Martin Simpson’s last album ‘Purpose and Grace’ was released in 2011 to great critical acclaim (read our review) which placed him at the top of his game. The songs from the album have been a big hit with fans and have been a welcome addtion to his setlist whilst touring.
Hard to believe but 2013 will see Martin celebrating his 60th year with some major festival appearances and the launch of his new album ‘Vagrant Stanzas‘, which will be released this summer by Topic Records. The album will be launched at Cambridge Folk Festival this year and will be toured extensively as part of an autumn tour: beginning in early September and finishing on 8th December those dates will be announced soon.
And, if you’re a Tom Waits fan then you’ll want to catch the Bright Phoebus tribute, a Sheffield based folk collective based that includes Martin as well as Jon Boden, Roy Bailey, Sam Sweeney, Fay Hield, James Fagan and Nancy Kerr – they will be performing their tribute at this year’s Shrewsbury Folk Festival.
Earlier this year Martin also collaborated with Arieb Azhar, a singer and guitarist from Pakistan as a result of a partnership between the British Council and The Sage Gateshead. By all accounts the performance is quite something with Martin’s banjo taking on a sitar-like quality against the richness of Arieb’s voice. Whilst we couldn’t bring you a video of that we did come across this interview Martin did for ABC Radio in Australia in which he performs one of my personal favourites and talks about the ‘folk boom’ and other entertaining things…you’ll see:
For the latest news and gig dates head to: www.martinsimpson.com