Smoke Fairies

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THURSDAY 20 JANUARY 2011
ALTERNATIVE FOLK-ROCK AMERICANA DUO SMOKE FAIRIES SET FOR GLEE CLUB NOTTINGHAM DATE

"Frankly the best thing I have heard in years" - Richard Hawley

When the calibre of Jack White and Richard Hawley are entranced, you know this isn’t fairy-tale, but the absolute truth.

At school in rural, restrained England during the mid-‘90s, best mates Katherine Blamire and Jessica Davies prayed they’d one day escape their home town of Chicester, Sussex and dive headlong into the landscape and myth of America, the promised land of their dreams. And more crucially, they’d be making music rather than some conformist career choice.

Little did they know that by 2010, they’d have lived in New Orleans and Vancouver, recorded with 21st century Yankee icon Jack White and toured across continents. And now they’re releasing a debut album - 'Through Low Light and Trees' - that fulfils the promise of their earlier singles. Smoke Fairies are an exquisitely shivery blend of English alternative folk-rock and a more humid, bluesy brand of Americana. In other words, equal parts home and away, reflecting who they are and what they’ve seen, and sounding both eerily ancient and thrillingly modern. It’s a perfectly balanced record; two friends who specialise in interlocking harmonies and guitar parts that shape their spectral melodies. “Instead of learning how to sing or play individually in a conventional way, we’ve learnt by bouncing off each other, and working out how to fit in with each other,” says Katherine. “It’s a connection we wouldn’t have found anywhere else.”

That connection began in the school choir, and after discovering guitars stashed in cupboards at their respective family homes. Jessica’s mum owned a ton of vinyl albums, dominated by American ‘70s classics, which energised two 13-year olds seeking alternatives to Sussex and Britpop on the radio. “The first time I heard ‘Teach Your Children’ by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, when those harmonies kicked in, there was nothing else like it,” Katherine grins. “Those old records sounded so otherworldly. Playing our own music seemed to be the way to become part of it all.”

Their first songs were “pretty mad, with really shouty choruses,” says Jessica. “They were all about escaping, and being frustrated,” adds Katherine. Prayers were answered by circumstance taking them to New Orleans for a year, studying American history. “That’s when we started filling out the sound a bit more,” Katherine continues. “But it was more the atmosphere of the place than any direct musical influence.”

After returning to England the pair went straight to the Sidmouth Folk Festival and discovered, “all this amazing English folk, people sticking their finger in their ear and singing these ancient songs,” Jessica recalls. “That was another turning point. Sometimes the way you find out who you are is by first leaving it behind.”

Not that Smoke Fairies are trad folk types, far from it; they’re simply adapting folk to their own unique ends. “It makes us feel good that we’re drawing on common ground, a foundation that all folk music seems to draw on, in that we might share the same influences as Sandy Denny for example rather than being influenced by her directly,” says Katherine.

From the start, Smoke Fairies had ‘heart-wrenching’ down pat; how else to explain Jack White’s immediate conversion? He produced a single for his Third Man label at his Nashville studio. ‘Gastown’ (the morning-after response to a particularly bacchanalian night in Vancouver) and ‘River Song’ became their fourth 7” released in December 2009. In typical White fashion, the session only lasted 36 hours; he also drummed and played, “a mad guitar solo” on ‘River Song’ with his Raconteurs/ Dead Weather pal Jack Lawrence on bass.

Jessica says: “We knew; how else would we ever get the chance to record with Jack? So we let whatever ideas he had seep into the record rather than be precious about it being our own thing. We got the essence of live recording from Jack, and took it into the album sessions.”

Smoke Fairies’ own fairytale continues to unfold. Having toured with Richard Hawley across Britain late last year and then being heralded as one of the bands to see at this years SXSW festival, they then headed off to the states to support Laura Marling for a month and recently released Ghosts: A Compilation of A-Sides, B-Sides and an EP from the Recent Past exclusively for the US market. Most recently Jessica and Katherine added supernatural, angelic backing vocals to Richard Hawley’s current EP False Lights From The Land.

Doors: 7.30pm
Venue: The Glee Club, British Waterways Building, Castle Wharf, Canal Street, NG1 7EH
Box Office: 0871 472 0400 www.glee.co.uk
Admission: £7.00 advance online / £7.00 advance phone

For any further enquiries please contact alex@glee.co.uk / 0871 472 0400