Most people have heard of Union Chapel because of a band or artist that has performed there but Union Chapel is also a working church, it is also host to the Margins Project launched in 1995 in direct response to those entrenched in poverty and crisis asking for help and shelter in Islington, one of the poorest boroughs in the country. Food, clothing and at times, emergency accommodation are provided by the Margins Project team, as well as practical support to help people break out of the cycle of despair and rebuild their lives. A Sunday ‘Drop‐in Service’ with up to 160 people coming every week to access services including a hot meal, showers, laundry facilities, warm clean clothing, toiletries and a haircutting service, alongside workshops and classes, enable people to move forward in a practical and positive way. In support of this work, between October 18th and 22nd, the Union Chapel will host it’s fourth annual campaign of exciting events with ALL proceeds going to the project:

‘Marginalised’ is a fantastically entertaining and engaging annual festival of events with music, art, comedy, talks, childrens workshops and discussions – all celebrating the breadth and the best of arts events at the Union Chapel. For the artists taking part, it’s an opportunity to present a unique one‐off event in an incredibly atmospheric venue. Some previous artists have chosen to work with the themes of marginalisation and homelessness. Some have incorporated visual elements. The brief is open. This year, the programme will build on the artistic legacy of past Marginalised festivals that have featured performances by Max Richter, Michael Nyman, David McAlmont, Gavin Bryars, UNKLE & Heritage Orchestra and the North Sea Radio Orchestra.

First events now on sale for the fourth annual Marginalised campaign 18th – 22nd October 2011. All proceeds will go to the Margins Project

Tues. 18th October – 5×15   Tickets

Five speakers, fifteen minutes each. True stories of passion, obsession and adventure recounted live with just two rules: no scripts and only fifteen minutes each.

• John Bird – on twenty years of the Big Issue
• Franny Armstrong – on her work as inspirational film maker and environmental activist
• Daisy Goodwin – on her passion for poetry
• Patrick and Henry Cockburn -  on Henry’s demons and living with schizophrenia

Thurs. 20th October – David Lean’s Classic 1948 film ‘Oliver Twist’ Tickets

Marginalised 2011 presents a special screening of the 1948 David Lean classic ‘Oliver Twist’

Based on the Charles Dickens novel Oliver Twist is about an orphan boy who runs away from a workhouse and meets a pickpocket on the streets of London. Oliver is taken in by the pickpocket and he joins a household of young boys who are trained to steal for their master. This version of Oliver Twist is topped by Alec Guinness’s masterly performance of arch-thug Fagin. Restaurant and bar open from 6.30pm

Fri. 21st October   Tickets

Live performance of the ‘Midnight Cowboy’ soundtrack

Arranged and performed by Stephen Ellis with the Space Marching Band

As soon as you hear those first memorable descending notes of the harmonica theme you’re immediately transported back into the 1969 film Midnight Cowboy. But the soundtrack  is perhaps also best most known for the pop success of Harry Nilsson’s rendition of Fred Neil’s ‘Everybody’s Talkin’, which has been covered by over 100 different artists. The soundtrack also featured the widely disparate sounds of B.J. Thomas, Elephant’s Memory, and even early Warren Zevon all drawn together masterfully by John Barry’s elegant title track and  a further handful of cues. Barry’s offerings seem to have had the most far-reaching impact on modern music – Faith No More notably covered and championed the main title track.

Stephen Ellis is the singer and songwriter for London band REVERE, who transport Barry’s plaintiff sound into their frequent use of reed organs and melodicas to contribute to something both mournful and universally epic. In honour of John Barry’s sad passing earlier this year, Stephen has set himself the not too small task of bringing this particular soundtrack to life on the Union Chapel stage.  It is an arena Ellis is all too familiar with having played sell-out shows here with REVERE and his other musical interest Gabby Young & Other Animals twice before. This evening’s performance will be arranged for and performed by a special expanded ensemble including members of REVERE alongside some specially chosen guests. The performance will also include in addition homage to some of John Barry’s other great film music.

The ensemble features members of Revere, Age of Not Believing Orchestra, Magic Lantern, The Unrecorded, Jess Bryant, The Howling Dog Choir, Strangled Brass and other special guests.

John Barry was a hugely influential English film score composer who died earlier this year at the age of 77. He is best known for composing 11 James Bond soundtracks and over  a career spanning almost 50 years, Barry received numerous awards for his work, including five Academy Awards; two for Born Free, and one each for The Lion in Winter (for which he also won a BAFTA Award), Out of Africa and Dances with Wolves (for which he also won a Grammy Award) and Somewhere in Time (1980) (Golden Globe Award nomination for Best Original Score – Motion Picture).

