This will be the 4th visit to the Maze for Sam in as many years and a very welcome one it is too. With his unique delivery of heart-felt stories and a stage presence to match this is one for the scrapbook of the most memorable Cosmic shows.

“Absolutely fantastic reaction to the Sam Baker track I played last Saturday. He is a major artist. . 'Pretty World‘ is magnificent - one of the great albums of the year." Bob Harris.

Since the 2004 release of his debut CD ‘Mercy’, word of Baker's songs has slowly, but surely spun it’s way around the world. Late in 2007 Baker returned with the second part of the story, the self released album ‘Pretty World”. Co-produced by fellow Texan and songwriter Walt Wilkins, the new songs reflect a life lived well and nearly lost.

Austin producer/songwriter Gurf Morlix said of ‘Mercy’, “It's the best writing I've come across since Mary Gauthier.” The UK's Maverick Magazine awarded the album five stars and writers that have discovered this raw talent often compare him to fellow Texans Townes Van Zandt and Guy Clark.

Sam's songs are pictures sketched in short; spare lines and lay bare the honest truths and simple details of life. Last year he released the third album of his trilogy entitled ‘Cotton’, again to rapturous reviews. Concluding the ‘Pretty World’ trilogy, which commenced five years ago with previous album 'Mercy' followed by 'Pretty World', 'Cotton' is Baker's third album. It finalises the journey he’s been through since the terrorist attack on the train in Peru which nearly killed him. It was number 1 in the Euro Americana chart of September 2009 and number 12 of the top 50 albums of 2009 in the No Depression reader’s poll.

www.myspace.com/sambakermusic
sambakermusic.com/

"Justin Rutledge has written a debut album that recalls all the best spine tingling, emotionally sucker-punching moments of Ryan Adams' 'Heartbreaker'." - Paul McNamee, New Music Express (UK)

Signed to Six Shooter Records, Justin Rutledge’s albums garner impressive amounts of critical acclaim. Between his debut, No Never Alone (2005), his sophomore release, The Devil On A Bench In Stanley Park (2006) and third album, Man Descending (2008), Rutledge has earned a Juno nomination, a Galaxy Rising Star award, countless year-end critics’ picks, the title of Toronto’s Best Local Songwriter (NOW Magazine), a spot on the 2008 Polaris Prize Long List and a Canadian Folk Music Award nomination. Justin has shared the stage with artists such as Blue Rodeo, Dolly Parton, Martha Wainwright and Great Lake Swimmers.

Justin Rutledge returns with The Early Widows, a stoic collection of songs that rehabilitate the heart and illuminate the dark. Produced with intense fragility by Hawksley Workman, Rutledge’s fourth album is an arrestingly moving and lyrically meticulous piece of art penned by one of the most progressive songwriters at work today. Shouldering an electric guitar instead of his trademark acoustic, Rutledge infuses the new material with a newfound conviction and drive. The Early Widows also includes songs co-written with literary giant Michael Ondaatje, and award-winning songwriter Darrell Scott from Nashville.

"The songs circle the evanescence of experience, the details of which pile up in the songs like litter at the end of a windy alley..it’s lovely." - Independent on Sunday (UK)

Amelia Curran is a seeker. Nearly a decade ago she left St. John's for Halifax, but still pines for Newfoundland every single day. With a number of East Coast Music Award nominations and an extensive discography, including: War Brides (2006), Lullaby for Barflies (2002), Trip Down Little Road (2001), and Barricade (2000), Curran knew it was finally time to make a record at home.

Over the past two years she recorded with Don Ellis in various caverns in St. John's, the city of legends, from the abandoned CBC building on Duckworth Street to an old farm house on the fringes of town. For Curran St. John's captures the essence of her inner huntress. A songwriter by trade, but a writer at heart, Curran believes language is everything. She describes the craft of song-writing as an act of "expressing the inexpressible, a means of describing the indescribable."

www.myspace.com/justinrutledge
www.myspace.com/ameliacurran

"The American roots music motherlode just keeps producing treasure, none more winsome and exciting than this quartet. Furnace Mountain sound like a marriage between Be-Good Tanyas and the best bits of Nickel Creek - except with true Appalachian soil caked onto their boots".

