Nashville based William Fitzsimmons has had a pretty rough ride these last couple of years. A relationship breakdown in the middle of recording a new record paid more than a personal toll on the songwriter. Creatively, unable to live with the finished record for obvious reasons Fitzsimmons decided to leave it on the cutting room floor, team up with a new producer and set about recording a brand new record. The resulting work, ‘Mission Bell‘ is a startling, at times heartbreaking, yet ultimately cathartic piece of work that warrants serious investigation. Americana-UK delves a little deeper. Continue reading “Interview: William Fitzsimmons”
‘This Too Shall Light‘ is the second album under her own name, but Amy Helm’s music goes back someway longer as a founder member of Ollabelle, and as a backing musician in the Midnight Ramble Band. Yes, that Helm. For this album Amy Helm has teamed with Joe Henry as the producer to make a richly layered and soulful Americana. All the more remarkable in that it all came together in an LA studio rather than back home in Helm’s Woodstock stomping ground, and that the recordings were put together and laid down in just four days. 
Kathryn Calder, singer and keyboard player with The New Pornographers and Woodpigeon’s Mark Andrew Hamilton form this new duo whose debut album is a frequently beguiling mix of dreamy atmospherics with poppy vocals from Calder and boasts a generally mellow vibe layered with strings and rich harmonies. 
Want a backstory? How’s this: Brooklyn native starts singing in dive bars with his brother a full decade before he can legally drink, drops out of high school, spends a year in Havana training with the Cuban national boxing team, then tours Europe – again with his brother – and their doom metal band, Dead Man’s Root, before it implodes and Ben de la Cour finds himself again stateside, this time armed with an acoustic guitar case full of songs he’s dubbed Americanoir. 
On the official Seasick Steve website, you will find a 38-second video clip in which a hugely self-conscious and apologetic looking Steve stands propped against a water tank alongside a stack of empty pallets at the back of his barn. As far as trailers for a new album go this is just about as low key as it gets, “I don’t know much what to say……. they want me to say something.” A vision of a groaning PR exec with his face in his hands springs to mind.