Guitarists
ments. Lee played in bands from his early teens but made his first mark in the mid-’60s as guitarist with Chris Farlowe and the Thunderbirds.
Lee, however, always wanted to play country music and he later became the go-to man in the genre. His unimpeachable credentials saw him work with the best in the country music sphere. The Everly Brothers, Emmylou Harris, Glen Campbell, Willie Nelson and Rodney Crowell are just a few of them.
Lee has fronted his own band for years, but prior to that he was also an integral part of Head, Hands and Feat, Bill Wyman’s Rhythm Kings, Hogan’s Heroes and Eric Clapton’s band.
He is a double-Grammy winner and has played on scores of albums as a guest musician (on mandolin and piano as well as guitar).
His recent album Highwayman saw Lee re-energise some classic material on acoustic guitar and his 70th birthday celebration – an allstar affair – was released on DVD.
A young woman who may well join the rarefied level of Lucas and Lee in the fullness of time plays her first show – sold out well in advance of the gig – in the region tonight at the Live Theatre’s Studio.
Molly Tuttle is from California but is now based in Nashville and she really did break the mould when she won last year’s International Bluegrass Award for Guitarist of the Year.
She was the first woman to be nominated, let alone win, the prestigious accolade and join the hallowed company of previous winners like Bryan Sutton and Tony Rice. Her new seven-track all-original EP, Rise, is getting glowing reviews.
Tuttle’s co-headliner at the venue is Rachel Baiman who is a multiinstrumentalist (and fiddler for Kacey Musgraves) who also works in the duo, 10 String Symphony. She, too, has a new solo release, Shame.
Monday night in Sage Gateshead’s Hall 1 has a night of Americana when the five-time Grammy winner Mary Chapin Carpenter is the headliner. She has released 13 studio albums (and over 40 singles) over the course of a 30-year career, the last of which was Sometimes Just The Sky which came out in March.
Several of her albums have achieved gold and platinum status, and her fourth album, Come On Come On, clocked up around three million sales and spawned seven songs on the Billboard Hot Country singles chart.
A reason to arrive early is the fact that Australian Emily Barker is the support act. She has been based in the UK for over 15 years and has toured solo and in band format (with Red Clay Halo), with a string of well-regarded albums.
For folk-inclined fans, Sage Gateshead has a couple of appealing shows. Tomorrow night brings the Orkneyborn singer/guitarist, Kris Drever, back to familiar turf when he plays in Hall 2.
Drever has played the venue numerous times, usually with his regular trio Lau, but this time he has a new album, If Wishes Were Horses, which is part retrospective and part new material. Scottish singer/fiddler Hannah Read opens the show. The other folk show is courtesy of the much-vaunted New England harmony quartet Windborne in the Northern Rock Foundation Hall on Monday night. Cluny also has a roots-heavy lineup this week. Nova Scotia’s highly-rated country singer, Whitney Rose, is in Cluny 2 on Monday night, and her last album, Rule 62 (produced by Mavericks singer Raul Malo), is likely to figure prominently in her setlist. The same space has Wolverhampton singer-songwriter, Scott Matthews, the following night with his newly released sixth album, The Great Untold.
There is more in the way of Americana (albeit Canadian in origin) with Deep Dark Woods in Cluny 2 on Thursday night, while upstairs in the larger room Barrence Whitfield & the Savages will be pumping-out some up-tempo soul, R’n’B.
Up at the Cumberland Arms on Thursday night, the midlands singer-songwriter, Jimmy Livingstone, is the guest.
Finally, the genuinely roof-raising JD Wilkes and the Legendary Shack Shakers are back in the Ouseburn venue on Wednesday night. Wilkes – who has a new solo album – fronts a truly authentic band that incorporates all the wildness of rock ‘n’ roll with some country tropes.
It is small wonder that this vibrant crew has been sought out as touring partners for the likes of Robert Plant and the Black Keys. Wilkes, incidentally, is also a published author, filmmaker and artist when not shack shakin’ around the globe.