Brothers Tristan and Danny Tipping set up Clubhouse Records ten years ago when Americana was considered Alt.County and plaid was still worn underneath your jacket to avoid tough questioning. That, a decade later, Clubhouse is considered one of the UK’s best roots labels that has provided the launchpad here in the UK and Europe for likes of Cale Tyson, Erin Rae, Don Gallardo alongside much-loved roots renegades, Redlands Palomino Company, is some achievement. Americana-UK catches up with Tristan to get to the nitty-gritty of what it takes to make the Clubhouse run smoothly and yet still be fun. Continue reading “Interview: Clubhouse Record’s Tristan Tipping celebrates ten years for one of the UK’s premier roots labels”
It’s a well-worn path. Artist runs out of ideas and decides to re-hash some old material and produces an album that is at best mediocre and at worst downright boring. Not in this case though, it’s truly excellent! Luke Tuchscherer has certainly dug deep into his back catalogue, with most of the songs dating back to the mid 2000s, but this is as far from dull, boring or mediocre as you could get – in fact it grips you from the opening few bars of the first track ‘My Darling England’ right through to the harmonica fade out on the last track ‘You Still Have My Heart’. 
This year’s Maverick Festival was held under glorious sunshine at Easton Park Farm in the deepest part of rural Suffolk. As usual, Director Paul Spencer had pulled together a tremendous range of polished multinational talent which all just about falls within what we consider Americana. The timing of the event, smack dab in the middle of the footie world cup, meant however that the balance of music vs. football in the conversational strands was slightly different from the July norm. 