When: 7.30pm on Saturday 11 April 2015
Where: Soup Kitchen, 31-33 Spear Street, Manchester M1 1DF

We’re delighted to be working with Black Yaya – aka Herman Dune’s David Ivar.

Black Yaya is a new singer, songwriter, although he’s not new to the world of singer-songwriters. Indeed, he used to write, record and perform under Herman Dune. After travelling the seven seas and beyond with Herman Dune and recording more than ten albums with that band, David Ivar decided he wanted to create something new so Black Yaya was born, the new moniker of Ivar.

One morning in November of 2012, David Ivar woke up with the strange feeling that he could not be in a band anymore, at least for the moment. He loved every moment he’d had shared with his friend, his brother, but he was different now. He needed to be able to speak for himself and for himself only. Something about being the voice of a band felt like he had to temper his feelings. As a band, he felt he was hiding behind a monster, but that big soft and furry monster had started to block his view a little bit, so he had to get it out of the way, at least for now.

As soon as he took the decision to take up a new name, Ivar felt a rush of inspiration and Black Yaya started moving freely. It was as if a door had opened and he was breathing the freshest air of the freshest morning he’d ever woken up to. He found himself writing about things he somehow never would have before, like strange crime situations, vengeance and betrayals (e.g. Glad Tidings, Watchman, Vigilante, Through The Deep Night), or incorporating dreams and visions into his writing (he wrote Save Them Little Children in an hallucinatory state in a hotel room in Norway). Movies like ‘Death Wish’ (Michael Winner) or ‘Night Of The Hunter’ (Charles Laughton), The Killing (Stanley Kubrick), Manhunter (Michael Mann), paintings of Hiernymus Bosch, of Marcel Duchamp, comic books like Watchmen (Alan Moore), Batman: The Court Of Owls (Scott Snyder) or Y:The Last Man (Brian K. Vaughan), or reading The Black Cat by Edgar A. Poe, The Doll by Daphne Du Maurier or The Long Goodbye by Raymond Chandler, or poems of Jack Kerouac (Pomes All Sizes) and Allen Ginsberg (Kaddish) were strong material in David Ivar’s mind when he was working on his new songs.

When Ivar came up with enough songs for a complete set, without ‘oldies’, he started performing solo shows, with an acoustic guitar. He felt it gave him such strength, such energy, to play as a rookie, in little clubs for little money, to audiences that didn’t know any of the songs he was about to play. He loved those shows it was just like he was starting out again, with a clean slate, back at the end of the line, with a hunger to play and perform, to get to the crowd, one member of the audience at a time. Having to work his way to the end of the show, to win the show, with everything he had inside, each night felt like being reborn, learning again, fighting again, writing on the road, alone in the green room. He felt that sometimes being alone was the least lonely he’d ever been…

The forthcoming, eponymous record is the only official collection of Black Yaya songs known to date and will be available from 2 March via City Slang. The initial limited vinyl edition will come with a bonus 7“ including 3 unreleased songs. Whether it be the funk-fuelled grooves of Glad Tidings, the upbeat harmonica-notes on Watchman or the mellow tones of Through The Deep Note, the debut LP from Black Yaya is packed with catchy pop-folk soaked tracks that makes the album so easy on the ear and marks a new and exciting step for David Ivar.

Support comes from Foxtales. Foxtales are a recent coming-together of four non-boys and one non-girl from Manchester. They make dreamy, psychedelic folk music layered with harmonies.

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.

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