Acclaimed Boston-based, Brooklyn-born singer-songwriter Kris Delmhorst has been making a number of milestones recently. Last year she released Blood Test, this was her first collection of original material in six years. We’re pleased to say that on top of this she has announced an April 2015 UK Tour, her first UK dates since 2008 which sees her following closely behind husband Jeffrey Focault’s recent tour which was also very well received and covered on FRUK. Here she is performing the title track her album live with Anders Parker, our Song of the Day:
In his review of Blood Test on Folk Radio UK Mike concluded his review calling the album “A mature, sophisticated album that you grow into and further confirmation of her enduring quality.” The album marked a moment of reckoning and centring in the songwriter’s life, and in society as a whole. Talking about the album she said “It’s not a record about becoming a parent by any stretch…only a few songs reference it even barely…but it’s an inescapable ingredient of where I’m writing from. Having a child affords a dramatically new view of yourself and your place – in your life, your family, with friends and surroundings. I don’t know how that perspective doesn’t inform any creative person’s work once they have it.”
As a Brooklyn native who for the past 20 years has called Massachusetts home, recording Blood Test in the middle of her old stomping grounds had a profound effect on Delmhorst. “I was getting coffee at the deli I used to go to in high school, then walking to the studio”, she says. “It was a kind of vertigo feeling to be working there, a little dizzying, but also really satisfying; it somehow completed the circle.” And while her New York upbringing is on full display on the album (see ‘92nd St’ for an obvious example), so is her current life in the hills of western Massachusetts with husband and fellow songwriter Jeffrey Foucault and their young daughter.
For all the big questions that Blood Test asks, it offers this conclusion: That everything we have done and seen and been and felt has led to this day. Who we are now. In this moment.That we have arrived. And we are right on time.
Don’t miss this rare opportunity to see Kris live:
Tour Dates
APRIL
09 – Menai Bridge, Anglesey, The Victoria Hotel
10 – Barton-upon-Humber, The Ropewalk
11 – Newcastle, The Studio in Live Theatre
12 – Kilbarchan, nr. Paisley, Kilbarchan Performing Arts Centre
13 – Edinburgh, The Voodoo Rooms
14 – High Wycombe, Private House Concert
15 – Lewes, The Con Club
16 – Plymouth, The B-Bar
17 – Torquay, The Crown & Sceptre
18 – Havant, Hants., Langstone Sailing Club
19 – London, Green Note
