When: 7.30pm on Thursday 16 March 2023
Where: Gullivers, 109 Oldham Street, Manchester, M4 1LW

PLEASE NOTE: This show was originally scheduled for January 2022 but was cancelled due to ongoing covid pandemic and the travel issues. It’s now re-booked for March 2023, with tickets back on sale.

We’re excited to be working with Rachel Baiman for the first time – plus guest Misty River!

Rachel Baiman’s June 2017 label debut Shame was featured on NPR’s ‘Songs We Love’, called a ‘rootsy wake-up call” by Folk Alley, and described by Vice’s Noisey as ‘flipping off authority one song at a time’. Now Baiman has announced Thanksgiving (out 2 November on Free Dirt Records) – a self-produced four-song EP, featuring her live trio as well as special guests including Molly Tuttle and Josh Oliver.

Baiman’s Thanksgiving is an intriguing follow up to Shame, allowing her a chance to stretch out stylistically, moving effortlessly between bluegrass, to folk, old-time and country. The bittersweet lyricism she’s become known for conveys the push and pull of hardship and hope we often feel during the holiday season.

Raised in Chicago by a radical economist and a social worker, Baiman was surrounded by social justice issues her entire life. ‘If I wanted to rebel against my parents I could have become a finance banker or a corporate lawyer,’ she says of her childhood. While her classmates went to church or temple on Sunday mornings, Baiman attended the Ethical Humanist Society of Greater Chicago, a non-religious community formed around discussions of morality and current events. ‘That was always a tough one to explain at school,’ she says with a laugh.

As a teenager, Baiman found music to be a welcome escape from worrying about global politics: ‘I often found the constant discussion of seemingly unsolvable problems to be intense and overwhelming, and when I moved to Nashville to pursue music it felt like something positive, beautiful and productive that I could put into the world. Now that I’ve had some years to devote to music.’

Baiman has been recording and touring internationally for the past four years with 10 String Symphony, and has played fiddle for numerous other artists including Kacey Musgraves and Winnipeg folk band Oh My Darling. ‘I find it hard to escape from the values that I grew up with, and I feel compelled to write politically, to speak out about things that I’ve experienced or seen,’ she says. ‘Songwriting is a unique opportunity to do that, because it avails a more emotional vehicle for discussion. I love the political tradition of folk music, from Woody Guthrie to Tupac, and my hope is that this record adds another voice to it.’

Tour support comes from Misty River. With a father from Dublin and a mother from Trinidad, Misty River’s music reflects a rich range of cultural influences. Having ‘run away’ from a strict classical conservatoire to immerse herself in traditional fiddle music in the west of Ireland, she quickly became a sought-after violinist and fiddler, touring with acts from the Corrs to the Kooks, Serj Tankien to Sinead O’Connor. She began writing and singing her own songs after the onset of a chronic illness, and identity in adversity is a recurrent theme in Promises.

‘As a result of my illness, it looked like I wouldn’t be able to play any more,’ she says. ‘That uncertainty gave me an overwhelming sense that now was the time to get on with things, once-and-for-all.’ It was then she began writing, and found her own voice – quite literally – ‘one of the reasons my voice is so unusual is that my condition affects my vocal cords too’.

Misty River’s harmonious blend of Americana and traditional roots music combines soulful melodies and heartfelt lyrics with honey-sweet vocals. The debut album, released in October 2022, includes the gently captivating Take This Dance, which featured on both the Oscar-winning film A Phone Call and the award-winning Netflix documentary A Secret Love.

The album, produced by husband Adam Morley and mixed in Nashville by Vance Powell (Chris Stapleton, The White Stripes), draws on the music on which she was raised, from Fleetwood Mac, The Rolling Stones and The Band to the Dubliners and Roberta Flack.

This show is a co-promotion with Please Please You.

Book tickets now.

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