The music of Furnace Mountain is at times lively and raucous, with spirited fiddle melodies weaving in and around the powerful rhythms of the bass and bouzouki. It is at other times poignant and poetic, with sublime vocal harmonies beautifully interpreting some of the oldest songs ever written. Furnace Mountain also performs a variety of original compositions, such as Scrampwang, Weezer's Dream, and the ever popular Spuds.

Furnace Mountain’s FIELDS OF FESCUE album (their fourth), established the band as one of the hottest on the circuit following its release at the end of 2009, and won them legions of new fans on this side of the Atlantic. Bob Harris played tracks from the album week after week describing the band as “wonderful” and saying the CD was "gorgeous". Meanwhile, BBC Radio 2's Mark Lammar kept the praise coming after featuring some tracks.

Get set to have a great night in the company of this truly great band from the Southern Appalachians.

"RAINA ROSE Rose’s new disc, End of Endless False Starts, features some fine acoustic-guitar picking from this Austin-based artist and, with its rootsy undercurrent, will certainly perk the ears of folk-pop enthusiasts. But its collection of musical novellas is really what sets this album apart from Rose’s singer-songwriter contemporaries, as these 12 stories enrapture the listener from first play." - PERFORMING SONGWRITER MAGAZINE.

www.myspace.com/furnacemountainband
www.myspace.com/rainarose

"Sometimes as darkly damaged as Lucinda Williams, at others as defiant and teasing as prime Peggy Lee and always authentically Americana in the Gillian Welch tradition....She's mighty good"

Boise-born and Boston-based, Jewell has quickly distinguished herself as one of the rising stars of a new generation of roots musicians. Her first two albums, 'Boundary County' (self-released in 2006) and 'Letters from Sinners and Strangers' (Signature Sounds, 2007) were astonishingly assured efforts, which matched Jewell's understated yet insightful songs with a rugged blend of Americana styles. They were met with a great deal of acclaim, with No Depression raving that Jewell is showing she can wander with the best of them, and write riveting song-stories about her adventures along the way. Indicative of Jewell’s strong following in Europe, The Word in the UK described her as A voice of real distinction [that] manages to transcend some powerful influences and pierce the fog long enough for her own point of view to emerge. On those albums, she reflects, people told me they heard folk, country, western swing, rockabilly, and even jazz but a part of my roots has been left out up until now.

Last year Signature Sounds released Eilen Jewell’s third album, Sea of Tears, a recording that fills in a vital, hitherto missing element of her musical persona. Before I discovered Woody Guthrie and folk music, she explains, I was listening to Elvis Presley, Buddy Holly, and, later on, the Animals and the Kinks. I love that stuff, and I love to play it With 'Sea of Tears', Jewell and her longtime band of Jason Beek (drums, harmony vocals), Jerry Miller (electric, acoustic, and steel guitars), and Johnny Sciascia (upright bass) wed her elegantly unflinching songwriting with a rustic, pre-Beatles swagger that encapsulates vintage R&B, Midwestern garage rock, Chicago blues, and early rock and rockabilly, while maintaining the haunting, folk-inspired purity that first made her an artist to watch.

The band are currently working on a side project called Butcher Holler, and are due to release an album of Loretta Lynn covers in July 2010.

DAVID LUTES - 2010 Texas Music Award Winner - The Founder's Award for Artistic Excellence AND 2010 Austin Music Awards Honoree - Top-10 Folk and Roots Rock Artist

www.myspace.com/eilenjewell
www.davidlutesmusic.com

“The band has that ragged blues-meets-country-rock groove down cold, with plenty of slashing guitar work and a rhythm section that could pulverize concrete. They come charging out of the gate with attitude and energy to spare and a relentless mid-tempo thump that never lets up.” —Harp Magazine

It may be a surprise to hear the country rock sounds of Detroits Deadstring Brothers coming from a city better known for loud rock and roll, but disillusionment can take many channels. Desolation, frustration and regret have always been present where great country music was played, and from its bombed-out inner city to its sterile suburbs, Detroit has its share.

Deadstring Brothers began in fall 2003. Since then, the band has worked to develop their own take on the American Sound, drawing influences from a variety of sources. Its all in there somehow, declares Kurt, but blues and country music just feel the most natural.

