When: 7.30pm on Saturday 10 March 2018
Where: Low Four, Old Granada Studios, Security Lodge Entrance, Quay Street, Manchester M3 4PR

PLEASE NOTE: This show has been rescheduled from December 2017 to March 2018. Original tickets remain valid and all other details remain the same.

We’re delighted to be working with Bella Union’s Karl Blau again – this time, at Low Four!

On Introducing Karl Blau the enigmatic vocalist charts a new vision of country music. A Northwest indie hero, Blau channels darkness and hope in a cinematic collection of Nashville country hits from the 1960s and 1970s. Produced by Tucker Martine, the record features performances by Jim James (My Morning Jacket), Laura Veirs, Jon Hyde, Eli Moore (Lake), Steve Moore (Earth, SunnO)))), among others.

It all started with cutting a 7” single, a cover of the 1969 Tom T. Hall hit That’s How I Got to Memphis. Blau, whom Martine had come to know from sessions with Laura Veirs among others, asked if he could try singing it. ‘I knew what a special artist Karl was, but I had no idea what a powerful interpreter of songs he was,’ Martine says. The collaboration, pairing Blau’s deeply sonorous voice with Martine’s warm, modern arrangements, recast the Nashville hit in a new light. ‘He was able to communicate the essence of the song in such a moving way that we started dreaming of making a whole record based around our excitement for that collaboration.’ The result was the single and, now, Introducing Karl Blau.

Martine and Blau worked for years on shaping the narrative of the record. ‘I feel like I am starring in this country-western movie, written and produced by Tucker, and it tells a story,’ says Blau. A sense of emergence from the shadows of loss, loneliness, infidelity, and melancholy runs through Introducing Karl Blau. ‘We’ve threaded a story through the record,’ says Blau. ‘My character is moving through this dark place, but there is always this light of hope.’

The record, all covers, is a crate-digger’s feast of forgotten hits and deeper cuts; most of them from the Nashville country-soul renaissance in the late 1960s and early 1970s – Tom T. Hall, Bobby Bond, Allen Reynolds. Other songs are from the Bee Gees (To Love Somebody), Link Wray (Fallin’ Rain) or Townes Van Zandt (If I Needed You). The project was a labor of love for Martine, the son of a Nashville songwriter who grew up listening to many of these songs.

Karl Blau is a multi-instrumentalist, singer, and DIY icon who helped turn his hometown of Anacortes, Washington, into an indie-music mecca. He has released more than 40 records in 20-odd years, many self-released in handmade packaging and mailed to subscribers, and others on iconic indie Northwest labels K and knw-yr-own. Blau has also toured and recorded for years with Laura Veirs, the Microphones, Little Wings, D+ and Earth.

Tour support comes from Sumie. For a singer-songwriter, the benefit of starting from a point of quiet is the room it allows for manoeuvre afterwards. Such is the case with the subtly cinematic second album from Sandra Sumie Nagano, Lost in Light, due for release via Bella Union on 10 November. On 2013’s eponymous debut, Sumie tapped into the mid-point between Scandinavian and Japanese folk music to deliver an album of blissful restraint, its quietude shaped by a combination of parenthood and natural inclination. The follow-up is an album of stealthy dynamism, drama and mystery, its impact made all the greater because it skirts obvious routes to dance just out of hand’s reach, always seeming to be on the verge of departure. Sumie has shared a beautiful animated trailer for the album as well as new track Leave Me.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fx772u65o9E

Completed in 1962, Low Four was built as part of the original Granada Studio. The live-room was originally connected to a control room above and was where The Beatles rehearsed for their first ever TV appearance. In its heyday, it was used to record theme tunes and soundtracks for classic ITV dramas such as Jewel in the Crown, Brideshead Revisited and Sherlock Holmes, often by sections of the Halle Orchestra.

Nowadays, it is used as a professional recording studio, and also streams one-off live performances by the likes of Jane Weaver, Mew, Jesca Hoop, Dutch Uncles, Polica, Alexis Taylor and Everything Everything.

This is a 14+ age restriction show. Under 16s must be accompanied by an adult.

PLEASE NOTE: This show has been rescheduled from December 2017 to March 2018. Original tickets remain valid and all other details remain the same.

Buy tickets now. Tickets are available from Piccadilly Records, Vinyl Exchange, WeGotTickets.com, Ticketline.co.uk and on 0871 220 0260.

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