Description

Red Balloon Music is back with a bang for 2021 with the amazing NATIVE HARROW - direct from the US (via their new Brighton home)!

Support comes from:

TORIA WOOFF
RUTH OWENS


NATIVE HARROW:

Devin Tuel (singer-songwriter of Native Harrow) may consider herself to be an artist meant for a different time, but she now finds herself inhabiting her own true place.

This record is about becoming your own advocate. Realising that maybe you are different in several or a myriad of ways and that that is okay. And further, it is about me becoming a grown woman, Tuel says.

'Happier Now' is a set of nine songs recorded and mixed by Alex Hall (JD McPherson, The Cactus Blossoms, Pokey LaFarge) at Chicago's Reliable Recorders. The album was co-produced by Hall, Tuel, and her bandmate, multi-instrumentalist Stephen Harms.

Native Harrow cuts out clear and vibrant narratives on fear, love, the open road, ill-fated relationships, and coping with the state of the world.

'I wanted to share that I made it out of my own thunderstorm. I had experienced the high peaks and very low valleys of my twenties. I saw more of the world on my own, got through challenges, revelled in true moments of triumph, but all the while the world around me was growing louder, wilder, and scarier. Music for me is a place to be soft. This album was my place to feel it all.'

Happier Now's nine songs were written during three back-to-back tours across North America supporting the band's second album 'Sorores'. The album was recorded in just three days in March 2018 during what Tuel jokingly calls 'downtime' in the middle of the gruelling 108 date tour.

Happier Now oscillates between feeling the sting of uncertainty (Can't Go on Like This), the beauty of California (Blue Canyon) and the ache for lavish stability (Way to Light).

You could say Tuel wears her heart proudly on her sleeve, but that'd be underplaying the exact gravity of her stories. Each starlit image is framed within her warm, enveloping vocals and the careful, profound considerations of Harms musicianship.

Start to finish, the new record pours forth from her very bones, and you get the overwhelming sense she has never been more daring and honest than right now.

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Website: http://nativeharrow.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/native_harrow/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/nativeharrow
Twitter: https://twitter.com/nativeharrow

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Press for HAPPIER NOW:

'[Tuel's] wondrous voice evoking both Judee Sill and early Joni Mitchell at their most wistful timeless folk-rooted confections.'

8/10

UNCUT



'Laurel Canyon-style folk rock with shades of Joni Mitchell'

????

THE TIMES



'Razor-sharp folk rock'

MOJO



'Beautifully soaring, wistful (but not whimsical) folk-rock. Sublime harmonies backed by grooving folk-rock riffs. Rolling grooves ground languid and dreamy clearwater shimmers of sound.'

ALBUMS OF THE MONTH

ROUGH TRADE


TORIA WOOFF:
https://www.facebook.com/toriawooff

Toria Wooff stands in the crossfires of gothic literature and pained Americana.

Telling tales of love and malevolence, her delicate spider-finger guitar and haunting vocals shine amongst a storytelling far beyond her years.

A master of scene setting, 'Badlands', Toria's recent EP, is the zenith of her craft, drawing you into a world of smoked sunsets, circling horses and swirling sand particles.

'Brilliantly crafted, unique, vintage folk ballads.'


RUTH OWENS:
https://www.ruthowensmusic.com

Growing up in Birmingham, Ruth Owens began to sing and learn the violin and guitar as a young child. With her parents guiding her eclectic music taste to include greats such as Rufus Wainwright, Norah Jones and The Beatles, she began crafting her own songs in a folk style in her early teens. By 16 she had recorded her first EP entitled 'Strong', from which two tracks gained radio play on BBC 6 Music, and the title track was placed in the independent film 'Just Charlie' which premiered on Sky Movies in 2017.

After moving to Manchester to study at The Royal Northern College of Music she met James Cooke, Kieran Murphy, Fraser Grant and Noah Chapman, who became great friends and band mates. Since consolidating this new line up, Ruth and the band have been writing fresh new material and gigging regularly around Manchester, highlights include performances at The Bridgewater Hall and Manchester Day, as well as supporting The RNCM Session Orchestra to a sold out hall accompanied by a 25 piece orchestra.

"I've known Ruth and her music for nearly six years now, and I can safely say that she is one of the most naturally gifted musicians that I've seen in a long time."

Loz Guest - Bauer Media

"Ruth Owens' voice has an effortless quality that is well complimented by the alt-country backing. It's a voice that seems to have a confidence well beyond her years"

Biff Roxby - Debt Records

Description

The 200 year long story of The Castle Hotel is woven not just into it’s bricks and mortar, its Victorian tiles or its mosaic floors. It’s a feeling that you can’t put your finger on. It’s in its people. In its memories. And in the layers of history built up over centuries of experience.

The Castle Hotel started life in 1776, although records show that there has been a dwelling on the site since the 1400s. Over the course of a century the pub changed name several times, trading first as The Crown and Sceptre, then The Crown and Anchor and later The Clock Face. In the late nineteenth century the pub was acquired by Kay’s Atlas Brewery and started a new chapter as The Castle Hotel; which is probably when the current tiled façade and bar were added. In the early 1930s Frederic Robinson took over Kay’s Atlas Brewery and, consequently, The Castle Hotel.

The pub’s now deeply cemented relationship with the city’s music scene probably began when it was a stopping off point for people on their way to Band on the Wall.

In 1979, a now legendary John Peel interview with Ian Curtis took place here, weaving The Castle further into the fabric of Manchester’s musical heritage. Sadly, The Castle fell on hard times and closed it’s doors in 2008. This cherished public house was not to remain closed for long though, and in 2009 friends Jonny Booth and Rupert Hill took over The Castle Hotel and set about bringing the decrepit building back to life.

After a period of restoration which saw the infamous leaky roof replaced and the pub’s entire interior sympathetically brought back in line with it’s rich heritage, the renovation was completed in October 2010 with the grand unveiling of the new Music Hall and Theatre at In The City 2010.

So that’s the story so far. And now The Castle Hotel is ready for it’s next chapter; one which will see this historical drinking house continue to evolve at the beating heart of Manchester’s creative communities. So come along, pull up a stool, and become a part of our story.

66 Oldham Street,

Manchester,

Greater Manchester,

England,

M4 1LE.

0161 237 9485