Not unlike Exile-era Stones, Deadstring Brothers deliver a menacing sound that draws equally on the melancholy of country ballads and the abandon of rock and blues. The bands music is deeply rooted in the storytelling and instrumental traditions of Hank Williams, Johnny Cash, and the American Outlaw Movement, but is also informed by the song structure and understated aggression commonly associated with Detroit bands. Their haunting melodies reveal the influence of early 70s rock icons like The Band and Gram Parsons and The Faces. Deadstring Brothers live performances have the energy of guitar rock, but sophisticated arrangements, Hammond Organ and a focus on traditional American music separate them from many of their Detroit contemporaries.

Led by guitarist/vocalist Kurt Marschke, these Detroit blues-rockers are touring in support of their recent album São Paolo, putting the Black Crowes and others of that ilk to shame for even trying.

www.myspace.com/deadstringbrothers

Born Robert Noonan in Buffalo, New York, Willie Nile studied philosophy at the University of Buffalo before heading for Greenwich Village, determined to make a name for himself as a latter-day troubadour. That he did throughout the ’70s, becoming a fixture in the Village folk and rock scenes and getting tabbed as the next big thing to come out of that long-thriving artistic community. Writing in The New York Times, the great rock critic Robert Palmer called him “one of the most gifted singer-songwriters to emerge from the New York scene in years.”

He made his recording debut in 1980 with his acclaimed self-titled LP on Arista Records, following it a year later with Golden Down. He also opened the Who’s North American tour at the personal request of the band. In 1982, he signed to Geffen Records but got caught in record-biz limbo and didn’t manage to release another record until 1991, when Columbia issued Places I Have Never Been. With the EP Hard Times in America in 1992, which became a cult favorite throughout Europe, Nile finally managed to jump off the major-label hamster wheel. Gathering together his resources over time, he managed to put out his first self-released album, Beautiful Wreck of the World in 1999. In 2006, Nile released Streets of New York, which some consider to be his best work. House Of A Thousand Guitars is Willie Nile’s latest release.

Nile is a songwriters’ songwriter. No less a personage than Lucinda Williams has said of him, “Willie Nile is a great artist. If there was any justice in this world, I’d be opening up for him instead of him for me.” And he’s never been more eloquent than he is here. Lou Reed hails Streets of New York as “a great album,” while Graham Parker calls it “a real gem—stirring melodies, passionate vocals, intriguing lyrics…every track a winner.” Says Ian Hunter, “Willie’s from the big-hearted downtown alleyways of NYC (New York commitment). Well done!” Little Steven adds, “Willie Nile is so good I can’t believe he’s not from New Jersey!”

On September 30, 2009, at his show at Giants Stadium in E. Rutherford, NJ, Bruce Springsteen invited Nile on stage to play with the E Street Band.

www.myspace.com/willienile
www.myspace.com/mickykempband

Once again it is a pleasure for us to have Eric play the Maze. A real favourite of ours and a highly gifted singer songwriter – a true original.

“ Eric Taylor....a very gifted songwriter. It was a high point for me performing ‘Strong Enough For Two’ with him at the Newport Folk Festival. Hope to work more with him” Joan Baez

Eric Taylor is a sage musician, a lyrical genius and a master of the guitar. If you're familiar with the intricate Texas singer/ songwriter jigsaw puzzle, you probably already know a lot about Taylor. If you're not familiar with Taylor by name, you've probably heard his songs performed by people such as Nanci Griffith and Lyle Lovett. He has created a multitude of fans and devotees that are legends themselves in the singer/songwriter realm, artists who have long considered Taylor to be a teacher and a lantern bearer whose time is long overdue.

"To say that Eric Taylor is one of the finest writers of our time, would be an understatement," Nanci Griffith says. "If you miss an opportunity to hear Eric Taylor, you have missed a chance to hear a voice I consider the William Faulkner of songwriting in our current time." Griffith has recorded several of Taylor's songs, including "Deadwood," "Storms," "Dollar Matinee" and "Ghost in the Music," which they wrote together. Lyle Lovett, who recorded Taylor's "Memphis Midnight/Memphis Morning," and with whom Taylor co-wrote the immensely popular "Fat Babies," compares Taylor's narrative voice to that of Bruce Springsteen. Iain Matthews claims, "Once you become a Taylor fanatic, it gives one immense joy and pride to be able to enlighten others to the man's work."

www.bluerubymusic.com/
www.myspace.com/alexkirbyalex

Beloved East Vancouver alt folk trio The Be Good Tanyas have achieved cult status since their inception in the late 90's. With classic albums Blue Horse, Chinatown and Hello Love. One of the defining features of acclaimed trio The Be Good Tanyas has always been Frazey Ford's distinctive vocals.

