Bill Wells has conjured up a deliberately misleading title for his latest project: The National Jazz Trio Of Scotland. Audiences who have not read the press relase may well be surprised to fins that the band is neither jazz or a trio, although it is at least partly Scottish. The band consists of Wells on samples, with a trio of female vocalists: Aby Vulliamy, Kate Sugden and Lorna Gilfedder. Onstage, Aby plays viola, Kate marimba and other potential live players include Teenage Fanclub guitarist Norman Blake and Babe vocalist Gerard Black.
The press release which includes an interview with Guardian journalist Mike Barnes suggests that the group’s name may be ‘Wells’ droll way of blowing a raspberry at the Scottish jazz establishment he feels has overlooked him in the past…whilst some may think that such a deliberately misrepresentative group name could prove a problem he begs to differ:
“I think in the short term it’s making life a bit harder, but hopefully in the long term it will make it stand out.”
The new album Standards Vol.III is released on 7 July 2014 on Karaoke Kalk. What came as an extra pleasant surprise with this release is that Marry Waterson has made an animated video for the song Word Is Like an Egg AKA Surprising Word. Anyone that follows Folk Radio UK will have seen Marry’s work before which included a beautiful video for one of Lal Waterson‘s (Marry’s mum) previously unreleased songs, ‘Piper’s Way’.
The following video involved some painstaking work with stop motion paper cutout animation that unfolds upon a book, it’s full of inventiveness.
The National Jazz Trio Of Scotland are performing Live on 28.06.2014 at Glasgow’s Glad Cafe