Celtic Connections, Ireland Debut, Turbulent Flights and Radio Delights..

 

Despite being extremely cold, wet and VERY windy 2014 kicked off with a great run of live shows for Z&P. We're were honoured to be included in the incredible line up for Scotlands annual 'Celtic Connections' Festival held in and around the best venues and concert Halls in Glasgow. The first up was CC's 'Roaming Roots Revue', This year (to our utter delight) the theme was 'California Dreaming' a night of music celebrating the Laurel Canyon sounds of the late 60's/early 70's. The show was curated and led by Scottish Legends 'Roddy Hart and The Lonesome Fire' and was held at The Glasgow Royal Concert Hall. The audience were treated to performances from Dawes, Cory Chisel, Lindi Ortega, The Webb Sisters, Roddy Woomble, Siobhan Wilson, Lau, Rod Jones and Zervas & Pepper. We spent the night at the side of the stage taking in the show, And as you can imagine, we had an absolute blast! A dream gig for us! It was so great to hear the music of James Taylor, Joni Mitchell, Judee Sill, Warren Zevon, The Bryds, Eagles, Neil Young, Linda Ronstadt, Crosby,Stills and Nash, Little Feat played out by such incredible players. We performed an acoustic medley of Joni's 'Woodstock' and CSNY's '4+20', Our own 'Ghost Dancer' and joined the band for versions of 'Eagles' Take it Easy' and Stephen Still's 'Love the one you're with'. The vibe backstage was electric and we can't thank Roddy and the crew enough for bringing us on board for the show. Check out the great poster for the night below.

Here's a Review of the night: Celtic Cennections- Roaming Roots Revue- California Dreaming

 

 

Next we boarded a very small prop plane (on a very windy morn) and headed over to Ireland for our debut live shows on the 'Emerald Isle', it was white knuckles all round as we landed in Dublin, But the warmest of Irish welcomes soon had us forget the wobbly journey kicking off with a Live Radio session with RTE's John Murray Show, a great intimate acoustic show in Galways 'Roisin Dubh', A session for Bray's 'East Coast Radio' and finally finishing up in Dublin's 'Sugar Club' where we met and performed for so many great new listeners.

A big thanks to RTE 1 who playlisted two singles from Lifebringer and cited the album as their 'Album of the week'. We very much hope to head back to Ireland later in the year for more shows.

Back on the wobbly prop to Scotland for more Celtic Connections dates, Next up we went live From the CCA on Glasgow's Sauciehall Street and joined 'My Darlin Clemintine', 'Blue Rose Code' and Aoife O'Donovan for an 'in the round' session for BBC Scotland's Ricky Ross's 'Another Country' Show. This was an excellent 'Songwriters Circle' type performance broadcast live in front of a studio audience. Check out pics here: BBC Gallery

Then on to a headline show at Edinburghs 'Voodoo Rooms', The excellent Adam Holmes opened up the night and set the tone for a great gig. Big thanks to all that came along, big shout out all who travelled to be there!

We then travelled back to Glasgow on another horrendous flight (plane blown around like a leaf in the wind, Terror only lightened by a certain star of 'Cracker'sat next to us providing quips as everyone including the staff hung on for dear life!)  for Mark Radcliffe's BBC Radio 2 Folk Show 'Live from Celtic Connections'. We were joined on stage by folk legends Seth Lakeman, Lisbee Stainton and Rab Noakes for another 'Live in the round' performance. Catch the show here .Sadly the day of the show it was announced that legendary Folk pioneer Pete Seeger had passed away, we all felt it would a nice idea to collaborate on and celebrate Petes contribution to popular music with a song he help to popularise.... Listen Here The night ended with an epic CC mash up in the hotel bar witnessing some of the UK's finest folk artists doing their thing in spectacular fashion! We haven't enough good things to say about this festival, If you haven't been yet.... Get your tickets in for 2015!

Our last show for Celtic Connections was at the beautiful Oran Mor in Glasgow supporting Kevin McDermot and Robbie McIntosh to a sold out crowd. Local Legend Kevin had the audience singing along all night whilst Robbie Mcintosh played some of the tastiest electric guitar we've ever heard! (He's also a axeman for Paul McCartney and John Mayer...Gulp!) A great night and a big thanks to the guys for having us on board. After the show we headed back to London on the rickety Caledonian sleeper train to meet the band (Orient express it ain't!).

Finishing a busy run of dates and with the onset of a bad cold for Paul, were two full-band line up shows at 'The Lexington' London and 'The Glee Club' in Cardiff. Here's some reviews of the shows The Lexington  The Glee Club , Again we're blown away by how many of you travelled to join us for these gigs, many of you went out of your way to catch these performances and we massively appreiciate it!

We're now currently writing material and preparing to record our next album release... We'll keep you all posted with any shows/events as they come in via our mailing list.. Sign Up Here..  and thanks for dropping by :-)

Z&P