When: 7.30pm on Tuesday 3 March 2015
Where: Gullivers Lounge, 109 Oldham Street, Manchester, M4 1LW

PLEASE NOTE: Due to unforeseen circumstances, this show now takes place in Gullivers’ Lounge – an intimate new room at the rear of Gullivers, which is a five-minute walk from Takk.

We’re happy to welcome back Vikesh Kapoor – last in town with the Handsome Family!

Following a spur-of-the-moment cross-country trip with a pair of fiery European girls, Vikesh Kapoor left school for a brief yet inspiring stint as a mason’s apprentice. The America he had previously known resided narrowly between his childhood home in rural Pennsylvania and the New England university he left home for. Alongside his parents’ own immigrant struggles, these experiences quickly witnessed Kapoor to the scope of the American dream.

A few years later, Kapoor performed at Howard Zinn’s memorial service in Boston, in front of Zinn’s family and colleagues (including Noam Chomsky). Roused by Zinn’s lifelong battle against class and race injustice, Kapoor spent the next two years in Portland, Oregon working on his full-length debut record. The Ballad Of Willy Robbins, a concept album loosely based on a newspaper article, chronicles the brutal but hopeful story of a working class man who slowly loses everything: ambitions, health, family and shelter. It’s a worker’s tale, less specific to the blue-collar life as it is about anyone struggling to make something of themselves.

The Ballad Of Willy Robbins, out last April on Loose Music, was co-produced by Adam Selzer (M. Ward) and features Nate Query (Decemberists, Black Prairie), Jeff Ratner (Langhorne Slim) and Birger Olsen (Denver).

‘A series of sharply etched portraits of struggling Americans that points back along a road of socially conscious songs. Woody Guthrie is standing at the head of that road’ – The New Yorker

‘Kapoor’s cameos of blue-collar life are poignant and universal: wrecked home towns, insecure employment, busted dreams. An impressive debut’ – The Observer, 4/5

Tour support comes from Cork City’s John Blek. John Blek takes inspiration from range of musical styles such as the outlaw country of Willy Nelson, the protest ballads of Woody Guthrie, the 100-mile-an-hour lyricism of Jack Kerouac and the melancholic country rock of Neil Young.

PLEASE NOTE: Due to unforeseen circumstances, this show now takes place in Gullivers’ Lounge – an intimate new room at the rear of Gullivers, which is a five-minute walk from Takk.

Buy tickets now. Tickets are available from Common (no booking fee), Piccadilly Records, Vinyl Exchange, Seetickets.com, WeGotTickets.com, Ticketline.co.uk and on 0871 220 0260.

Attend on: Facebook | Last.fm