Frazey Ford is a soul well travelled. Best known throughout the last 10 years as a member of The Be Good Tanyas, Ford is now ready to tell her own story with a solo album she describes as being “moved by motherhood, earth and land.” Obadiah is a collection of songs hand-carved by the hardships and exaltations of life, and stained with the rich colours of soul and folk music that fuelled artists like Joni Mitchell, Ann Peebles, Neil Young, and Donny Hathaway.

A true storyteller with a voice that defies comparison, Ford’s greatest talent is her ability to inhabit completely the mind of her song’s protagonists. In many ways Ford’s journey is just beginning, after a period of stillness, here is the sound of Ford finding herself once again.

www.myspace.com/frazeyford

Please note this show will be at: THE GLEE CLUB Waterways Building, Castle Wharf Canal Street. Nottingham, NG1 7EH. Phone: 0871 472 0400. Email: Website: www.glee.co.uk Tickets available from the venue website and also online at www.alt-tickets.co.uk and www.wegottickets.com

Imagine, if you will, a cross between Marvin Gaye and James Taylor; Smokey Robinson and Paul Simon; Sly and the Family Stone and Neil Young. Okay, got it? You're halfway towards getting a feel towards the gorgeous and painful, yet warm, country-soul sound of The Duke & The King. They've released one of last year's best albums with their debut Nothing Gold Can Stay (recorded in a cabin in the Catskill Mountains of New York State) and are utterly devastating live. - Q Magazine

Following on from last years sell out show with the band and Simone’s solo acoustic show at the Maze (also sold out) here is another opportunity to catch this amazing band. This time they are out in support of the release of the new record, ‘Long Live the Duke and the King’ out 27Th September 2010. If you have failed to see the band the past few times then I suggest you get your tickets in advance this time around. The show will be at a new Nottingham venue (see above) with a greater capacity than the Maze, however with the press interest in the new record and the fact they are quite simply an amazing band with an incredible live presence I strongly advice you NOT to miss this one.

The Duke & The King are a glam-soul-folk quartet from New York featuring Simone Felice, Bobbie Bird Burke, Simi Stone and Nowell Haskins. Named after the travelling Shakespeare Hustlers in Mark Twain's 'The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn' these curious blood-brothers (and sweet sister) have found a home together, a travelling church of harmony and sin where its OK to French kiss your cousin and all strays are welcome to come out of the cold and sing along to songs of love, loss, pathos and hope.

www.myspace.com/dukeandtheking

One of last year’s favourites at the Maze, it’s great to have these extremely talented guys back. If you need convincing then don’t take my word for it speak to someone who was at the show last time as nobody left that night disappointed!

"On Saturday evening, the band set the main stage tent on its head and had the crowd screaming for more. As word of Headwater’s stunning musical prowess spread like wildfire throughout the festival grounds, it was standing room only and folks out the door for the band’s Sunday afternoon acoustic set. “So how much time do we have left?” asked group leader Jonas Shandel to the crowd “Well, the Rolling Stones are outside but they can wait!” bellowed an enthusiastic audience member."

Hearing Headwater is like listenening to the West Coast of Canada in song. Freewheeling, fierce, sentimental and sexy, the Vancouver, B.C., quartet has earned its reputation as one of the finest acoustic roots groups around the old-fashioned way - they work their asses off.

Since forming in 2001, the group has logged in thousands of kilometres criss-crossing Western Canada and playing to anyone and everyone willing to give it some love. With hooks, driving rhythms, adventurous steel guitar and mandolin solos, and beautiful three-part vocal harmonies all featured in tight, concise under four-minute songs, they found fans fast. Or they roped them in at first, street busking before gigs rather than hanging out waiting for crowds to come to them.

"Lay You Down is a tremendous record...9/10" It respects old-time folk styles, injects them with a youthful and modern vitality and intuitively knows what sounds absolutely right. Its' creators may not – as yet – have the credibility cache of some of their American neighbours, but they are more than good enough to take on the best of 'em.

www.myspace.com/headwater

Anaïs Mitchell is already known as a phenomenal singer-songwriter, but now she has proven herself to be a brilliant poet and playwright with her new album Hadestown." –

'HADESTOWN' - 5 Star review in UNCUT!

