We leave you this weekend dear reader with news that Los Angeles quartet The Americans are returning to Europe for a series of shows this summer including some high profile support slots in the UK with Eric Clapton at BST Hyde Park and The Gipsy Kings at Kew The Music in Kew Gardens and Cambridge Corn Exchange. They’ll also be playing a slot at Black Deer Festival and regional dates in Winchester, Leeds and Oxford.
Handsome as well as talented in a “why does God hate me?” way whenever you see them, the Americans released their debut album ‘I’ll Be Yours’ via Loose last year which we are big fans of. Having started out as a roots band enthralled by pre-war American country and blues, they have evolved into an amalgamation of those influences, injected with a fiery blue collar rock’n’roll attitude, absorbing and reconfiguring the history of American music from Chuck Berry and Tom Waits to Bruce Springsteen. They named themselves after the controversial photo series by Robert Frank, which was first published in 1958 with a foreword by Jack Kerouac. Like Frank’s photos, The Americans’ songs are miniature biographies, intimate and empathic portraits of individuals that leave much unsaid.
The band were plucked from obscurity by Jack White, T Bone Burnett and Robert Redford to appear in the recent PBS/BBC4 series American Epic. Featuring artists such as Beck, Elton John, Nas, Willie Nelson, Alabama Shakes and more, the film reconstructs the story of the first American music in the 1920s and re-assembled the recording apparatus that was used at the time. As experts in early music, The Americans were invited in to figure out the equipment and make the first recordings. Once the sessions were underway, they functioned as the house band, backing up various artists and suggesting songs to the filmmakers. Burnett was quoted as saying; “The Americans are part of this group, these genius 21st century musicians, that are reinventing American heritage music for this century. And it sounds even better this century.”
Here are those dates if you want to go and find out for yourself.
24 June – BLACK DEER FESTIVAL, Kent (UK)
3 July – WINCHESTER The Railway (UK)
5 July – LEEDS Lending Room (UK)
6 July – OXFORD Bullingdon (UK)
8 July – BST HYDE PARK (w/ Eric Clapton)
9 July – CAMBRIDGE Corn Exchange (w/ The Gipsy Kings)
10 July – LONDON The Garage (w/ Lukas Nelson)
11 July – KEW THE MUSIC (w/ The Gipsy Kings)
