Bellowhead’s Boden heads for Galeri
FOLK musician Jon Boden will play in Galeri Caernarfon tomorrow, Thursday, September 26. Boden is best known as the lead singer and main arranger of the progressive folk juggernaut Bellowhead.
After 12 years, a quarter of a million album sales, seven singles on the Radio 2 playlist and selling out hundreds of venues throughout the land and beyond, including the Royal Albert Hall, Jon announced in 2015 that he wanted to move on.
The rest of the band decided not to continue without him. Bellowhead played their final gig on May 1, 2016.
As a total contrast to the 11-piece Bellowhead, 2016 saw Jon launch his live solo career with a performance at Cambridge Folk Festival in the July where he was the festival’s first guest artistic programmer, followed by dates the next week at Snape Proms and Sidmouth FolkWeek.
His recorded solo career goes back to 2006 with the release of his album Painted Lady (re-released with new bonus tracks in October 2016 to mark the album’s tenth anniversary) followed by the critically lauded Songs From The Floodplain which led to him being named Folk Singer of The Year at the 2009 BBC Folk Awards.
He has toured several times since then with his own band The Remnant Kings, but this was the first time he performed entirely solo.
Widely respected as an interpreter of traditional song, the solo shows also showcased Jon’s instrumental talents on fiddle, guitar and concertina, as well as his trademark “stomp box” which he and John Spiers introduced into the world of traditional music in 2001.
Through his solo work and his work with Bellowhead and Spiers & Boden Jon has won 11 BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards – and promises to take the audience deeper into the song worlds of traditional music and of his own song writing. Jon’s latest album ‘Afterglow’ was released in October 2017 and continues his explorations of a post-oil world, this time following the course of two lovers over the night of a fire-lit city carnival.
The first single from the album ‘All The Stars Are Coming Out Tonight’ was playlisted on BBC Radio 2.
The release has been followed by the launch of a newly extended 11-piece Jon Boden & The Remnant Kings and the 4-piece Jon Boden & The Remnant Strings, but it is solo that Jon is in his element with a dazzling array of instruments and a stage presence which has conquered some of the biggest stages in the world.
Jon will be supported by Elidyr Glyn, winner of this year’s Cân i Gymru.
To book tickets for the gig, visit www.galericaernarfon.com or call 01286 685 222.