Oliver Gray

Live Review: Boia Festival, St Davids, Pembrokeshire – 23rd-25th October 2025

November 5, 2025 Oliver Gray 2

One thing you can always rely on at Boia is shocking weather. Does it matter? Not a jot, because as the wind howls and the rain batters, you are safely inside the range of super venues […]

Live Review: Folk In The Park, Manor Park, Sutton – 16th August 2025

August 21, 2025 Oliver Gray 1

Sedentary performers were prominent at Folk In The Park. Richard Thompson had fallen down some stairs, while Tom Robinson was suffering from a more prosaic hernia. Poor Eddi Reader, meanwhile, had fallen ill but… The Show […]

Live Review: Ramblin’ Roots Revue, University of Bucks, 4th–6th April 2025

April 15, 2025 Oliver Gray 5

Established 2017 says the logo, and the Ramblin’ Roots Revue, despite rather oddly sharing a name with an entirely unconnected festival in the Netherlands, offers a convivial opportunity for a mass gathering of the UK Americana […]

Festival Review: South By Southwest 2025, 11th – 16th March, Austin, Texas

March 25, 2025 Oliver Gray 1

Having missed out on last year’s South By Southwest Festival for various reasons, AUK’s occasional foreign correspondent Oliver Gray returned to the fray this year, accompanied, as always, by his intrepid chum Paul Dominy on photo […]

Live review: Boia Festival St Davids, Pembrokeshire 25 – 27 October 2024

November 6, 2024 Oliver Gray 0

Back in 2022, when Boia festival was still known as Cwtch, the band of the weekend for me was Buzzard Buzzard Buzzard. They are still very youthful and prone to extended feedback exploitation and Freebird-style twin […]

Can’t Live With It, Can’t Live Without It: Tom Waits

August 5, 2026 1

The musical influence of Tom Waits over the last seven decades has spanned far beyond what one might define as americana. His deep, gravely voice, has been described as having been soaked in a vat of […]

Paul McClure “The Good And The Bad Of It”

August 5, 2026 0

The Rutland Troubadour returns for album number four. Paul McClure, on his fourth album, decided to go to pastures new and left the rural north and travelled south to East Sussex and the fine Bex-Pop Studios […]

Artists with Hearts of Gold contribute to two more albums of Neil Young covers

August 5, 2026 0

Includes tracks from My Morning Jacket, Lucinda Williams and MJ Lenderman among others. Cinema Music Group, Killphonic Records, and City Slang have announced Heart of Gold: The Songs of Neil Young, Vol. 2 – Out of […]

Articles by Oliver Gray