Links

http://www.unionchapel.org.uk/pages/margins.html

Scottish born David Byrne is probably best known as the founding member of Talking Heads but he has a number of other passions which span across art, literature and the bike! He is a devout advocate of bicycle transportation, not for fitness necessarily, although he admits this is an added bonus when you get older, but for seeing the world from a different perspective.

David Byrne’s main mode of transport around New York has been his trusty bicycle since the early 80′s. When he discovered folding bikes he began to take his passion abroad. His choice was initially made out of convenience rather than political motivation, but the more cities he saw from his bicycle, the more he became hooked on this mode of transport and the sense of liberation, exhilaration, and connection it provided. This point of view, from his bike seat, became his panoramic window on urban life, a magical way of opening one’s eyes to the inner workings and rhythms of a city’s geography and population.

Bicycle Diaries chronicles David’s observations and insights — what he is seeing, whom he is meeting, what he is thinking about — as he pedals through and engages with some of the world’s major cities. In places like Buenos Aires, Istanbul, San Francisco, and London, the focus is more on the musicians and artists he encounters. Politics comes to the fore in cities like Berlin and Manila, while chapters on New York City, and on the landscaped suburban industrial parks and contemporary ruins of such spots as Detroit, Pittsburgh, and Columbus are more concerned with history in the urban landscape. Along the way, David Byrne has thoughts to share about fashion, architecture, cultural isolation, globalization, and the radical new ways that some cities, like his home town, are becoming more bike-friendly — all conveyed with a highly personal mix of humor, curiosity, and humanity.

It is now also available as an audiobook.
Sample:

Buy Links

Order the Audio Book

Get the Paperback from Amazon: Bicycle Diaries

Well, there’s always a first for everything and this is your first audio story on offer from FRUK. A Motorcycle for a Horse is a new short story from critically acclaimed author and Richmond Fontaine frontman Willy Vlautin who has been described by the independent as mining a lost seam of American writing. Download and enjoy!

Willy Vlautin is the author of the novels Lean on Pete, Northline and The Motel Life. Willy himself reads the story, and you’ll recognise a number of characters from Lean on Pete, his latest novel – Charley Thompson, Lonnie Dixon and the unforgettable Lean on Pete himself.

Listen below or download here.

With beautiful footage from Portland Meadows racetrack and an original soundtrack, Willy Vlautin tells the story of ‘Lean on Pete,’ his unforgettable new novel of friendship and hope in dark times.

Fifteen-year-old Charley Thompson wants a home; food on the table and a high school he can attend for more than part of a year. But as the son of a single father working at warehouses across the Pacific Northwest, he’s been pretty much on his own for some time. When they arrive in Portland, Oregon, Charley takes a stables job at the local race track. It’s here that he meets Pete, an old horse who becomes his companion as he’s forced to make his own way in the world…

Buy the Book: Lean on Pete

Steve Tilston has unveiled he has other talents outside his folk-singing career with the release of his first novel titled All For Poor Jack. Based around the discovery of America it takes us on a terrifying forced march into the New World and the rituals of native tribes, with a parallel journey through the landscapes and society of 15th century Bristol, culminating in a dramatic reckoning across the ‘Ocean-Sea.’

1485. The dreams of Columbus are but a fancy on the furthest imagined horizon. The Bristol Carrack, ‘Swallow’, lies foundering off the coast of a ‘New World,’ with survivors Matty Tyrell and Sam Dodds taken captive by an Abanaki warband and forced to accompany them into the hinterland. It soon becomes apparent that their captors are being followed by a much larger enemy band of native tribesmen, the Paquatuogs, or ‘The Destroyers.’ What was supposed to be a triumphant return now becomes a race to reach the tribal lands and safety.

1485. The Merchant Venturers of Bristol nervously await news from Bosworth Field and the homecoming of the ‘Swallow’ from its voyage of exploration and fishing for cod – or ‘Poor-Jack’. After a deadly game of football, Matty’s younger brother Simon is falsely accused of murder and is forced to go on the run, joining up with a band of outlaws and lepers in the forest of Stokeleigh.

‘All for Poor Jack’ takes us on a terrifying forced march into the New World and the rituals of native tribes, with a parallel journey through the landscapes and society of 15th century Bristol, culminating in a dramatic reckoning across the ‘Ocean-Sea.’

