Corinne West comes to Devon
San Francisco-based folk-Americana singer-songwriter Corinne West announces May-June UK Tour in support of her new album Starlight Highway – her first UK tour since 2011 – including Devon dates at Otterton Mill on Thursday May 19, which opens the tour, and The Plough Arts Centre in Great Torrington on Saturday May 21.
Corinne will be accompanied at all shows by multi-instrumentalist Sam Lawrence.
Corinne West has been a travelling soul since the age of 15 when she left her family home and her school to travel across America in a converted school bus with a band of activists. She has been described as “the Siren of the Sierras” (SF Bay Area’s Times Herald) while the North Coast Journal in Arcata, declared, “West’s voice invokes angels, if angels had a dangerous side.” Corinne’s powerful and eloquent voice, coupled with the way she weaves her potent songs has earned her a unique identity in the worlds' acoustic roots scene. Relix noted her “voice of gold,” while legendary BBC radio DJ Bob Harris proclaimed, “I love Corinne’s music and truly believe in her as an artist. She has spirit, integrity and talent. I am a massive fan.”
The material on Starlight Highway, West’s latest recording came about after a year-long sabbatical in Austria, which culminated in the new disc. “Starlight is my first completely self-produced record,” West says about the sessions. “I wanted to create a body of songs that moved my music in new directions, while paying tribute to the music I have done in the past. This influenced my decisions regarding the instrumentation; piano, organ, acoustic rock angles, heavy harmonies, the deep-drive of drums, the laid back floating ballads…”
“I surround myself with high talent.” offers West. “Kelly Joe Phelps and I recorded and toured as a duo for two years, and he is featured both vocally and on guitar. Mike Marshall produced my 2007 release, Second Sight, and it was a treat to work with him again. Ricky Fataar (Bonnie Raitt, Beach Boys) brought in quite a backbone to lean into. It's amazing how when music is tight... it all becomes beautifully loose. It was a high adventure for me to both steer and gently hit cruise-control to get just the right synergy, tones and movement the songs were reaching for.”
“The songs for Starlight Highway have taken quite a journey. Many of them were written in 2011, on the heels of my last release, and have been waiting - wherever it is that songs do wait - for a place to land and sing themselves. The songs are decidedly more revealing than others I have released; less dripping in metaphor, more direct and perhaps stark.
“This is an intimate record, and covers a lot of territory,” adds West, summing up the new album. “I marvel at how deeply personal experiences so often translate into universal and mythic principals. It’s as though there is an invisible blueprint somewhere, continuously showing up in stories and art. My aim with this recording is to communicate a personal emotive glimpse of what we all experience in our own way, on our own roads, as we climb, fly, fall, isolate, believe, reinvent, connect, dream... Though seemingly different, we are all somehow cut from the same cloth.”
Corinne will be live at Otterton Mill on Thursday 19 May and at The Plough Arts Centre in Great Torrington on Saturday 21 May.
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