John K. Samson will be touring the UK in May.

May 18th, 2017 – London, O2 Islington Academy
May 19th, 2017 – Manchester, Soup Kitchen
May 20th, 2017 – Brighton, The Great Escape

John ​has also recently released a new video for “Alpha Adept”, a song from his latest full-length album, Winter Wheat, which was released in October last year, on ANTI-. The video was made by John K. Samson’s good friend and musician/artist Shotgun Jimmie, who made the video for John as a present.

The double bill of James Leg from Texas and The Bonnevilles from Northern Ireland play:

TUE 9 MAY Manchester, Soup Kitchen
WED 10 MAY Leeds, The Brudenell Social Club
THU 11 MAY Newcastle, The Cluny
FRI 12 MAY Halifax, Arden Rd Social Club
SAT 13 MAY Brighton, Brighton Tattoo Convention
SUN 14 MAY Exeter, The Phoenix
TUE 16 MAY Ramsgate, Ramsgate Music Hall
WED 17 MAY London, Borderline
THU 18 MAY Southend, Railway Hotel
FRI 19 MAY Aldershot, West End Centre
FRI 19 MAY Norwich, NAC

Both acts are signed to Alive Records (Black Keys, Left Lane Cruiser, Two Gallants ) and will be touring new albums. James Leg’s album ‘Blood On His Keys’ is acclaimed as career highlight including a 4 star review in Mojo Magazine and album of the week on Mojo editor Phil Alexander’s Planet Rock Radio show.

Back in his days with the Heavies, Leg laid the foundation for his solo work with his down- n- dirty keys, fervent l ive performances and trademark gruff black snake moan. Following the success of his acclaimed 2015 solo album, Below The Belt, Leg recorded once again at the Masonic Sounds located in a Masonic Lodge in Dayton, KY, and had the album mixed by renowned producer/engineer Jason Soda ( GospelbeacH, Everest) at SodaCuts in East LA.

Leg, the son of a Texas preacher, started playing piano when he was just six. Raised on southern gospel music, he began preaching at the church his father pastored at the age of 14. Two years later he became infected with the lure of rock- n- roll and eventually alcohol and drugs. It was this contrast of good & evil, heaven & hell that would affect not only his music -solo and otherwise – but also his impassioned l ive performances evoking some sort of fervid snake-handling Pentecostal preacher in the middle of a lung- busting, jugular- popping sermon ( just replace the slippery vermin with a fifth of whiskey and Leg pounding on his signature Fender Rhodes and you get the picture).

The Bonnevilles

The Bonnevilles are shaking Northern Ireland in a way it hasn’t felt since Van Morrison & Them obliterated Club Rado in 1964 and Stiff Little Fingers blew apart The Trident in 1977! The Bonnevilles don’t so much play punk blues as use it as a spring board to create a completely new genre. Their new album “Arrow Pierce My Heart” is evidence of a band at the top of their game. The Lurgan duo take Mississippi Hill Blues and Punk Rock and mix into their own unique dark Northern Irish Punk Blues stew.

Lead singer and guitarist Andrew McGibbon Jr had this to say to the Huffington Post when they exclusively previewed & streamed “Arrow Pierce My Heart”….

“We decided to write a love album, hence the title Arrow Pierce My Heart, but we aren’t balladeers so it ended up littered with our usual topics—death, rising from the dead, murders, drinking, drugs, sex, revenge and more revenge, but that’s ok.

Because we’re Irish, which isn’t so much a race of people as it is a death cult, we deal with this stuff so you don’t have to and our idea of love is a dark love not the sickly sweet kind. Not so much roses and kittens but whiskey and shame, and that too is ok. We take our responsibility as the conduits of the Gods very seriously. The human experience is about sinning and failing; that’s where the acid is and that’s what we try to write about.”

“Arrow Pierce My Heart” is out now released on Alive Natural Sounds

Aidan Razzall says “This video stands in stark simplicity. We sought to achieve the exact opposite from our previous video for ‘Valley of Vision’, which was a more cinematic and dramatic story. Taking inspiration from the K Foundations ‘Burn A Million Quid’, we burned an effigy of our debut album cover in unadorned surroundings. As they burnt a million pounds in cash to spark debate on worth of currency, we visualised the Phantom video with an element of catharsis. Our record ‘Swarmculture’ is a polished example of time, effort and passion, and to see its physical form brought down to ash and dust over the course of two and half minutes serves to deliver it into the world.

You could draw references to iconoclasm, but it’s far more simple than that- the cuts between the wasteland backdrop and the cover being engulfed in flames echoes the structure of the track. As each chorus comes in, the burn becomes more severe until nothing but scraps are left. ‘Phantom’ is probably the poppiest and most colourful track we’ve written, so it was a conscious decision to create a tension in the video between the psychedelic sonic world and the stark, brutal visual one.”