Buy it from Amazon: All for Poor Jack

I‘ve got three books on my top list that come highly recommended. The first one I intend to get completely lost in with ale and mincepies over Christmas: Seasons They Change: The Story of Acid and Psychedelic Folk

Here’s a bit on each:

Seasons They Change: The Story of Acid and Psychedelic Folk
Greg Weeks of Espers (Foreword), Jeanette Leech (Author)

In the late 60s and early 70s the inherent weirdness of folk met switched-on psychedelic rock and gave birth to new, strange forms of acoustic-based avant garde music. Artists on both sides of the Atlantic, including The Incredible String Band, Vashti Bunyan, Pearls Before Swine and Comus, combined sweet melancholy and modal melody with shape-shifting experimentation to create sounds of unsettling oddness that sometimes go under the name acid or psych folk. A few of these artists – notably the String Band, who actually made it to Woodstock – achieved mainstream success, while others remained resolutely entrenched underground. But by the mid-70s even the bigger artists found sales dwindling, and this peculiar hybrid musical genre fell profoundly out of favour. For 30 years it languished in obscurity, apparently beyond the reaches of cultural reassessment, until, in the mid-2000s a new generation of artists collectively tagged ‘New Weird America’ and spearheaded by Devendra Banhart, Espers and Joanna Newsom rediscovered acid and psych folk, revered it and from it, created something new. Thanks partly to this new movement, many original acid and psych folk artists have re-emerged, and original copies of rare albums command high prices. Meanwhile, both Britain and America are home to intensely innovative artists continuing the tradition of delving simultaneously into contemporary and traditional styles to create something unique. “Seasons They Change” tells the story of the birth, death and resurrection of acid and psych folk. It explores the careers of the original wave of artists and their contemporary equivalents, finding connections between both periods, and uncovering a previously hidden narrative of musical adventure.

About the Author
Jeanette Leech is a writer, researcher, DJ and music historian.She writes regularly for Shindig! magazine, and as part of the B-Music collective she has DJ’d throughout the UK, including at the female acid folk events known as ‘Bearded Ladies’ and the Green Man Festival.

Buy from Amazon: Seasons They Change: The Story of Acid and Psychedelic Folk

Electric Eden: Unearthing Britain’s Visionary Music

‘A passionately researched, carefully written and compulsively readable map of the leys and songlines of an oral culture with its roots in pre-Roman times and its branches in the charts … Young s grasp of context is enviable, his knowledge encyclopaedic … Electric Eden constructs a new mythography out of old threads, making antiquity glow with an eerie hue. It can sit proudly on any bookshelf beside Alan Lomax s The Land Where Blues Began, Greil Marcus s Invisible Republic, Nick Tosches Where Dead Voices Gather or Jon Savage s England s Dreaming. If Mr Young never writes another word, he can count this epic book as the fruit of a beautiful labour.’ –Peter Murphy, Sunday Business Post

Beginning with a striking riff on how music and image open up wormholes into past times, Electric Eden joins a multiplicity of dots. Moving from the folk revival of the early 20th century onto what the author calls Albion-centric, historically resonant folk-rock of the 60s and 70s, music fans will enjoy comprehensive analyses of Fairport Convention, Comus, Nick Drake and many others. Where Young takes more esoteric flight is when he convincingly works such disparate concepts as the free festival scene, Bagpuss and The Wicker Man into his meditations on an agrarian past that survives in the imagination. Fascinating. –Ian Harrison, Q Magazine

Stunning … The thread of mapping modern instruments on to traditional folk tunes leads Young from Peter Warlock to Bert Jansch, Steeleye Span and the Aphex Twin, via the bucolic psychedelia of the Incredible String Band, the Beatles and Pink Floyd. This is no easy path to navigate but Young rarely wavers. –Bob Stanley, Sunday Times

‘A comprehensive and absorbing exploration of Britain’s folk music, which serves, too, as a robust defence of the genre … What [folk music] emerges as, in this impassioned and infectious rallying cry of a book, is a musical tradition that is about so much more than morris dancing and a determination to hold onto the past. Folk, be it traditional, mystical, mythical, radical or experimental, is a living, breathing form, Young believes. It is everywhere, in all the music we hear, in every song we sing. Electric Eden defies you to disagree.’ –Dan Cairns, Sunday Times

‘Hugely ambitious … What keeps it consistently readable is the happy marriage between Young s incisive observation and his talent for a vivid phrase … A thoroughly enjoyable read and likely to remain the best-written overview [of the modern British folk phenomenon] for a long time … I ve already made several precious musical discoveries thanks to this book and I expect to make more.’ –Michel Faber, Guardian Book of the Week

Buy from Amazon: Electric Eden: Unearthing Britain’s Visionary Music

White Bicycles: Making Music in the 1960s

White Bicycles – Making Music in the 1960s is the memoir of music producer Joe Boyd. It is published by Serpent’s Tail. A companion CD of music he had brought to the public in the 1960s and associated with the book was published by Fledg’ling Records at the same time.

