You wait a whole decade for one
Ian Siegal live
album – then two arrive in the space of a year. For any ordinary
performer, the release schedule might seem like overkill. But with this
fascinating artist, it’s entirely justified. Shedding his musical skin
and bending his back catalogue into bold new shapes each time he hits
the stage, every live snapshot of Siegal’s music is authentically
communicated from a different angle.
Photo Credit: © Will Ireland
As such, while 2014’s
Man & Guitar showcased the award-winning British songwriter as a solo acoustic troubadour,
One Night In Amsterdam
flicks the power switch, marking Siegal’s first live album with a
full-throttle electric band. Chalk up another first for the man that
Mojo called, “One of the most innovative, gifted and engaging blues performers on the planet today.”
The new album will be released in the UK on CD and vinyl by
Nugene Records (NUG1501) on
Monday March 9th 2015. The album dovetails with Ian’s nationwide UK tour which kicks off at the
Chester Live Rooms on
March 17th (tour date details listed below). Fans can pre-order the limited edition vinyl release
here.
Three songs into his set at the
North Sea Jazz Club
in April 2014, Siegal halts the band to give the Dutch crowd the
mission-statement: “We’re going to play some new songs, some old songs,
and some songs by great heroes of mine, who were influences on me in my
early days, back in the 1930s…”
Photo Credit: © Marco van Rooijen
He’s joking, of course. In reality, Siegal is now in his
early-forties, at the top of his game, and able to draw on an
astonishing eight-album catalogue that has scored him seven
British Blues Awards in five categories (he’s also the only Brit ever to receive two nominations at the
U.S. Blues Music Awards).
Likewise, the bar for Siegal’s live albums has been set sky-high by
Man & Guitar – recently crowned
Blues Album of the Year by
Mojo– but from the opening notes of
One Night In Amsterdam, it’s clear he’s up for the challenge.
The new album features Siegal’s relatively new (launched in 2013)
Dutch-German contingent and his first band change in ten years. With an
average age of 23,
Dusty Ciggaar (guitar),
Raphael Schwiddessen (drums), and
Danny Van’t Hoff
(bass), deliver in spades, as though they have been playing with
Siegal for as long as they are old. Young Dusty Ciggaar, already well
known on the Benelux scene, confirms his status as a guitar god in
waiting.
Photo Credit: © Will Ireland
One Night In Amsterdam is the sound of
chemistry, of course, but the songs are always the stars. Several of
these tracks have never been played live by Siegal before. None have
ever sounded quite like this. Before the crowd’s welcoming cheers have
even subsided,
I Am The Train races out of the blocks, perhaps even more urgent here than when Siegal tracked it in Mississippi for his 2012 album,
Candy Store Kid.
Also from
Candy Store Kid comes the sad-eyed, slide-powered travelogue of
Early Grace,
Siegal’s raw vocal exposing the tarnish on the Golden State
(“California, where all your dreams come true, your nightmares too”).
Plus, don’t miss the extended free bonus track
Hard Pressed – unlocked via a download key with every copy of
Amsterdam, and available from the release day of March 9.
Photo Credit: © Marco van Rooijen
Elsewhere, true to his promise of “old songs”, the bandleader digs deep into his oeuvre. He pulls out the funk-blues strut of
Kingdom Come (from 2009’s
Broadside), with its tough vocal telling of a woman with “the wings of an angel and the eyes of a shark”. He revisits the evergreen
Brandy Balloon (from 2005’s
Meat & Potatoes), and even dusts off
Queen of the Junior Prom (the pick of 2002 debut
Standing In The Morning), with the crowd reaction suggesting that Siegal’s earliest fans have never left his side.
In Siegal’s hands, the old is every bit as thrilling as the new.
Even dog-eared cover versions can feel like they’re being born right in
front of you. At the North Sea Jazz Club, he shows his scholarly
appreciation of the masters - whether re-imagining Tom Russell’s
classic cockfighting fable,
Gallo Del Cielo,
or revisiting his own back-pages in Nottingham, England, where local
legend Harry Stephenson entranced the crowds. “I just really wanted to
do one of Harry’s songs,” explains Siegal, before launching into
Stephenson’s gutsy rocker,
Writing On The Wall.
For the final two tracks of the album Ian is joined by siblings,
Joel and Tess Gaerthe, from the popular Dutch indie band,
Ashtraynutz.
