Winter Mountain to release debut EP 'Find, Follow' on Charcoal Records

EP Release: Find, Follow by Winter Mountain
Release date: 20 May 2013
Label: Charcoal Road
Listen: on Youtube

They have an extraordinary backstory straight out of a movie screenplay for which their songs would make the perfect soundtrack. How Joseph Francis and Martin Smyth met and were discovered is remarkable and goes a little like this...

An Englishman and an Irishman step onto the same train at Chicago's Union station and meet for the first time. Both singers, both songwriters...both broke, but intent on making their way by rail to Memphis, TN, the birthplace of Rock n Roll.

That night, the two strangers began a conversation that lasted until the early hours. A conversation centered on their mutual love of the sounds of the 60s and 70s, of great albums and great artists, and great harmony singing: The Band, Simon & Garfunkel, Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young were all discussed. By morning they had named themselves Winter Mountain and committed to travel together, swapping stories, exchanging lyrics and singing together in the bars and clubs of the deep south. From their first performance it was impossible to ignore the rare magic of their natural vocal blend as heads turned whenever they sang.

On their return the guys spent a fortnight songwriting in Ireland which led to a chance entry in a Battle of the Bands competition. Winter Mountain competed against the best unsigned talent in Northern Ireland, and won! It was enough to capture the heart of a local theatre owner who booked them to open for Irish singing luminary Cara Dillon. After hearing Joseph and Martin’s performance Cara and husband/producer Sam Lakeman immediately signed Winter Mountain to their independent label, Charcoal Records and set about assembling a team of experienced musicians who could help realise the vision that Joseph and Martin had for their music.

With contributions from Robbie McIntosh (guitarist with McCartney, The Pretenders, John Mayer), Audrey Riley (string arranger for Coldplay, Nick Cave) and Leo Abrahams (guitarist for Brian Eno, Florence And The Machine), the songs were recorded in a host of vintage studios which echo the authenticity of their sound and the resulting EP, Find, Follow, blends exquisite melodies, heartfelt lyrics and above all else, compelling harmonies.

The final, perhaps most striking touch to the EP was made when the highly acclaimed Mike Crossey (Ben Howard, Jake Bugg, The Arctic Monkeys), stepped up in the midst of his hectic schedule and mixed all three tracks.  

There have been the obvious comparisons to Simon & Garfunkel, The Fleet Foxes and The Everly Brothers and when you hear and see them perform you’ll understand why. Yet Winter Mountain bring something new to their vocal delivery, echoing  those legendary harmony acts, but adding a vital, contemporary edge that is uniquely their own. Their vocals blend as if they’ve been harmonising for a lifetime. And although Martin’s from Donegal, Ireland and Joseph hails from West Cornwall, you get the impression they were born to sing together.

Winter Mountain’s debut EP Find, Follow is now due for release on iTunes and other online outlets on 20th May 2013 on Charcoal Records.

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One Mile An Hour: debut album out 1 October

Album release: One Mile An Hour by One Mile An Hour
Release date: 1 October 2012 
Label: Snowbird Records 
Listen: www.onemileanhour.com

Also available: 250 ltd edition 180g vinyl

It’s often remarked that we are all products of our environment. So when 3-piece One Mile An Hour began to put together their debut album, they were only ever going to achieve the result they wanted by constructing their own studio. A space built at the top of a house, overlooking the sea on the south coast, became the scene for the recording of this complex, introverted outsider-folk record. 

One Mile An Hour chose to self-produce the album in order to capture the record’s recurring themes, which most notably come in the form of the outdoors and nature. Things used, wasted, squandered and lost sit alongside more hopeful ideas of escape and salvation, all forming part of one all-encompassing continual idea of humanity, our relationships and love. The album was mastered by John Dent (John Martyn, Nick Drake, PJ Harvey).

Vocalist Jeff Kightly covers some seemingly bleak ground at times; “for open are the arms from which hope can unfold…Some'll see stone where another knows gold… ” (In Return), “Magpie is faking that my ink is running dry when the black eyed dog calls” (Magpie Song). Outdoor themes became integral following the band's immersion in Scandinavian landscape and literature – the form and structure rather than the content itself.  Trouble’s Roots references Tove Jansson’s The Summer Book, while In Return was influenced by the backdrops of Finnish folk tales.

One Mile An Hour is an album oozing ideas and ambition. It’s cinematic yet intimate. Busy yet controlled. Opening track Sunken Ships sets a breezy tone, Kightly’s gorgeous falsetto curling tightly around understated guitar-play, while You Are On Beach aligns deft riffing with melancholy verses and emotive chord progressions. Elsewhere, tracks are allowed to breathe and weave but surge forward, focused on their ultimate resolution (the 10 minute album closer, Nine Eight). The band’s musical fluency, drive and intricacy make the whole record feel less a result of direct influence by other artists, and more like a conversation between the likes of Pentangle, Bonnie Prince Billy, The Grateful Dead, John Martyn, The Band, CSN&Y – in which One Mile An Hour are the topic of discussion.  

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A great American rock record from the Ready Stance

Album release: Damndest by the Ready Stance
Release date: May 21, 2012
Listen: www.readystance.com  

In these days of gimmicky indie art projects, the Ready Stance’s time-honored sound is rare: just four guys in a room knocking out straight-up, folk-based rock, much as it could’ve been done in 1966.

The back story of Cincinnati band the Ready Stance qualifies as rock’n’roll fairy tale. Wes Pence, the creative force of revered early ’90s outfit Middlemarch recalls “I was walking home one night and happened to glance in the open window of a house on my block. Inside were a couple of guitars and on the walls some old show flyers from The Replacements and other bands I loved, which seemed really out of place for the neighbourhood. Then this guy walked out on the porch…”

That guy was lead vocalist and guitarist Chase Johnston - an Ohio native and a veteran of the Athens, Georgia music scene. An animated conversation between the two revealed an uncannily simpatico musical vision and still more shared touchstones: The Hold Steady, Big Star, VU, The Band, R.E.M., the Feelies. After some preliminary sessions, it wasn’t long before talk turned to forming a band. Pence recruited one of his old Middlemarch bandmates, drummer Eric Moreton, and music veteran Randy Cheek (The Libertines U.S, Ass Ponys) on bass and backing vocals and the new quartet started working up Pence’s backlog of tunes. In the guitarist’s basement studio, before even playing out, the four began recording Damndest, the Ready Stance’s astonishingly solid debut.

Much like the story of the band’s formation, the yarns in the album’s 11 tracks—all set to sweeping, melody-rich hooks, raw, ringing guitars, and driving rhythms—are rooted in fact and stranger than fiction; literate, image-laden observations with a penchant for classic, bent Midwestern arcana. There’s Steamship Moselle, the calliope-infused account of an 1838 maritime explosion that ends with an ill-fated minister found clutching a dry Bible; and Marathon, an amusing local legend concerning a confused fistfight between a speech-impaired gas station attendant and a customer with a similar affliction. More timely themes include Real America, a chord-crunching, poetic look at divisive politics and pundits who claim to represent the 'real' country.

Damndest is a also a simple story of a guy who had marginal success in music during the early 90s, then spent a couple of decades in the epicenter of US manufacturing (amid globalization and the disappearance of the entire US/Midwest manufacturing sector…) How does a Midwest industrialist cope with globalization and the decline of US manufacturing? By making the great American rock record, that’s how.

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