Olivia Chaney March 2019 UK Tour

Grammy-nominated singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist Olivia Chaney has announced a run of UK dates in March 2019 in support of her acclaimed album Shelter, released on Nonesuch Records in June last year and reviewed here.

Shelter is a series of teasingly enigmatic meditations leaving a distinct feeling that for all Olivia’s emotional candour there’s a persistent – albeit attractive – unknowability giving an added depth to her increasingly masterful songwriting. David Kidman, Folk Radio UK

As well as dates in Whitstable, London, Southampton, Cambridge, Bristol, Manchester and Belfast. The show at Southampton’s Turner Sims on March 8 falls on International Women’s Day and will feature a specially curated programme to include songs by Chaney’s favourite female songwriters. See full dates below.

Shelter is the follow up to Chaney’s 2015 Nonesuch debut The Longest River, and was produced by Thomas Bartlett (David Byrne, Magnetic Fields, Sufjan Stevens, The National, St. Vincent, Florence Welch, Father John Misty, et al.). The new album features eight original songs, including ‘IOU’ and ‘Roman Holiday’ (which she recently performed on Later…with Jools Holland, see below), along with Chaney’s interpretations of Henry Purcell’s ‘O Solitude’ and Frank Harford and Tex Ritter’s ‘Long Time Gone’, first recorded by the Everly Brothers.

Born in Florence, Italy, Chaney grew up in Oxford, England, in a household whose intellectual and artistic engagement was complemented by an expansive musical soundscape. This included Billie Holiday, Mozart operas, Sandy Denny, Prince, Tracy Chapman, Bert Jansch, Michael Jackson, and Joni Mitchell. She studied at London’s Royal Academy of Music, where she took in everything the conservatory had to offer. Her curiosity led her further afield, from Ligeti to West African pop, Edith Piaf to Laurie Anderson, Mary Margaret O’Hara to Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, Sonic Youth to Sappho, Kate Bush to old-time country music – all while finding her own voice.

The range of artists Chaney has shared a stage with includes Robert Plant, Zero 7, the Labeque Sisters, Martin and Eliza Carthy, and Kronos Quartet, with whom she also recorded two songs for the 2017 Nonesuch album Folk Songs. Also in 2017, she fronted a Grammy-nominated album, The Queen of Hearts, forming a new outfit, Offa Rex, with The Decemberists which we reviewed here.

Chaney is undoubtedly one of the freshest and most exciting talents of the British folk scene, but teamed up with The Decemberists might just mean this music goes mainstream… Peter Shaw, Folk Radio UK