When Muddy Waters came to London at the start of the 60s, a kid from Boston called Joe Boyd was his tour manager; when Bob Dylan went electric at the Newport Festival, Joe Boyd was plugging in his guitar; when the summer of love got going, Joe Boyd was running the coolest club in London, the UFO; when a bunch of club regulars called Pink Floyd recorded their first single, Joe Boyd was the producer; when a young songwriter named Nick Drake wanted to give his demo tape to someone, he chose Joe Boyd. When, 35 years after it was recorded, “Just Another Diamond Day” by Vashti Bunyan came to the publics attention it was found that he had produced it.

His greatest coup is bringing to life the famously elusive figure of Nick Drake – the first time he’s been written about by anyone who knew him well. As well as the 60s heavy-hitters, this book also offers wonderfully vivid portraits of a whole host of other musicians: everyone from the great jazzman Coleman Hawkins to the folk diva Sandy Denny, Lonnie Johnson to Eric Clapton, The Incredible String Band to Fairport Convention.

Buy from Amazon: White Bicycles: Making Music in the 1960s

James Yorkston has relased a book titled: It’s Lovely to be Here The Touring Diaries of a Scottish Gent. As the title suggests, it’s a book of tour diaries and if anyone read Jame’s example of tour writing in the first edition of Loops, then you know it’ll be fun. Here’s what some nice folk have said about it:

Rob Da bank

‘I’ve loved James’ music for years now and booked him repeatedly for my festivals so what a joy to have a book by the man. His laidback prose is like having a conversation with an old chum sat by the fire nursing a wee dram on a windy night on some slightly desolate Scottish island. My kinda night out so thanks for the writing James!’

Johnny “Pictish Trail” Lynch

Reading a tour diary whilst being on tour is an unusual experience, to say the least.  The claustrophobic hotel rooms, the dark fug of perpetual hangovers, the unintentional / intentional moments of rudeness to complete strangers.    JY’s diaries capture all this – and play out like Larry David trapped in Lost In Translation.  In other words, utterly hilarious!  I laughed, I winced, I sucked in through my teeth, I drank, I winced some more, and I drank some more. Braw as a craw!

James Barton

A beautiful book about being on the road: brilliantly funny, unsentimentally poignant and shot through with the clear-eyed honesty that James Yorkston brings to his music-making. It’s Lovely To Be Here is, quite simply, unmissable.

David Shrigley

I wouldn’t have imagined that the unglamorous reality of the tour bus, the antithesis of the rock-star lifestyle, would make for good reading. Yet this book succeeds in being both very readable and hugely enjoyable; full of poetic humour and honesty.

Here he is reading an extract:

Jame’s informs us:

I’ll be on the road to promote it next year. The Luminaire Christmas show sold out a few weeks ago, but fear not London folk, for another London show is built into this tour:

26th January: Glasgow Celtic Connections: ‘Conversation Pieces’ 12pm – 1pm, Ian Anderson interviewing JY live for Celtic Music Radio. Free event, Exhibition hall of The Royal Concert Halls – www.celticconnections.com
26th January: Glasgow Celtic Connections: 7pm – James Yorkston performing live at The Recital Room at Glasgow City Halls, Glasgow – www.celticconnections.com
3rd February: Berwick upon tweed, The Maltings Theatre & Cinema – www.maltingsberwick.co.uk/booking
5th February: Thirsk, The Old Courthouse – www.inthedock.net
11th February: Edinburgh, Old St Paul’s Church Hall – www.wegottickets.com
16th February: Manchester Deaf Institute – www.ticketline.co.uk
17th February: Wakefield Henry Boons – www.wegottickets.com
19th February: Birmingham Midlands Arts Centre – www.macarts.co.uk
20th February: Cambridge The Junction – www.junction.co.uk
21st February: Norwich Norwich Arts Centre – www.norwichartscentre.co.uk
22nd February: Brighton Brighton Ballroom – www.ticketweb.co.uk
23rd February: London St Giles Church – www.ticketweb.co.uk

At these shows, I’ll be playing solo, doing old songs and new and some readings from the book. I’m hoping they’re going to be a lot of fun.

