Recording and New gig dates in Scotland

The new songs were  recorded in rough on a Yamaha 16 track recording desk.

I will be travelling to Glasgow and then hiring a car.

Luggage will include guitar, ukelele, leads,mic, mic stand and a Yamaha 16 track digital recorder and very few clothes. I will be then heading to Fort William to find my Air B and B accomodation for the week.

We will be doing gigs across the Highlands, taking in breathtaking scenery, climbing the soaring mountains and descending loch filled valleys.

We will be recording at home in Fort William, adding the haunting cellos of Hilary and Sacha over my existing recordings.

Then onto meet up with  Dave Holmes for a mini tour of gigs in Mallaig, Crieff and Fowlis Wester.

Management Agent based in Crieff.

These recordings will be carefully wrapped in my luggage  and delivered to the studio back home, the new album with all new exciting creations to be released on CD and vinyl  !!

Steve Gifford band at Worcester Music Festival

A great night with the Steve Gifford Band headlining on Saturday.

After Worcester Music Festival Steve Gifford said

“It was worth the wait until we could finally get on stage at 10pm on the main night.
We followed 14 other artists and bands who I must say were of a pretty high standard.  The crowd were a bit high on alcohol by the time we did our set and I really hope they remembered us the next day”

Steve and Jo dueting at Royston Folk Club

Steve and Jo Dervish played at Royston Folk Club in Friday 13th March as part of the regular showcase evening.

Varied and accomplished musicians performed and Steve sang two to his own songs.  After the interval Steve and Jo and a heartfelt duet, Peter Gabriel’s “Don’t Give Up”.  They followed it up with Steve’s song “Blame It On Me” and got a very warm reception.

Altogether a great evening of music.  Well worth going back again to see Steve and the other performers at Royston.

OXFORD Cellar bar gig 11th April 2015.

ONE of TWO SHOWS.The Cellar Bar Oxford is the home of best quality live performers from around the country.At £5.00 a ticket to see both The SG BAND And THe MADRIGALS on the same bill is a “must not miss” opportunity.Dont delay.The csame show will be performed on the 12th June at The Mill Arts Centre Banbury.

http://www.cellaroxford.co.uk/listings/calendar?date=2015-04

The mini Scottish tour September 2014

So I met up with Hilary in Fort William on the 10th Sept to rehearse for two Beaudersert Album concerts in Crieff and Arisaig 12th and 13th September.Dave Holmes(of Hard Drive Promotions)friend and generally great guy,arranged the gig in Crieff at Spikes'( Mike Stevensons’)  Venue@24/bistro in the town centre.

The hospitality was fantastic, Dave and Spike looked after us and we had a full house for the gig.Accompanied by Hilary on cello we re created the accompanied songs from Beaudesert and went on to play songs from Ungodly Hour Boy on a beach and even a couple of Tom Petty covers which went down well !! Shame I didnt write them.

The 2nd gig at Arisaig was again well attended but this time by a more mature audience, many classically trained musicians came along, friends of Hilary,who very kindly forgave me for my primitive tuning technique of the Ukelele, to the melody of “my dogs’got flees”. Again we got some feet tapping without any physical injuries.Scotland we’ll be back !!

New dates…flyer

A new flyer highlighting reviews in Sunday Telegraph, Mojo, Fatea and Froots Mag go out to all venues interested in booking Steve Gifford and Steve Gifford band.

Steve Gifford ON TOUR

Beaudesert launched in a basement at Ollie Vees.

Ollie Vees Pic

One week before the album party, Billie the owner of Ollie Vees cleared out and painted the basement of their retro shop in Leighton Buzzard in preperation for the launch party of the 5th studio album in 12 years.A few days before the gig a licensed bar had been granted, which bought the album, a glass of wine and a ticket for the basement gig.

Before the beer break Steve covered 10 of the album tracks and then followed up with some self styled covers of songs by influences Tom Petty, Dire Straits and Beatles.After some serious audience participation, the evening over ran finishing at 11.20pm.

The previous week the Sunday Telegraph highlighted the album as a “must have” from their top 10 folk selection

FATEA Magazine – Beaudesert Album Review

Steve’s one of those names you feel you ought to know – and probably you do. Milton-Keynes-based Steve was a familiar name on the 1980s London music scene, after which he took a sabbatical to raise a family, finally returning in 2002 with a well-received singer-songwriter album Cut And Run, the success of which he followed up with 2005’s Building Bridges. Both of these albums characterised Steve’s modestly heartfelt yet clear-sighted writing and performance style, which encapsulates life experiences in honest and straightforward language and backed by unaffectedly simple acoustic-driven instrumentation.

Those positive aspects haven’t changed over the subsequent years, and nowadays Steve’s viewed as a reliable UK singer-songwriters with a solid reputation for well-crafted songs loosely inhabiting a satisfying roots-Americana styling and as entirely comfortable within that milieu as his audiences are. I’ve noted a further progression in Steve’s writing from album three (Boy On A Beach) through to Beaudesert (album five), in that his words and ideas have become altogether more sharply focused, and this latest collection can therefore likely be counted his most accomplished in that regard.

There’s an attractive immediacy of expression to the more observational of the songs, those which might best be termed tributes-cum-character-portraits (Last Train and Geordie Trawlerman) and the evocative title track with its telling juxtaposition of beauty and barrenness, a theme that tends to inform much of the rest of the album. A sense of wistful reflection pervades much of Steve’s writing too, as on Places In The Sun and the darker What’s A Sign For?, and we can both readily identify with Steve’s questioning of reality on songs like He Won’t Go and appreciate his acceptance of life’s ambiguities on Nothing Ever Stays The Same.

For backing, Steve has scaled things down from album four (The Ungodly Hour), ringing the changes this time round by engaging as producer the highly-regarded Ben Walker, who brings his own sensitive mandolin, mandola, piano and organ additions to Steve’s clean, crisp guitar work, and further gently enhancing the texture on seven of the tracks with cello (played by Hilary Fielding). All of which gives the album an appealingly unified sound. The slight downside to this is that its very consistency feels a little too comfortable on occasion, especially on the inevitable minority of songs which don’t quite stand out from the rest (if you see what I mean). But the album’s virtues will still reveal themselves more on repeated plays, of that you can be sure.

David Kidman

Review link: http://www.fatea-records.co.uk/magazine/2014/SteveGifford.html

Album Party confirmed 17th May

Ollie Vees are hosting a small party to launch my new album Beaudesert at 8pm on the 17th May. 33,Market square in Leighton Buzzard…this  is 2 streets from where I did my first gig at the Brush factory folk club when I was only 17.

steve-gifford-album-launch

Beaudesert Makes Telegraphs Top 10!

The new album Beaudesert’s that was released 1st May 2014 has been selected as one of the top 10 folk albums to add to your spring collection by the Sunday Telegraph;

Click the link below for full details;

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/music/cdreviews/10806148/Folk-Music-treats-for-spring-2014.html

Beaudesert - Steve Gifford