One night. A thousand highlights. And yet another reason why Ian Siegal is leading the musical pack in the post-millennium.
Photo Credit: © Will Ireland
CHESTER, LIVE ROOMS
TUESDAY 17th MARCH 2015
Tickets: £16 / Box Office: 0871 220 0260
Book Online: theliverooms.com
1 Station Road, Chester, CH1 3DR
theliverooms.com
HARROGATE, RIPLEY BLUES
FRIDAY 20th MARCH 2015
Tickets: £15 / Box Office: 01423 860340
Book Online: ripleylive.com
Town Hall, Ripley, Harrogate, HG3 3AX
ripleylive.com
NEWCASTLE, CLUNY
TUESDAY 24th MARCH 2015
Tickets: £16 / Box Office: 0191 230 4474
Book Online: See Tickets
36 Lime Street, Ouseburn, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, NE1 2PQ
The Cluny Website
SOUTHAMPTON, TALKING HEADS
SUNDAY 29th MARCH 2015
Tickets: £12 / Box Office: 02380 678 446
Book Online: TalkngHeads.co.uk
320 Portswood Road, Portswood, SO17 2TD
TalkingHeads.co.uk
Photo Credit: © Marco van Rooijen
IAN SIEGAL
BIOGRAPHY & DISCOGRAPHY
Blues album of the Year
MOJO MAGAZINE 2014
“One of the most innovative, gifted and engaging blues
performers on the planet today.” MOJO
Ian Siegal is known as a bluesman, but it’s just
one shade in the palette of an artiste who slips between continents,
eras and expectations. They say you can’t sing the blues until you’ve
lived the life, and when Ian Siegal steps up to the mic, you can hear
the slings and arrows. Recent years have seen the songwriter catch
fire, with
British Blues Awards raining down and consecutive nominations in 2012 & 2013 for Contemporary Album of The Year in the
Blues Music Awards - in effect, the Grammys of the Blues.
Ian was born in 1971 in Hampshire. It has been said that had he been
performing and recording in the sixties he would today be accorded the
same reverence as artists such as Van Morrison and Joe Cocker.
Instead, he dropped out of Art College in the late eighties to go
busking in Germany. From the streets of Berlin he progressed to clubs
around Nottingham, then to London and ultimately to major stages around
Europe.
Siegal’s forte is playing to an audience. Whether fronting his band,
or alone with just an old acoustic guitar, he takes command of the
stage in a way very few artistes alive today can match. Sweat, passion,
humour, balls-to-the-wind slide guitar and a soul-infused voice big
enough to fell trees! And as his BBC-recorded 2014 solo release
MAN & GUITAR shows, he has a neat line in between-songs banter and humour.
His career got under way in 2003/04 with two successive European
tours as the opening act for ex-Rolling Stone Bill Wyman’s Rhythm Kings
(Wyman also invited Ian to record with the Rhythm Kings). This was
followed by UK tours as a duo with Big Bill Morganfield (son of Muddy
Waters). During this time Siegal was also capturing the hearts of
audiences in Holland, Belgium, Austria and Hungary. In 2005 he topped
the Soul/Blues/Jazz charts in Holland. And hasn’t looked back.
RECORDINGS
His 2005 album
Meat & Potatoes – the first to gain a
full retail release - has been universally praised and gained a maximum
four star (excellent) rating in the Penguin Book of Blues Recordings.
Ian is one of only two living British Blues artists to gain this
distinction. Meat & Potatoes was later re-released as a limited
edition together with a DVD of his stunning 2005 performance on the
main stage at the North Sea Jazz Festival.
That was followed by
Swagger his 2007 release, which again received universal praise,
“No
less of a testament to the talents of one of the most innovative,
gifted and engaging blues performers on the planet today.” MOJO magazine ranked Swagger as their no.2 Blues album of 2007.
In response to fans’ requests for an acoustic album
The Dust
was released at the end of 2008. A collection of new songs and some
old favourites (with noted pedal steel guitarist B.J. Cole appearing on
some tracks), the CD quickly entered HMV’s roots chart, and again made
No.2 in MOJO magazine’s Blues album chart – this time for 2008.
His 2009 release
Broadside finally gave Ian the top spot in MOJO’s annual Blues album chart, the first non-American to achieve this status.