Order Now

I mentioned a little while ago (on facebook) that I was going to be featuring an occasional piece on venues that offer something a bit different and unique. The first place to catch my eye was The Rude Shipyard run by Pete David and Sally Smith in Sheffield. It’s a cafe/bookshop and the sort of place I’d love to have on my doorstep! In their own words:

The Rude Shipyard is a cafe/bookshop run by Pete David and Sally Smith on the offbeat Abbeydale Road in Sheffield. Cloistered around us are antique shops, Italian and Indian restaurants, hardware shops, cafes, an old picture palace and florists aplenty! What makes Abbeydale Rd exciting is that it has never attracted big chains and there is a wonderfully independent spirit to the way shops are conceived and run.

We’re situated between the main set of shops on Abbeydale Road and the Asian restaurants of London Road further towards town. Being slightly set apart has its advantages and disadvantages but it seems to suit us well enough as people have adopted us fairly quickly. May is our 1st birthday and although its been a tremendous amount of hard work, we’re delighted to not only still be trading, but to have attracted so many people into our humble shop.

As well as selling books and food, we also have a regular open mic poetry night called The Shipping Forecast, a monthly book fair, a book club on the last Thursday of every month, and a spattering of gigs that go on in our upstairs room. Acts who’ve played here include Little Robots, Flamingo Love Parade, Men Diamler (pictured above), Mark Wynn, Carl Woodford, The Yellowbellys, Neil McSweeney, Fernhill, Art Terry, Leila Adu, Cuckoo Clocks, Antique Doll, Tom Rodwell, Tom Baxendale, Big Eyes Family Players, and many more I can’t recall right now! To celebrate our first birthday, we’ve got some very exciting gigs. On Sunday 9th May, blues-country stompers Groanbox will be performing from their latest album, The Livingston Sessions, on the back of a four star review in The Guardian. Then on Thursday 13th May, Men Diamler returns to us with his irreverent spirituals and west country field hollers, with support from country picker, Mark Wynn. A week later, on 20th May, a literary cabaret troupe make their way down form Edinburgh with poetry, spoken work, bluegrass and country music and a paper cinema all on the bill! We round things off with a good ol’ fashioned party on 22nd May. Everyone’s welcome and the mic is open for folks to bring a song, story or snippet of something special to our stage.

Future gigs include alt. folksters Rachael Dadd and Alessi’s Ark (July 15th), and the French kitsch pop band, Odland (July 11th), as well as hosting Sheffield City Magicians for an amazing night of magic. We’ll also be involved again in the city-wide Tramlines music festival, with gigs happening all over the city, including The Rude Shipyard. So far, we’ve got Flamingo Love Parade, Big Eyes Family Players and Neil McSweeney confirmed.

In June, as part of the Sharrow Fringe Festival, we’ll be running a Flash Fiction day, in which customers get to to write short stories in the day and read them to an audience in the evening. Then in October, we’ll be getting involved in the Literature festival, Off The Shelf. Details of all our events can be found on the website.

Pete
The Rude Shipyard
0114 2589653
www.therudeshipyard.com

If you’re in the area folks, pay them a visit and if you’re not…make a trip! This place sounds like a dream come true. Built on passion!

That’s right, Colin Meloy of the Decemberists is about to release a series of Children’s books. Maybe not so surprising as some may report though. The series entitled Wildwood see’s Meloy collaborating with his wife, Carsons Ellis, an illustrator. Wildwood is a classic tale of adventure, magic, and danger.

Wildwood is set in an alternate version of modern-day Portland, Oregon, which is a hotbed of musical activity for us as a station so why not for a folkloric fantasy book? Folk music is steaming with tales and Meloy has never been that far removed from the roots of English folk and story telling. This statement may come as a surprise to some, but he is a folk lover! He makes no secret of his adoration for Shirley Collins. He is a bridge for the modern meets the traditonal. He’s the dog’s bollocks! Shakespeare said that…

“Storytelling and rich imagery are hallmarks of Colin’s songs, so writing a novel seems like a perfect next step for him,” said Donna Bray of Balzer & Bray the co-publishers. ” Wildwood is both incredibly original yet timeless – nothing less than an American Narnia. We’re thrilled to introduce such an exciting new voice in children’s literature.”

“The germ of this series goes back a long way,” Meloy said. “For me, this is the culmination of a long-term collaboration with Carson, matching words and art. I grew up on a steady diet of Lloyd Alexander, Roald Dahl, and Tolkien; this is our humble paean to that grand tradition of epic adventure stories.”

Personally I can’t wait! I read to my kids every night…so the chance to read a story by Meloy is, shall we say, a wee bit selfish? OK, maybe it may be a bit early on in their lives…I don’t want to scare the crap out of them do I?

Pursue the knowledge here!