Following on from our recent ‘Continental Shift’ series of features on americana music in continental Europe, we’re launching a new monthly column, Vox Continental.
This column is designed to be a round-up of americana activity in mainland Europe. We’ll feature new releases from continental artists and the pick of the mainland’s tours and festivals. We want to show that americana music is alive and thriving throughout mainland Europe and, hopefully, bring a bit more attention to artists and events that slip below the mainstream’s radar.
If you’re an americana musician working in continental Europe, we want to know what’s happening on your local scene. Similarly, please let us know if there are festivals or similar live events in your part of Europe. You can reach me via my email address at Americana UK – rick.bayles@americana-uk.com.
Just for clarity, this column will not be reviewing any recordings. If you’re an americana artist and want your material reviewed at Americana UK you need to submit it in the usual way, via our submissions desk at submissions@americana-uk.com. Similarly, we won’t be dealing with any releases or events associated with the UK or Ireland, as that is the main focus of the site in general. This column is only about what is happening in mainland Europe.
Please do share information with us. This column will only work if people engage with it and make the effort to let us know what is going on in your local scene. The ‘Continental Shift’ series showed that there is interest in what is happening across the Channel and we hope this new column can help to keep our readers informed of americana activity beyond the UK and Ireland.
This month’s continental americana activity mainly comes from Germany and Spain. Should you happen to be sunning yourself in Ibiza at the end of April, you could do a lot worse than take yourself along to the rather impressive-looking Costa Festival, which has recently announced its line-up for this year. Taking place at the Seaview Country Club in Ibiza, from the 25th April to the 1st May. The eclectic lineup includes Hayseed Dixie, Elles Bailey and Iain Matthews, along with a host of others. You can find more details here.
Also appearing at the Costa Festival are the Madrid based folk and americana band, Track Dogs. Track Dogs are a four-piece outfit, made up of 2 Irishmen, an Englishman and an American and the band’s new album, the eighth since their formation back in 2006, is officially released on the 25th April but advance copies are available, via the band’s website, now. Titled “Tracks Laid, Tracks Covered” it will be a double album featuring 40 tracks, the best of their 2010 – 2021 recordings plus 9 new songs. They’ll also be releasing singles from the album over the coming months, starting with ‘Amor De Mi Vida’, which has a mariachi feel to it, courtesy of Englishman Howard Brown’s trumpet playing. featured below.
From a festival on a sunny island in the Med, we head north to Germany’s Oberhausen, where the Static Roots Festival, which takes place at the City’s Zentrum Altenberg on the 11th & 12th July, has just announced an increased capacity for this year’s festival and updates to a bill that now includes Uncle Lucius, Peter Bruntnell, The Southern Fold and French singer/songwriter Bobbie, who will be appearing with her full band. Full details of the lineup and all festival information can be found here.
Staying in Germany, we have new releases from two artists who recently featured in our Continental Shift series. Mathias Gaede has announced that he’ll no longer perform live concerts, due to health issues, but he continues to write and record new songs and his latest, ‘Shine Bright’ has recently been released, see below.
Tobias Panwitz is releasing his first americana album in his native German language on March 27th. This follows five previous albums released in English, but this Berlin based singer/songwriter feels that the time is right to put out a set of his German compositions under the album title “Erinnerungen Machen” (Making Memories). He’ll be releasing some singles in the run-up to the album release, the first of which is ‘Wo die Strasse Mich Hinführt’ (Where the Road Leads Me), and he will be performing live in support of these recordings. Full details of the recordings and live performances can be found on his website.
Finally, for this first column, we have news of an interesting gig coming up in Italy. We like to hear about collaborations between different European artists, so we were particularly happy to hear that Italy’s Mandolin Brothers will be teaming up with Swedish singer/songwriter Richard Lindgren for a show at Milan’s Nidaba Theatre on Thursday 20th March. They are frequent collaborators, who made an album together, “Malmostoso”, in 2016, and this promises to be a popular concert at one of Italy’s premier roots music venues.
That’s it for our first Vox Continental column. Hopefully, you can see what we’re trying to do and where this is going. Now it’s up to the musicians, venues and events to keep us informed on what’s happening all over mainland Europe.
Until next time.
