It’s business as usual for Joe Coates. No sooner has the dust settled on the festive period and the man behind the York-based live music promotion company Please Please You (and also the recently crowned Cultural Champion at York’s annual Culture Awards ceremony) is once more hard at work bringing some of the best and most interesting musical acts to this area.
Now into its 13th year of existence, 2017 was Please Please You’s biggest and busiest yet with a wealth of fantastic live events including truly great shows from the likes of Promised Land Sound, Angel Olsen, Bill Ryder-Jones, Siobhan Wilson, John Murry and Matthew E. White all of which continue to linger long in the memory. A quick glance at Please Please You’s forthcoming programme of gigs strongly suggests that 2018 will be every bit as exciting and memorable as the year just gone by.
The New Year starts in earnest on 22nd January at the Brudenell Social Club in Leeds no less with an appearance there by The Deslondes. Named after the New Orleans’ street where they first formed and where their vocalist and guitarist Sam Doores still lives, the five-piece band make strong musical connections between the past and present fusing the central elements of folk, country and good old fashioned R&B. With admirable support coming courtesy of the Sheffield-based songwriting collective The Buffalo Skinners this promises to be a cracking start to the new Please Please You musical year.
In what will be one of only three English dates on her forthcoming tour of Europe, the highly regarded New England singer-songwriter Lina Tullgren comes to the Hyde Park Book Club in Leeds on the 9th of February. As she very helpfully suggests on her Facebook page, “get the fuck on board”.
The following month it is the turn of Catholic Action who will take to the Fulford Arms stage in York. Put Sunday the 4th of March in your diary because the Glaswegian four-piece are sure to punch a huge guitar-shaped hole right through that particular Sabbath evening.
Two nights later and it is all down to The Crescent for what should be one of the early highlights of the year. In a joint collaboration with fellow York promoter Let’s Go Baboon!, Please Please You brings the wholly individual artistry of Richard Dawson, Charlie Parr and Ed Dowie to this former working men’s club turned community venue. Topping this glorious bill the Newcastle singer-songwriter Dawson is a man whose unlikely music challenges the very concept of simple categorisation. That last year’s album Peasant featured highly in most musical critics’ end-of-year lists is testament to his mercurial talent. File this gig under “one not to be missed”.
March gathers even further momentum when first the consistently wonderful The Wave Pictures play consecutive nights in Leeds and York (respectively at The Hyde Park Book Club and the Fulford Arms on the 12th and 13th of the month) and then the Idlewild frontman Roddy Woomble comes to The Crescent on the 20th before the indefatigable post-punk perennials The Monochrome Set return to the Brudenell a mere three nights later.
And this is all before we even get round to mentioning Japan’s Otoke Beaver at the Brudenell on the 18th of April and Lilly Hiatt, the Nashville singer-songwriter appearing at Gullivers in Manchester the very next evening.
For full details of all the upcoming Please Please You shows and how to get tickets for them please go HERE
