Southport Arts Centre, Cambridge Hall, Lord Street, Southport
DOUBLE BILL - TAM WHITE and MIKE HERON
8 p.m. £12/£10
Mike Heron and Tam White take the stage at Southport Arts Centre on Saturday 20th June in a unique double bill. For the first time in history, lucky audiences will be able to see these two seminal and legendary figures of the British folk and blues circuit on the same bill on the same night
in the same venue!
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TAM WHITE
If there's one man who can prove that you don't need to come from Chicago, Memphis or the Mississippi Delta to sing the blues, it's Scottish blues supremo Tam White. In an illustrious career spanning over four decades, Tam White has established himself as a troubadour in the truest sense of the word, acclaimed in mainland Europe as one of the great European blues singers and in his own country, Scotland, as a national treasure. In England blues legend Alexis Korner hailed him as " the greatest undiscovered blues talent of our time".
Since his early fame with the Boston Dexters in the 1960's (and as the first man to sing live on Top of the Pops) Tam has packed concert halls and clubs throughout the world, performing solo or with his big band, Tam White's Groove Connection or The Shoestring Band. Over the years Tam has played with and guested for John Mayall's Blues Breakers, Long John Baldry, Brian Auger, James Taylor, Van Morrison, Rev Al Green, B.B. King, Mose Allison to name but a few.
Tam was the voice behind Robbie Coltrane's Big Jazza in the highly successful BAFTA award-winning BBC TV series, Tutti Frutti. In his other profession as an actor he played a major role as Clan Chief MacGregor in Mel Gibson's 'Braveheart', and acted in 'Man Dancin' with an accompanying CD of the same name. Tam's 60th birthday celebrations at the Queens Hall in Edinburgh were a testimony to Scotland's greatest blues singer, a performer at the height of his powers. The critics appear to agree: 'The Crossing', his collaboration with pianist Brian Kellock, received the kinds of notice that most performers can only dream about and Tam's recent appearance fronting the Scottish National Jazz Orchestra brought the house down.
Now available for solo gigs, Tam White is the U.K. godfather of blues, but if truth be told Tam's talent covers a far wider spectrum of colour than that of blue. His idiosyncratic style reveals a potent mixture of power & sensibility few artists achieve in their lifetime. He is equally in his element with such songs as Gill Scott-Heron's 'Home Is Where The Hatred Is' , John Hiatt's 'This Is The Way We Make A Broken Heart', the traditional Scottish ballad 'The Water Is Wide' and his own superior original material. His repertoire is drawn from experience and his personal appearances are a master class in how to lift, move and involve an audience. In the words of the man himself "It's just in my nature to perform, man, I have to do it. I like the message in the music I play. Music is communication."
http://www.tamwhite.co.uk
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MIKE HERON
Singer-songwriter Mike Heron was a founding member of the legendary Incredible String Band which was probably the most influential and iconographic psychedelic folk group to emerge from the counter-culture of the mid-sixties, co-writing most of their memorable songs. Influencing artists such as John Lennon, Led Zeppelin and Mick Jagger, the Incredible String Band produced over 14 seminal albums and appeared at the famous Woodstock Festival in 1969. Their acclaimed album 'Hangman's Beautiful Daughter' propelled them into the Top 5 of the British charts behind the Beatles, Cream and the Rolling Stones. Mike's solo album 'Smiling Men With Bad Reputations' - produced by Joe Boyd, originally released in 1971 and then reissued in 2003 - featured a once-in-a-lifetime stellar cast from the aristocracy of folk-pop-rock musicians, including Pete Townshend, Richard Thompson, Elton John, Jimmy Page, Steve Winwood, Keith Moon, Dave Pegg and Ronnie Lane.
Since the break-up of the ISB in 1974, Mike has continued to write songs in epic quantities (many re-released recently on the Glen Row Tapes CD) and has fronted a variety of bands, most recently his Incredible Acoustic Band. In the late 1990s he, Robin and Clive reformed the Incredible String Band for several years.
Mike's solo album 'Where the Mystics Swim' revealed a songwriter forever pushing the boundaries, but retaining his originality, creativity and musical integrity. In 2006 he was commissioned to write music for John Burnside's poem 'Song For Irena' as part of a poetry/music project entitled Ballads Of The Book at Glasgow's Celtic Connections. More recently he was invited to play at Syd Barrett's tribute in London, a testament to the groundbreaking role Mike has played in the British music scene over four decades.
Mike will be joined by his daughter Georgia (keyboards, percussion and vocals), whose own songwriting and performance has been described in a recent Scotsman review as "arrestingly artless" and "the nu-folk answer to Martha Wainwright". They have also performed at the Crossing Borders festival at the Hague, Holland, and an all-star Folk Britannia event at the Barbican. Their unique performances are a potent mix of new songs and much-requested ISB favourites.
