TALENT IS TIMELESS PRESENTS: LIVE AT THE BEDFORD

DONNA CANALE

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Scottish born Songstress Donna Canale’s music career has spanned the last 3 decades in a variety of guises. Her eclectic tastes have meant that Donna has toured the UK, Europe and Japan with Big Bands, worked with British Jazz artists, and even had a couple of pop chart busting hits with ‘Mucho Mambo (Sway)’ and’ Mambo Italiano’ for the dance act ‘Shaft’. Her Solo CD ‘Thinking of You’ was released in 2002 to critical acclaim and gained the 4 headphones mark from The Guardian reviews. She is also a founder member of the vocal ensemble ‘Clive Dunstall’s Voxtet’. Donna Says – “I picked up a guitar and would sing as a teenager, but laid it down again while I was experiencing all the different ways to carve out a living as a musician and session singer. Now, through lockdown I feel I have come full circle, and am re-discovering the joy and simplicity in just ‘being’ with a guitar and a voice. My songs are little stories which have told themselves to me along the way” Donna is currently recording a new album which will be ready for release early in 2022.

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STEVE STRAWHEAD

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Steve Strawhead is a Generation X singer songwriter guitarist from Cambridgeshire. He was a founder member of originals 4-piece The Sunkings and is currently the other half of The Strawheads. Steve’s songs are a blend of UK Country, Rock and Americana and although steeped in admiration for contemporaries Justin Currie, Ed Sheeran and Maren Morris, having spent his formative years in a 50’s & 60’s covers-band, his creative output is unconsciously imbued with a distinctive retro vibe. Having taken a very lengthy hiatus which followed a loss of musical confidence and a necessity for grownup responsibilities, a self-financed album released during lockdown2020 has introduced new fans to The Strawheads and recent engagement with the ‘Talent is Timeless’ project, has given Steve a renewed zest for writing and performing.

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PHIL HOOLEY

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Phil Hooley is the founder member and frontman for the alt country band The Woolgatherers. On 14th May 2021 he released his first solo album Songs From The Back Room. Recorded mostly during lockdown, the album is the result of a chance meeting between Phil and former Nashville drummer and producer Justin Johnson in Phil’s hometown Scarborough, “Justin put a post on Facebook, asking if anyone in the Scarborough area was writing Country/Americana songs, so I got in touch. We met up for a coffee and a chat in January 2020 and soon realised we had shared opinions on music. I told him about past recordings with The Woolgatherers and my ideas for recording the next selection of songs.”

Justin had more or less been brought up in a recording studio. He originates from Washington State but then moved to Nashville, working as a session drummer and in recording studios. He moved to England and had been working in Liverpool for a few years, where he had built up connections with some top musicians. Justin’s influence helped ensure a stellar line-up of musicians grace Songs From The Backroom, including Ben Smith, Robert Vincent, Andrea Zonn (long time fiddle player for James Taylor), Simon Goulding, (an in demand bass player, who has played with the likes of SnakeDavis), Scott Poley who played most of the pedal steel and Justin himself, who plays drums and assorted percussion.

The songs reflect the emphasis Phil places on lyrics, telling stories of everyday people and their emotions, “I enjoy people-watching, and often make up back stories about some poor passer-by, which are probably wildly inaccurate, but I find it a great source of inspiration for songwriting. I suppose I am telling my own story through these made-up characters, with a dollop of poetic license!”
Phil cites songwriters such as Guy Clark, John Prine and Nick Lowe among his many influences, and he has certainly served his time on the circuit, performing on the Yard stage at Black Deer Festival and The Cambridge Folk Festival Club Stage, as well as countless intimate back room bars.

Phil: “I suppose you could say I am a late bloomer, having played for many years on the circuit, but never putting myself out there as a writer of songs. I’m not one for explaining the stories behind my songs. I would like to think that they are fairly self-explanatory, although I accept they may mean different things to different people. That is the wonderful thing about sharing music.”

“Phil’s life-worn voice is the perfect instrument to enunciate his thoughtful and articulate songs.” Americana UK
“
Great song, this is brilliant….Midasville” Ralph McLean, BBC Radio Ulster

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Saskia Griffiths-Moore is a London based singer-songwriter that has been performing at folk clubs, theatres and festivals worldwide.
She is endorsed by Agnew Instruments and JWC Guitars, and has completed her second recording at Abbey Road Studios. Her music has been featured on Sky TV, London Live, BBC Radio Scotland, Wales and more, she was awarded multiple grants from Arts Council England and has received glowing four and five star reviews from Maverick and RnR magazine respectively.

