Please Please You is at it again. Once more the York-based live music promoter is putting together a hefty schedule of really top-notch gigs that will take place in its home city, Leeds, Hebden Bridge and Manchester in the coming weeks and months, something that is guaranteed to keep us extremely busy and very happy between now and Christmas.
This year already Please Please You has brought us some cracking shows, including those by Laura Veirs, James Chance, Michael Chapman and King Creosote. And there is much more to come, I can assure you. Here God Is In The TV looks at just some of the upcoming highlights.
The early May Bank Holiday weekend gets off to a tremendous start, but also faces us with a very difficult decision to make. Should we stick in York with Stina Tweeddale’s new incarnation of Honeyblood who will be returning to The Crescent on Friday the 3rd of May or head 20-odd miles down the A64 to Leeds to catch those superb Japanese garage rockers Otoboke Beaver at the famous Brudenell Social Club?
Either way, having seen both of their last shows in these venues, you are promised one helluva good night.
The Bank Holiday weekend is brought to a delightful close when the Netherlands’ outfit and recent Heavenly Recordings’ signing Pip Blom bring some top indie-pop tunes from their forthcoming debut album Boat to The Crescent on Monday 6th May.
The following weekend on Sunday 12th May The Crescent is once again the place to be when Montreal-born Grenadian-Canadian banjo player and songsayer, Kaia Kater comes to town. The Guardian has described her music as being at the point “where bluegrass meets Nina Simone” and that sounds pretty good to me.
And these brilliant musical weekends just keep on coming. On Saturday the 18th and Sunday the 19th of May respectively, the Grandaddy mainman Jason Lytle appears at St. Philip’s church in Salford and the Brudenell Social Club. Given this chap’s supreme talent, I think it is fairly safe to say that these two shows can be filed under “not to be missed”.
The following month the experimental folk trio Lau land at The Crescent on what will be the penultimate date on their Midnight & Closedown Tour 2019. The tour takes its name from the title of their most recent record, Mojo magazine’s Folk Album of the Month when it was released in February.
Into July and on the first of that month, the LOVE Band Featuring Johnny Echols will play at the Brudenell as part of their farewell tour celebrating the music of Arthur Lee and the legendary Los Angeles band Love.
Later that month on Thursday the 18th a trip to Hebden Bridge and its legendary socialist members cooperative, club, bar and music venue The Trades Club is highly recommended because that night the self-proclaimed Dublin folk miscreants Lankum are playing there.
Looking a bit further ahead to Friday the 11th of October, tree-loving Snapped Ankles will be stopping off at The Crescent in York as part of a new tour of English forests.
A week later on the 18th The Crescent then plays host to Willie Watson the American singer-songwriter, guitarist, banjo player, actor (he took the part of The Kid in the recent Coen Brothers’ movie The Ballad of Buster Scruggs) and founding member of Old Crow Medicine Show. If his show at the Howard Assembly Room back in January was anything to go by then we are going to be in for a bit of a treat.
And as if that isn’t quite enough entertainment at The Crescent, the former working man’s club then welcomes the former founding member of The Beta Band Steve Mason to its premises on Sunday the 10th of November in what will undoubtedly be yet another excellent show.
With 27 gigs already on its schedule for the rest of this year and with the prospect of still more to be added, full details of all Please Please You’s forthcoming events can be found HERE
