On Friday November 11th,
WagonWheel Presents… makes its first appearance at Shakespeares, and we’re delighted to be welcoming our old friend
James Apollo back to Sheffield from the US. A new album is in the works, with Damien Jurado at the production controls, and we’re looking forward to another magical night in his company. Completing a fantastic evening’s entertainment will be
The Farewell State, and after several solo shows, back with his band we have
Mat Wale & The Rackets. Advance tickets priced at £5 are available from WeGotTickets (
http://www.wegottickets.com/event/136370) or entry on the night will be £6. Doors open 7.45pm.
***JAMES APOLLO***
James Apollo is used to wandering. He once lived in the same apartment for a whole year. A friend went to help him move out before they left on another tour with no end date. He was on the curb with 2 suitcases.
“That all you got?”
“Well there’s the piano in there still, but we dont have room for it in the van and i can’t get it down the stairs anyway.”
So it was no surprise that after Apollo and his bandmates spent a year of gruelling dates in the US and Europe, he wandered off for some time. Unseen for a couple weeks, his friend called his mom. Then they called a few ex girlfriends. Some were more concerned than others. No one had any answers.
It was a few weeks later when he was knocking on his friend’s front door. He was with his brother. They’d been out in the Utah Canyons penning a slew of new songs, which, after a couple months of arranging with the rest of the band, became the record Til Your Feet Bleed. On asked why he wandered quite that far, Apollo recalls, “I’d walked out on most everyone and everything, so i figured i may as well take it all the way”
Til Your Feet Bleed is touching mix of recurring western themes, dusty melodies, wide open space, and the peaceful loneliness of a man resolved to it. It was those big, lonesome sounds that launched James Apollo from a roadside curiosity to an international curiosity, receiving high praises from radio presenters Tom Robinson and John Kennedy, as well as raving reviews from Uncut, Mojo, Word and Q. It put Apollo into the radio circuit of BBC, XFM, Virgin and others in the US and UK.
Shortly after it’s release, Mojo asked James Apollo and the boys to record a tune their 40th Anniversary re-imagining of The Beatles Let it Be. The resulting track “1 after the 909″ was a lonesome tango bastardization of the bluesy original. It sold 120,000 copies in the next month and introduced a whole new audience to James Apollo.
After barely surviving a motorcycle accident in 2010, Apollo relocated the band from Brooklyn to Seattle. “It was time to move,” he recalls, “I’d gotten the grit, the saxes, the swagger, it was time to see some sunsets”
The move has proved fruitful. With renewed spirit and constant touring, Til Your Feet Bleed has made fans of many of Apollo’s early idols. Elvis Costello and Lucinda Williams have been heartened champions of his exotic tumbleweed sounds, and the list keeps growing.
James Apollo and his band, The Sweet Unknown, are currently in the studio with renowned indie pioneer Damien Jurado. The record is slated for release this Fall.
“
dark delights with a ghoulish air of danger and charming fragility”
MOJO
“
there’s something instrinsically beautiful in how [Til Your Feet Bleed] is woven together to such a doleful, quietly epic effect.“
Uncut
“
haunted, western-rich folk with hints of Latin rhythms and Tom Waits-style cabaret”
The Onion
“
an earthy blend of haunted melodies and dusty rhythms”
Sheffield Star
http://www.jamesapollo.com/
***THE FAREWELL STATE***
Starting out as one voice from local widescreen rock outfit The Letter, with influences ranging from the likes of Fugazi and Afghan Whigs to Sparklehorse and My Morning Jacket, The Farewell State was originally an outlet for new songs of Simon Roberts. Having now morphed into an instrument-swapping Alt-country trio, channelling the sounds of the likes of Bon Iver, Ryan Adams and even Neil Finn into the mix, the band are crafting something that lasts with noise and melody.
http://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Farewell-State/195736200456415
***MAT WALE & THE RACKETS***
Mat Wale has been writing, producing and recording with various of his own band projects since 2004. As well as releasing a string of albums and EPs he also produced the ‘Medieval Death Folk’ EP for Mexican Kids At Home which remains to this day their definitive work. In 2008 he toured the US and UK with experimental indie band ‘avanGaad’. In 2009 he provided the soundtrack for Welsh indie film ‘Big Font, Large Spacing’.
Mat formed ‘The Rackets’ in late 2006. The band played nearly 200 shows and recorded 4 EP’s together until their initial demise in late 2009. More recently he’s been performing solo shows showcasing his country tinged songs of love and heartbreak but has now returned with a reformed Rackets line up.
http://www.myspace.com/matwale
Facebook Event page:
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=300753519938531
Last.fm Event page:
http://www.last.fm/event/2074233
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