Tune Up - Music Touring Across Scotland

Tours: King Creosote with Jeremy Warmsley and Slowclub

King Creosote

visit artist website

Kenny Anderson is an extraordinary man. Making music under the moniker King Creosote, Anderson manages simultaneously to be a remarkable musician, a genius songwriter, the inspirational head of a record label and the beating heart of the fantastic Fence Collective, all from the sleepy fishing village of Anstruther in the East Neuk of Fife.

Ten years ago, tired of chasing a fickle music industry around, Anderson returned to his native Fife, drew a line in the sand, and set about creating his own incredible, touching and heartwarming music in a stress-free environment, surrounded by like-minded friends. Producing quality tunes at a prolific rate, he recorded album after album at home, released them on his own Fence Records and sold them around Fife and beyond. Word spread. More like-minded souls gravitated towards Anderson and his notorious jam sessions in the local Ship Tavern, and the Fence Collective was born.

These days the Fence Collective boasts dozens of artists, including Domino signing James Yorkston, the legendary Lone Pigeon (Anderson's brother Gordon and one-time member of the Beta Band), while current rising star KT Tunstall is also a former member. The Fence Collective have become a lighthouse in the fog of the music industry, a bastion of the D.I.Y. music-making ethic, and Fence Records is now a bustling cottage industry in its own right.

As for King Creosote, having put out over two dozen albums (yes, really) on limited release, Anderson decided it was time to step things up a gear in 2003 with his first properly distributed national release, 'Kenny and Beth's Musakal Boatrides', a fantastic collection including everything from drunken sea shanties to experimental drone-folk to feisty skiffle-pop, all imbued with Anderson's characteristic charm and easy-going demeanour. Accompanied by his Fence Collective chums, Anderson strummed his guitar, squeezed his accordion and sang like a heartbroken angel. Needless to say, the record met with universal acclaim.

After a host of side projects, collaborations, and some time off to organise two phenomenal Fence festivals in Anstruther, Anderson returned to King Creosote duties, releasing the home-recorded 'Rocket D.I.Y.' through Domino/Fence in Spring 2005, a record which built on the foundations of 'Kenny and Beth's...' while adding a newfound maturity of vision and poignant depth of songwriting to Anderson's arsenal.

And so to Autumn 2005, and the latest and greatest King Creosote release. Recorded in collaboration with Mancunian psychedelic minstrels The Earlies in their studio, and released on The Earlies' imprint of Names/679 Recordings, 'K.C. Rules OK' begins a whole new chapter of the King Creosote story, and promises to be a breakthrough record.

The album, preceded by the superb and diverse 'Favourite Girl' EP, expands the King Creosote musical palette further with horns, beats, strings and atmospherics, but is still at heart a collection of extraordinarily touching, funny, sad, poignant, heartbreaking and downright beautiful songs, nothing more than you'd expect from a man with as big a heart and as big a talent as Kenny Anderson. K.C. Rules OK? You bet your life he does.

Jeremy Warmsley

visit artist website

Jeremy Warmsley is a 22-year-old musician currently residing in London. He's literate, bespectacled, wears braces, and, certainly most relevantly of all, has written, performed and produced one of 2006's most intoxicating listens in debut album 'The Art Of Fiction'.

Recorded across desolate, wintry evenings from the ending days of 2005 through to the warmer midst of our present annum, 'TAOF' is a heady, venturing blitz of electronica-strewn, folk-belting soul. It marks the culmination of a young lifetime of assorted musical fiddling.

Ask him what music soundtracked his formative years, and the barrage of responses is predictably unpredictable (of the highlights, Paul Simon, Sam Cooke, Mozart and Beethoven). Ample travelling around at a young age with his Brit/French family, meddling with four-tracks, and a few years at Cambridge University (studying philosophy, since you ask) beckoned, as did the slow evolvement of music-making.

"I had always dabbled with making electronic music, but had never tried to do it seriously; I tried, and my friends hated it. Not everyone else did though, which was nice."

Hence where we are now – a blissful, transient state between deft, Bowie-sized epics such as 'I Knew Her Face Was A Lie', home-leaving, strings-bolstered anthems such as "Dirty Blue Jeans', the 'it-should-have-happened(-but-didn't... or-did-it?)' tragedy of '5 Verses', and intricate, laptop-bleeping remorse of 'If I Had Only'. But it's also about celebration and unification – the righteous thrill of learning what your bits are for in 'Modern Children' and the sensuality of the opposite sex ('I Believe In The Way You Move') – in other words, universality we can all nod heads to, whether embarrassedly or otherwise.

And the origins, other than Warmsley’s head and then fingers, for this produce? His own bedroom. Where else?

"What began out of necessity turned out to be a strength; recording at home allows me tremendous freedom and time to get everything just so.

So, 11 songs in hand, cataloguing Jeremy's ascent personally and professionally from keen student artist to Transgressive-signed, budding superstar in waiting... where next? Retelling bitter, adolescent beefs until your hair thins? Hardly.

"I'm looking forward to trying some much more stripped-down stuff on the next album, although I have some fairly complicated plans for a couple of the songs," reveals Jeremy, smiling coyly. "I actually already have most of my next two albums planned out. The first is going to be half pure pop, half high-concept; I have a whole story planned out that I'm going to tell in song form. All the songs are written; I can't wait to get back into the studio."

Suitably, we wait with baited, desperate breath for the next chapter.

Slowclub

http://www.myspace.com/slowclub

Date	Artist(s)	Venue	Tickets
Tue 3rd Oct 2006	King Creosote Jeremy Warmsley	An Tobar, Tobermory	An Tobar - 01688 302211 http://www.thebooth.co.uk/
Wed 4th Oct 2006	King Creosote Jeremy Warmsley	Lime Tree, Fort William	Fired Art - 01397 705005 http://www.thebooth.co.uk/
Thu 5th Oct 2006	King Creosote Jeremy Warmsley	Raigmore, Inverness	Raigmore Motel - 01463 221546 http://www.thebooth.co.uk/
Fri 6th Oct 2006	King Creosote Jeremy Warmsley	Woodlands Centre, Stornoway	An Lanntair Arts Centre - 01851 703307 http://www.thebooth.co.uk/
Sat 7th Oct 2006	King Creosote Jeremy Warmsley Slowclub	Loft, Forres	East Grange Loft - 01343 850078 http://www.thebooth.co.uk/
Sun 8th Oct 2006	King Creosote Slowclub	Fusion, Kirkwall, Orkney	Fusion - 01856 879489 http://www.thebooth.co.uk/