colleen

Back from the US part two…

I loved every single one of the shows on this US tour and was truly touched by the kindness and warmth of everyone who came to see me play. Special thanks also go to some of the organisers for their enthusiasm and trust – I’m thinking in particular of the great team at The Exploratorium and Resonance curator Wayne Grim, who were the first to invite me for a 2014 show that had to be cancelled due to my lack of visa at the time, of Peter Broderick and Andrew Neerman of Beacon Sound for the Seaview and Portland shows, of Ronen Givony of Wordless Music for the New York show, and King Britt in Philadelphia.

I unfortunately have few high-quality photos of the shows, but here are a few tpictures from Constellation in Chicago, where I was very excited to finally be able to meet the whole Thrill Jockey team, and pictures from one of the most special shows on the tour, the Sou’wester Lodge in Seaview, Washington.

Seaview is a tiny town on the coast of Washington, about two hours’ drive from Portland, and the Sou’Wester Lodge is a very special place indeed: a 1892 lodge surrounded by vintage trailers and trees, the sea just a few hundred metres away… The atmosphere at Seaview is so serene and everything contributed to make this a special day: Peter Broderick gave a truly beautiful opening set, Liz Harris aka Grouper did a sound installation in one of the trailers, the sound was great thanks to the Beacon Sound PA and engineer Jason Powers, and last but not least delicious food was served at the end of the show, everyone sitting at the same huge table , with the night drawing near and finally engulfing us… Here are a few pictures of the show that can give you an impression of the afternoon’s atmosphere…

Another highlight of the tour was doing a session for David Garland’s WNYC’s Spinning on Air radio show: I had recorded a session and interview with David 10 years ago and it was such a pleasure to reunite with him after all these years! You can listen to the programme here and also watch this video of me covering the song from The Night of the Hunter, “Pearl’s Dream” aka “Once upon a time there was a pretty fly”, which I now play at almost every show.

A few articles and interviews were published during the tour, including Time Out Chicago, Portland Mercury and Classicalite, and last but not least I got my first review in the New York Times for my New York show!

I’d like to end this post by sharing a drawing made by someone who attended my Portsmouth show: one of my favourite songs to play live is “This hammer breaks”, especially the ending, which until now had always brought images of some kind of nuclear alarm to my mind, but as the tour went on, nicer images came into my brain, specifically – for some reason – “Star Wars”, until in Portsmouth I actually strongly visualised some mice battling with laser swords throughout the ending of the song… I told the crowd about it and one audience member, Alyssa Grenning, did this drawing, which I just love and I think is the perfect epilogue to this tour!

Thanks so much everyone for your support and interest, as always your words and presence really mean a lot to me! Wishing you a wonderful summer :-)))

I have been back from my US tour for one week and am slowly recollecting my physical strength, my head still full of wonderful images and memories from what has proved to be my most fulfilling tour on every level – I truly do not regret the amount of time and effort that’s gone into getting the US visa and booking that tour as it’s been 100% worth it!

Life when you’re touring pretty much consists of packing and unpacking your suitcase constantly and making sure you don’t miss your plane (especially true if like me you’re travelling alone and no one is there to tell you what time you should get up and get ready to go), so I did not have time to update this website while on the road, although I did do facebook, which is faster to do. So I’ll give you an update in two or three parts on all that went on for my music in June, and there’s been a lot!

First things first, Christophe Thockler’s wonderful video for “I’m kin” was unveiled at the start of my tour.

Christophe was interviewed about the video on The Plus Paper and on The Creators Project, and you can also read Christophe’s own words on the video and see some stills on his website. Thank you so much Christophe!

I was invited by The Vinyl Factory to make a 100% vinyl mix, and after the two purely Jamaican mixes I did for Solid Steel and FACT (which were actually also 100% vinyl!), this time I decided to focus on the rest of my record collection, going back to old favourites and tying the past with the present. I hope you will love those tracks as much as I do, and you can listen and read what I wrote about the mix and some of its tracks here.

https://soundcloud.com/thevinylfactory/vf-mix-14-colleen

One of the highlights at the beginning of my US tour was getting to do a KEXP session in Seattle – here is the full session below, and you can check out photos taken on that day here.

More from me soon!