.com

by Paolo Hewitt.

“Won’t you meet me in the country, in the Summertime in England….”

In 1980 Kevin Rowland of Dexys Midnight Runners went searching for the young soul rebels. He went to bars and pubs and cafés, even libraries and old people’s homes, but he could not find them anywhere. He gave up his search, trudged slowly home. Maybe if he had headed for the countryside he might have been in luck. For there, amongst the woods, the rivers, the fields, the hills, the stumbling waterfalls, he might well have come across one of the great soul rebels of our time, Mr Van Morrison reading nature poems by Alfred Austin and dreaming up the music that would create a landmark album in his career.
The Common One is Van Morrison’s twelfth album and I would venture an absolute classic. Certainly, nature has never gripped a songwriter – or indeed Van – so vividly or so tightly. Nearly every song is set in the countryside, relates to the countryside, and is about the countryside.
For Van, nature is many things. On Haunts Of Ancient Peace it is a conduit into the past, a place of great relief, where love and light create the void where words do not exist. On Summertime In England it is where the poets Wordsworth and Coleridge meet and go smoking poetry. It is where his love in red robes rides down by Avalon and there is Van asking to meet her in the long grass, to enter nature as one.

On Satisfied, the album’s out and out r’n’b gem, he opens up the song ‘walking up that mountainside.’ On the sublime Wild Honey, he urges his lover to open her arms and greet him in the early morning light. And on the experimental When Heart Is Open he asks time and time again, ‘hand me down my old great coat, I think I’ll go walking in the woods.’
Sex plays no part in this album. Van’s only desire is to respond to nature’s mystery and utter beauty. This is an album of the soul not an album of desire, a deep and holy music designed to evolve in the way nature does, that is, in brilliant and unexpected ways.
One of the album’s many triumphs is the overriding sense it gives of a band following the music wherever it goes, just as on a long hike into unknown territory you have no idea of the beauty that awaits you just around the bend.
Summertime In England is the perfect example. It begins with a drum beat, establishes a rhythm and an urgency which is simply compelling. The band maintain the groove until quite unexpectedly orchestral strings enter like a late guest at a party and signal the end of phase one.
The band then move into another gear before taking off again. But there is more, a church organ, another change in time and space which allows Van and the band to slowly strip away everything until there is just him standing on a hill asking can you hear the silence, can you hear the silence?
Furthermore, I think this Van’s best sung album. That is because the music demands he use that great vocal talent as an instrument as much as a method of conveying words, images. Often in this work of such great stature Van plays his voice off against Pee Wee Ellis’s brilliant saxophone playing or Mark Isham’s deliberate evocation of the Miles Davis’s trumpet sound, circa Kind Of Blue.

Fittingly, this wonderful album was recorded in a monastery, the Super Bear studios, located in the South of France. Guitarist Mick Cox refers to it’s recording as ‘highly charged’ and states that the rehearsals for the album (which took place in the dying months of 1979) actually yielded better versions than saw the light of day.
Overdubs etc were added in America and it was released in September of 1980. I was 23 years old at the time and not ready for it. I was a City Boy and full of attitude. I would have to wait many years to be ready for this masterpiece.
The same could be said of many others. The NME for example called it, ‘colossally smug and cosmically dull; an interminable, vacuous and drearily egotistical stab at spirituality”.
It was only later on that the great writer Lester Bangs started to say, you know what boys, this album might just well be something very special indeed.
According to the books Van reacted badly to the critical dismissal of this album and you can see his point. To create a work of such magnitude, to create a music that demands the very best in terms of imagination and playing and commitment, and to be dismissed so easily, got to hurt, got to hurt bad.
The Common One reached 68 in the UK charts and disappeared.
Time now to enter the silence and retrieve The Common One.

Paolo Hewitt

‘Juniper‘, the new album by Treecreeper, the band fronted by Caught by the River contributor Will Burns is released tomorrow by Trash Aesthetics.

The press release says:
“After the critical warmth with which their debut album “Grain” was received, brothers Greg and Will Burns have spent the last 3 years basking in rock n roll’s three biggest pastimes: bird watching, fishing and playing cricket (just don’t tell the Times. ed). In between their busy schedules, they’ve also found time to write “Juniper”: a stunning paean to love; both old and new”

We have three copies of the album to giveaway. To have a chance of winning one you need to;
1/ be on our members list.
2/ answer the following question correctly: “What traditional English ardent spirit is distilled using the Juniper berry?”
3/ send the answer to info@caughtbytheriver.net before 6pm on Tuesday.
The first three correct answers pulled from the keep net win the CDs.

See Treecreeper live on the Caught by the River stage at the Port Eliot Festival, at 12 noon on Saturday, July 24.

Number six in our series of Birdsongs downloads goes out to members this week. Make sure you are signed up to our mailing list (see the box above) and look out for the newsletter on Friday.
Having launched this series back in January we are pleased to welcome back British Sea Power’s Martin Noble as guest selector.Martin has been generous enough to include the demo version of the Sea Power classic, ‘The Great Skua’, that was only previously available as a stream on Caught by the River (if you know what I mean).