You can read our review of ‘SWARMCULURE’ and the go get it on pre-order at http://ilovealcopop.awesomedistro.com/bands/weirds – including a very limited edition WEIRDS custom leather jacket package.

WEIRDS saw a flurry of interest recently after their Facebook page was bizarrely hacked and transformed to a viral videos page. After each member received a notification that they had been removed as admins from the band page, they reached out to Facebook to begin the long winded process of restoring the page. When it was eventually resurrected, their online following had exploded from around 3K Likes to over 100K Likes. However this was short-lived, as the page was hacked a second time last week and WEIRDS have been unable to regain control since, forcing them to create a new page entirely.

Aidan commented “This shows a darker side to the way we all use social media today. As soon as you make a Facebook account you sign away your power to a huge corporation, and when that relationship is compromised, it can be devastating for small, independent artists like us. Bands, businesses, artists, filmmakers, whatever, rely on social media as the main port of call for new fans. We live in a time where, particularly in music, your Facebook page is sadly an indicator of your success to people that haven’t heard of you before, which makes it an inescapable necessity. Even though the hack hadn’t affected our day to day lives- we were still playing shows and doing what we do, it felt like the reputation and following we had cultivated online, which is what everyone is so dependent on, had been lost. On a serious note, it was weird how depressing the situation actually was. It was like a really mundane episode of Black Mirror set in a van on the M1. Unfortunately, it felt to us like there could be one day in the world where everyone’s online existence was compromised, and everyone would re-evaluate how dependent we’ve become on social media platforms. It’s made us definitely reflect on how we use social media for the band.”

Fresh from performing at last weekend’s Live At Leeds festival and their recent support to The Wytches and VANT, WEIRDS are now gearing up to perform at The Great Escape, and will then embark on a June UK headline tour. The band will also perform at Camden Rocks, 2000 Trees, Truck and LeeFest festivals, with more to be announced. With unrelenting, full-throttled live shows at their core, 2017 will see the band push each performance to its limit.

Armed with a phenomenal debut record and a plethora of live dates, WEIRDS are hungrier than ever and set to infest the UK.

Upcoming dates

18-20 May – The Great Escape, Brighton
31 May – Gullivers, Manchester
01 Jun – Full Moon Club, Cardiff
03 Jun – Camden Rocks Festival, London
04 Jun – Crofters Rights, Bristol
06 Jun – The Cookie, Leicester
07 Jun – Brudenell Social, Leeds
08 Jun – Broadcast, Glasgow
09 Jun – Cluny 2, Newcastle
12 Jun – Polar Bear, Hull
06-08 Jul – 2000 Trees Festival, Upcote Farm
21-23 Jul – Truck Festival, Oxfordshire
10-12 Aug – LeeFest, Tunbridge Wells

Producer and bass player Chris Clarke says outright it’s the best record the band has come up with so far while for Danny it’s:

“a bit like taking a peek into somebody’s house, there’s great stuff that immediately grabs your attention and then there’s other stuff and you start out thinking it might be a bit mundane, but as the whole picture takes shape it proves to be incredibly beautiful”

That’s typical Danny Wilson a brave stab at modesty but far too honest to sell himself short. He and his band are already much loved for their whole-hearted openness their democracy and their sheer joy in what they do. They’re going to be loved too for this record. Very soon Brilliant Light will be the soundtrack to an awful lot of people’s lives and that is no small achievement.

The band have also released ‘Swift Street’ from the album.

‘Swift Street’ is deeply personal to Danny George Wilson who co-wrote the song with Polly Paulusma and Carra Bacon.Inspired by three family photographs Swift Street in Melbourne Australia is where Danny’s mother grew up and where in childhood he stayed with his grandparents. The song is near-Proustian in its recall of smells and tastes of past days.

He’s allowed both himself and his band the absolute freedom to explore experiment and collaborate – and they’ve grabbed it with both hands.Hidden away somewhere in this diverse collection you’ll find the question “can we release ourselves back into the brilliant light?”. For Danny the brilliant light is creativity, but more than that it’s collaborative creativity, and the process of birthing these songs, both by design and then serendipity, has been to maximise the creative potential of all The Champs.

DANNY & THE CHAMPIONS OF THE WORLD + Special Guests WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR: SEPTEMBER 2017 TOUR

12 – LEEDS Brudenell
13 – NOTTINGHAM Maze
14 – SHEFFIELD Plug
15 – MANCHESTER Soup Kitchen
16 – GATESHEAD Caedmon Hall
18 – BRISTOL Lantern
19 – CAMBRIDGE Junction 2
20 – LONDON Scala
21 – CARDIFF Globe
22 – OXFORD Bullingdon
23 – TUNBRIDGE WELLS Forum

PRE-ORDER NEW ALBUM ‘BRILLIANT LIGHT’ – OUT 23 JUNE
http://smarturl.it/brilliantlight

FOR MORE INFORMATION

Website: http://www.dannyandthechamps.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/dannyandthechamps