Film By Sam Clayton and Lee Rowley... Watch this one alone in a dark room, a new track you won't have heard before, off my soon to be available studio album...
HERE'S LUNATIC OF THE HALL...
As I have a habit of temporarily kidnapping members from other bands, the line-up regularly changes, but currently most commonly consists of...
Electric Bass- Ste Evans (The Planets), or Double Bass- Bonz (Biggles/Shake the Roots), Percussion- Leon Patel (Meninos/ Reem Kelani), or Drum Kit- Adam Clarke (Twisted Wheel),Clarinet/Tenor Sax- Stuart Mortimore (Rockability), Dobro/Fiddle- Dave Pope (Biggles/Rockability), or Tenor Sax- Christian Dyson (The Cassettes/With Double Bass), Trumpet- Dave Leonard (Voytec the Bear), very kind musicians who step in and add their own dulcet touches are, Electric Guitar- Mike Mellor (Mike Mellor/Rockability), Electric Bass- Danny Blomely (The Kyla Brox Band), Percussion- Iain Mellor (Meninos), Alto and Tenor Saxes- Tony Marshall (The Kyla Brox Band), Percussion Kit- Eoghan (The Fayre), Percussion- Zac Sargent (Bloco Novo), Dru (The Barrel/Death to the Ghosts), SFX- Ursula Jones (Meninos/Bloco Novo), this is a rush job, and there will be people who I am very, very greatful to, who I have missed off, and also the list will continue, I am sure, as and when I can, I will update it!
Influences
Difficult to discriminate between what one listen's to and what actively influences, I'll give it a go... TOM WAITS! Bob Dylan, John Martyn, Bert Jansch, Leonard Cohen, Ian Dury, John Cooper Clarke, a huge range of world music, Little Feat, The Band, Peter Blegvad, Mal Webb, Skip James, Blind Willie McTell, Blind Willie Johnson, Rev. Gary Davis, Mississippi Sheiks, Danny Thompson, Laurie Anderson, being brought up on Bluegrass, Chuck Berry, Edward Lear, The Chieftains, various novelty songs, Dr. John, The Incredible Stringband, Frank Zappa, Davy Graham, being surrounded by great mates, (some of whom constitute great bands, and some who constitute great travelling companions, and great people to generally be around), travelling extensively around the world, living abroad, Charles Mingus, John Coltrane, Miles Davis, David Olney, lots of books, lots of booze, Randy Newman, having played in world percussion groups from the age of about 11, Elvis, Joe Meek, Joe Boyd, Cabasa, Hamish Imlach, Gill Scott Heron, The Streets, Hank Williams, Sonny Boy Williamson, Mike Seeger, Lynton Kwasi Johnson...(I'm trying to avoid mentioning people I love to listen to, but am not sure of if they influence or not, so please don't think I'm limited to just this stuff, I'm fighting the urge to write loads of names that I don't hear an influence from, and might be failing in a couple of cases!)... so basically I have been majorly lyric/mood driven for a long time and am possibly straying a little further into performance poetry more recently, but still focussed on the performance side of the musical show... I'm also currently enjoying applying my production bent to my own work, after having worked on many other people's work in the past, my album is sounding GoooooooooD!
COCAINE LIVE AT GLASTONBURY FESTIVAL 2008
"Such a hit...one of the most original voices on the scene" MANCHESTER CITY LIFE --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"With rave reviews, Stefan is quite simply captivating!" CROWN OF LIGHTS FESTIVAL -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Mr. Elastic and Mr. Fantastic, muchos gracias!" MR. MILAN (Milan's Cafe) -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Wowed crouds with his own unique blend" TAMESIDE ADVERTISER ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Pope does a mix of traditional numbers and his own material: carefully constructed songs...performed with an immense passion, silencing traditionally noisy audiences... a world away from the stream-of-consciousness "ain't-life-awful" approach adopted by many songwriters I've encountered." MANCHESTER CITY LIFE
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Started off many years ago with a mission to educate younger people into the realms of folk music... Flirted with protest songs and political statement songs, before finding my feet better as a songwriter.
Now I sing about being drunk, devious women, subversions, perversions and manipulations. In short...life! And if I'm feeling really vindictive, the odd old folk song might start coming out too!
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The only constant is that the line-up always includes me on guitar and vocals, and at least one lead musician, be it Sax, Clarinet, Fiddle etc., sometimes we augment this with double bass or percussion etc. (depending on the gig), and the set consists of us equally lulling, then intimidating the audience, prancing about the stage, and putting on a show (both sonic and visual) for however long is required!
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I've put up simple guitar/vocal demos up here (apart from the more live recordings) at the moment, but am currently working on an immense album, (if I do say so myself!) completely constructed from self penned material, and decorated beautifully with the cream of the crop of local musicians each highly acclaimed in their own rights in their own fields. With all this virtuosity involved then, I must say that what's completed so far has already exceeded my wildest hopes for the album, and it's begun to take on a real life of its own...
Watch this space!
Stefan.
hey just heard those new recordings, stefan theyre excellent! Always new ur stuff would sound this excellent proply recorded, cant wait for the album! The brass is really well written too...
Hey Stef! We have made a set of top trump cards based on characters, friends and other general nonsense that has been part of our planetary path for the last year or so. They are in our myspace images if you want to check them out!!
hey stef, hope you are well. any plans for curry tonight (for your dad's birthday)?? we will be there in spirit, but please order us some food- spirits need to eat!
whoa whoa!!its been so lonnng since i looked at this page...man IM lovin it!!!wkd glasto gig stef!u still rippin up dat poor guitar !lol...n i see u hav ur loyal fiddler with ya too!i love u guys u rock!(still cant blieve u saw machinehead b4 me tho!grrr bitterness)
Great video Stef!! glad your gonna be at Delph - are you going acoustic in the bar area again? That was really great. Mr Steve is in Scotland at the moment learning the bagpipes, so he won't have spied yar comment with his wee eyes yet (Scottish).