NT Sounds Project from National Trust on Vimeo.

by Nick Franglen.

On the surface there might not be all that much to this record, nice as it sounds – Jarvis Cocker goes around National Trust properties recording sound effects. Certainly the National Trust don’t make out there’s much more to it that that – they say it’s “the ultimate chill-out album”, a background record to be dipped into when you want a bit of respite from the stresses of life.

That’s fine if you simply have to relive the sound of the music box at Lanhydrock, and very lovely it is too, but becomes a less enticing proposition on many of the other tracks. Let’s face it, it’s not all that relaxing listening to the sound of a strap press starting up, wherever it might be.

Thank God then for Jarvis and his irrepressible creativity. Listened to in its entirety rather than as disparate tracks this album takes on a whole new life, and becomes so much more than just a themed collection of sound effects. The choices Jarvis has made in recording and compiling the source material make for a really enjoyable journey, creating thought provoking and amusing comparisons as he threads his way through the different locations – the murmuring of schoolchildren associated with the clamour of wildfowl, the snicker-snack of a gardener clipping away allied to the inner workings of a clock. And there are sections where it feels like you’re eavesdropping on an unfolding mystery – footsteps down long halls, the creaking of the stairs at Chartwell, the Billiards Room at Upton House. All that’s missing is Colonel Mustard with the Lead Pipe. It helps that everything’s been recorded beautifully, and Jarvis’ mic positioning puts you extremely close to the action and often surrounded by it, say as the waves of Brownsea Island gently break and swirl all around you in glorious stereo. The pacing of the sections is equally well applied – sound effects these may be, but there’s real musical beauty to be found in this record.

So I say don’t just dip into these recordings one track at a time with your tea, do the whole lot in a oner and enjoy Jarvis’ mystery tour. I listened to it on headphones, lying flat on my back in my garden on the hottest day of the year, and it was a genuinely memorable experience. A story unfolds as you create the links between the different sources, and it starts to feel as though, despite being pooled from National Trust sites all around the British Isles, everything’s taking place in the same location. And surely that’s the point.

National Trust: The Album is available for free download until the end of June 2010 from http://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/soundsalbum

Fender; the golden age 1946 – 1970, is dedicated to the art and design of Fender guitars and amplifiers and the revolutions they inspired.

Two of the authors, Paul and Martin Kelly, are dear friends of ours, scrub that, Paul & Martin are family. I first met them both back in early 1987 (or was it late ’86?) when I watched their band, Episode Four, play a gig at the Black Horse pub in Camden Town. I put that gig on and booked them again for a fortnight later. After that one we all went back to my place and stayed up all night listening to records and trying to come up with a better name for the group. They became East Village and we became inseperable.

Sadly, the band found it tough and Martin began spending more and more time helping me out at my work. That led to us starting a record label, Heavenly, in 1990 and sharing a life of adventure in the twenty years hence. Paul continued as a musician for a while longer, playing in Saint Etienne and forming the group Birdie with his partner Debsy. But Paul always had the eye. I remember thinking how talented he was when he did the sleeves and art for the Village. He has been responsible for most of the Saint Etienne sleeves plus the Finisterre film (a collaboration with Kieran Evans) and most of the best designs for Heavenly. Paul also did the cover for our ‘Words on Water’ book. But this is the one, it really is stunning.

It would be easy to describe the book as an ‘art’ book as it definitely isn’t a manual, but that would take away from the incredible research that has gone into the text, which is way more interesting than any non-musician could imagine. Martin tells it as a story of invention and innovation, highlighting key moments in the rock ‘n’ roll timeline, like how music changed when Leo Fender brought out the Precision bass in 1957 and those instruments fell into the hands of Donald ‘Duck’ Dunn, Carol Kaye and James Jamerson. Or how Dylan chose the Stratocaster for his ‘Judas’ shift to electrified music. (JB)

Martin says of the book: “..The photography, layout and overall design represent our collective vision of a holistic celebration of the Fender aesthetic. This is the culmination of our passion and obsession with all things Fender that began with our abiding love of music. The beautiful sounds we heard growing up led us first to discover the instruments that made them and then, ultimately, to the source – the man who changed the way music was created and heard forever – Leo Fender”.

The book is published by Cassell Illustrated and in the shops on June the 7th.
We have two copies of the book, signed by Paul & Martin, to giveaway as competition prizes. See this Friday’s newsletter for details.
Now available to pre-order from Amazon.

Words and Music on Radio 3 yesterday evening was called Take Me To The River. Radio Times said : Juliet Stevenson and Jamie Glover read poetry and prose on the theme of rivers by Wordsworth, UA Fanthorpe, Ezra Pound, John Clare and Elizabeth Jennings, with music by Tippett, Delius, Duke Ellington, Henryk Gorecki and Talking Heads.

listen on the iplayer.