Having previously recorded exclusively in the UK, for his 2011release
The Skinny
Ian went to America to work with Grammy nominee Cody Dickinson of the
North Mississippi Allstars as producer. A band was assembled from
musicians in the North Mississippi area including Gary Burnside, Robert
Kimbrough and Rodd Bland, all offspring of notable bluesmen. The
Skinny gained Siegal his first Blues Music Awards nomination for
Contemporary Album of the Year and he performed at the 2012 Awards
ceremony in Memphis.
Ian returned to north Mississippi in 2012 to collaborate with
another dream-team of local legends that he collectively coined The
Mississippi Mudbloods. Joining Ian and Cody Dickinson were Cody’s
brother, Luther Dickinson, and Alvin Youngblood Hart. Ian first met
Alvin during The Skinny sessions, when the Grammy-winning guitarist
swung by the studio and ended up tracking some guitar and backing
vocals.
The end result of this second visit to the Dickinson’s Zebra Ranch Studio was
Candy Store Kid
released at the end of 2012, which quickly reached no.1 in the iTunes
UK blues chart and garnered a swathe of awards in the UK and another
nomination in the Blues Foundation’s
Blues Music Awards.
2014 saw two album releases.
Man & Guitar (May, 2014),
showcases Siegal’s supreme ability as a solo performer and his
force-ten charisma. Recorded by the BBC at the Royal Albert Hall London
Bluesfest, it is Siegal at his belt & braces best – a world-class
performer bleeding into his favourite songs. This scored Ian another
no.1 spot in MOJO’s annual chart of Blues recordings.
That May release was followed in November by
THE PICNIC SESSIONS,
a low-fi back-porch project with friends in the USA. What was intended
to be a fan-club-only side project quickly gained momentum, resulting
in a label-backed full release in January 2015. The album has Ian,
Luther Dickinson, Alvin Youngblood Hart and Jimbo Mathus sitting
semi-circle around an old ribbon microphone, simply chatting, singing
and playing. Recorded in two afternoon sessions, The Blues magazine
made it their Jan/Feb 2015 featured album, saying
“The strength and
feel of Siegal’s voice shows just how effectively and legitimately he
can inhabit the vocal traditions of Mississippi.”
In 2013, after 10 years of touring Europe with an unchanged band,
Ian recruited entirely new personnel, three young players based in
Holland (average age 23). It was, he says -
“one of the best decisions I have made in a long while.” The band brought a new energy and a fresh approach to Ian’s songs. Eager to let the world hear the results,
ONE NIGHT IN AMSTERDAM was recorded at the North Sea Jazz Club in Amsterdam and releases March 9, 2015.
MEMORABLE MOMENTS
Ian has become established in Europe as one of the most natural,
exciting and vibrant talents on the Blues-roots-Americana scene. Each
year the stages get bigger, but what sticks most in Ian’s mind is his
guest appearance with then 92-year old Pinetop Perkins and some of the
other remaining members of Muddy Waters’ band. This was at London’s
Jazz Café in 2005 to a packed house. Then later at a festival in
Norway, in a role reversal, these legends of post-war Blues
spontaneously joined Ian on stage for what turned into a memorable
hour-long set.
In a twist to his career, Ian performed for several years (2009-12)
with France’s Orchestre National de Jazz in a program of Billie Holiday
songs entitled “Broadway in Satin.” Backed by a 12-piece orchestra of
young hand-picked musicians and accompanied by the French singer, Karen
Lanaud, Broadway in Satin has performed at major festivals across
France and as far afield as South America and east Africa.
Blues Album Of The Year
MOJO MAGAZINE 2014
British Blues Awards Hall of Fame
2013
Male Vocalist Of The Year
BRITISH BLUES AWARDS 2013, 2012 & 2011
EUROPEAN BLUES AWARDS 2013
Album Of The Year
BRITISH BLUES AWARDS 2013
Best Song
BRITISH BLUES AWARDS 2013
Best Contemporary Album
BLUES MUSIC AWARDS NOMINEE 2013 & 2012
BLUES BLAST MUSIC AWARDS NOMINEE 2013
Acoustic Artist Of The Year
BRITISH BLUES AWARDS 2012
Band Of The Year
BRITISH BLUES AWARDS 2010
Blues album Of The Year
MOJO magazine 2009
Photo Credit: © Christie Goodwin