***** “The sound of a major artist” RnR

**** “Expertly crafted and expertly played” Maverick

​Saskia started her career as Craniosacral therapist on Harley Street until her performing career took off. She has toured through the United Kingdom and across Europe including Germany, Belgium, The Netherlands, and Denmark.
On the 50th anniversary of Woodstock festival, 2019, Saskia recorded and released a commemorative album of folk music called ‘Baez, Dylan and Me’, featuring songs by Bob Dylan and Joan Baez that are evocative of that time period.
Accompanying Saskia at Abbey Road Studios were; Kit Hawes on Mandolin and guitar, Thomas Holder on double bass, and Joseph O’Keefe on Violin. The project was sponsored by JWC Guitars. She returned in December 2019 with a 40 person choir behind her and a string quartet to record the single ‘For You’.

“Rising star of the UK folk scene” Music republic magazine

Recently a transatlantic record deal has been struck between Saskia and The Susanne Marcus Collins Foundation Inc. (US), and they are now working together on “creating quality acoustic music mirroring the style and capturing the energy of the great legacy folk artists.” See full article here.

Instead of touring America, Canada, Europe and the UK this year, 2020 will see Saskia releasing her new album ‘Are You Listening’ on July 31st, and she is heading to Abbey Road Studios for the third time to record. She will also be completing a series of ‘safe summer’ concerts in August, and plans to raise money for charity later in the year, building towards touring again in 2021.
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Join her at www.saskiagm.com @Saskiagmsings on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook.
“We suspect that the main sticking point in ongoing Brexit negotiations is in fact, Brussels’ insistence that we hand over Saskia Griffiths-Moore” The Folk Show, Keep It Country TV, Sky TV

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TONY MOORE

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Tony began his career in the music industry playing keyboards as an original member of “Iron Maiden”.

He then went on to be part of the formation of a new band called “Tanz Der Youth” with Brian James (ex Damned) and achieved critical acclaim as part of the “New Wave” of British Music at the end of the 70’s.

During the early 80’s Tony recorded an album of his own songs at the legendary Abbey Road studios which spawned a Christmas hit in Europe in 1983 with a song called “Fool”

In 1986 he joined a band called Cutting Crew as keyboard player and they went on to have massive worldwide success with a song called “I Just Died In Your Arms Tonight” which was number 1 in many countries around the world.

Through the 90’s he wrote, recorded and produced songs for Argentine singer Marie Claire D’ubaldo and toured the world as her MD on the back of massive hit songs like “the Rhythm Is Magic” in Italy, Japan, Russia and South America.

In the late 90’s Tony Moore launched a seminal venue for songwriters in Central London called The Kashmir Klub . His entrepreneurial instinct and passion for music helped him establish a groundbreaking club that went on to discover and develop artists like Damien Rice, KT Tunstall, Imogen Heap, The Feeling and many more.

At the start of  2003, building on the success of the Kashmir Klub, he took over The Bedford in Balham and turned it into one of the most successful and award winning small venues in the country. Where, once again, he played a significant role in the careers of artists such as Paolo Nutini, James Morrison, Newton Faulkner, Amy Macdonald, Ed Sheeran and a host of others whilst still continuing his musical career, writing, recording and playing live shows.

He has been inducted into the Music Managers Forum “Roll Of Honour” for outstanding contribution to The British Music industry as well as receiving the much coveted “Gold Badge” award from BASCA for his services to songwriters and music. In Malta he was even honoured to join other celebrities with his own GOLD “STAR” in the walk of fame alongside his hand print

In April 2014 Tony was invited to  present his own highly acclaimed weekly music show on Soho Radio London (www.sohoradiolondon.com) which won “Best Online Radio In The World” in 2016 and now has in excess of a million streams a month

Since the beginning of 2017 he’s been recording and releasing new material with the first single, “Perfect And Beautiful” making it into the top 40 iTunes singer/songwriter chart and a steady stream of material being released and heard all around the world.

On June 30th 2019 Tony performed his own composition “We Are The Light” at the closing ceremony of the European Games 2019 in Minsk, Belarus to a sold out stadium audience in front of special guest Vladamir Putin. The show was also televised live to 117 countries with an estimated audience of around 500,000,000 people.

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