When: 7.30pm on Thursday 18 August 2022
Where: Gullivers, 109 Oldham Street, Manchester, M4 1LW

We’re delighted to be working with Josephine Foster for the first time, as we bring her to Gullivers – with special guest Dan Haywood.

North American artist Josephine Foster: song composer, singer/multi-instrumentalist, poet. Known to breathe new life into archaic forms, embodying the cultural archaeology of Harry Smith’s old weird America, she has lent her warbling mezzo-soprano and interpretive wit to over two decades of self-produced recordings.

As Jarry said, anachronism, the crossing of different times, produces eternity. And anachronic is an apt arch-adjective to describe Foster’s singular songbook, one that began in the Mountain West, where at age 15 she had her first gig delivering hymns at a log cabin church. Her uncanny timbre imparts a paradoxically rustic glamour, despite a certain stage shyness.

In her 20s, submerged into Chicago’s fringe rock and free jazz periphery, frayed vestiges of her abandoned operatic aspirations wore away; she then crossed the Atlantic for over a decade, grounding herself in the earthen glaze and folklore of rural Spain. A glitter of country-blues tinged Nashville recordings (where she generally resides a few months of the year) round out her prolific output of solo and band album releases, leading a variety of ensembles on the road around the world and in the studio.

Foster draws from spiritual wells beyond limits of space and time, her performances mesmeric. An oneiric voice which entwines with her own swelling guitar, piano, harp or autoharp gestures, folk-art songs spun in surprising musical design, are often playfully unravelled. And while she favours the piano or organ, she will probably play whatever guitar is handed to her.

Many of her over a dozen critically acclaimed albums, including the Americana inflected No Harm Done (2020), or her most recent, the gothic futuristic-folk cantata Godmother (2022), are available through Fire records.

Special guest is Dan Haywood. With his cliché-busting compositions covered by his peers and admired by the late great David Berman, Dan Haywood is a true songwriter’s songwriter.

His freewheeling guitar and vocal sets can draw on 25 years of engrossing craft and wild inspiration, with selections from his breakthrough cosmic-folk triple album Dan Haywood’s New Hawks, to his most recent Wire-endorsed Country Dustbin on Café Oto’s Otoroku – and anything in between, including his punky parallel career leading Pill Fangs.

Described by Record Collector magazine as ‘the greatest songwriter you’ve probably never heard of’, this is a great chance to catch the sometimes-reclusive singer at the top of his game.

Buy tickets now. Tickets are also available from Dice.fm, WeGotTickets.com, Ticketline.co.uk and on 0871 220 0260.

Attend on: Facebook