“Anaïs sings of love among the ruins, coming of age to find yourself an outsider looking for the place you belong, finding other strangers along the way. Anais Mitchell writes songs that are as intimate as conversations and as rich in detail as short stories. The daughter of “hippie back-to-the-landers” whose father was a novelist and English professor, she remembers her family’s home containing a library full of novels, and lots of old folk and psychedelic rock albums. No surprise, then, that the reference points of her music may seem to come from all over the map while still interconnected: the country ballads of the Carter Family, the hard-edged cabaret of Brecht and Weill, the story-songs of Randy Newman, the vast narrative scope of Pink Floyd’s The Wall, and the intricately crafted tales of her namesake, bohemian feminist Anaïs Nin, to name a few. All of these influences come together in here latest release ‘Hadestown’, an epic “folk opera” retelling of the Orpheus myth.

Anaïs Mitchell is the rare musician who is equally comfortable wielding an acoustic guitar alone onstage, sharing a disc’s worth of alt-country duets, or scripting a vast operatic journey into the underworld. She’s a fearless explorer, and her world just keeps getting larger.

"Fearlessly emotive... Like Dylan, Cohen, and Welch, Mitchell weaves her stories into an effortlessly beautiful and cohesive tapestry with the skill of an artisan's carpenter, showing no seams." - ACOUSTIC GUITAR

"The music ranges with classic American folk forms: country gospel, ragtime, blues, and early jazz, to approximations of rock, swing, and avant-garde -- all of it immediate, accessible, and inviting. ...Mitchell doesn't make herself the star, but is nonetheless. She is convincing as Eurydice; her lyrics are poetic, and her melodies unpretentious, yet sophisticated thanks to Chorney's arrangements. This 57-minute work goes by in a flash. Artfully conceived, articulated, and produced, Hadestown raises Mitchell's creative bar exponentially: there isn't anything else remotely like it." - Allmusic.com, March 2010

www.myspace.com/anaismitchell

JUSTIN TOWNES EARLE HARLEM RIVER BLUES - RELEASE DATE: SEPTEMBER 20, 2010

“I had the idea for a while of being some kind of poet, and then I discovered Nirvana and found songs could be like poetry” JTE

Justin Townes Earle is an anomaly. He’s tall as the day is long, all angles and elbows and a hard stare, both welcoming and deadly serious. He’s Nashville North, all set up in lower Manhattan now, just like his hero Woody Guthrie, with twang and charm intact. That hard working earnestness has paid off, to say the least. Justin won the Best New and Emerging Artist at the 2009 Americana Music Awards. His record, Midnight at the Movies, was named one of the best records of last year by Amazon, received four stars in Rolling Stone and found a sweet spot in the blackened hearts of fans and critics alike. GQ Magazine named him one of the 25 best dressed men in the world in 2010. He also appeared on HBO’s Treme with his dad, troubadour Steve Earle, on whose Grammy Award winning Townes record Justin also guests. The aforementioned Woody Guthrie once said, “Any fool can make something complicated. It takes a genius to make it simple.”

On Harlem River Blues, Justin chose the simple route. The record’s not a wall of sound produced to the rafters. It’s rockin’ and reelin’ at times, sweet and slow at others—and it’s great. Like good fried chicken, a well-cut suit and a handmade guitar, there’s heaven to be found in the beautifully crafted simpler things. Compared to the much-lauded Midnight at the Movies, Harlem River Blues is more mature and increasingly nuanced, while still embracing the raw voice and clean sound of previous standout tracks like “Mama’s Eyes.” Harlem River Blues straddles not only the Mason- Dixon, but time itself. As versed in Mance Lipscomb as he is in M. Ward and sporting Marc Jacobs suspenders, Justin Townes Earle is a man beyond eras. With Harlem River Blues, a record that’s perfect for late Indian summer nights on either the front porch or fire escape, Justin’s found yet another way to be a timeless original.

www.myspace.com/justintownesearle

MARY CHAPIN CARPENTER had sold more than 12 million records.

One of popular music’s most introspective and literate lyricists makes her first visit to Derby and a rare appearance anywhere in the region. She has won no less than five Grammy Awards - four consecutively in the ‘90s for Best Female Country Vocal Performance, and another for Best Country Album! Carpenter’s vocals have an intimate quality with instantly memorable melodies, and she released her latest album, The Age of Miracles, earlier this year. By combining folk, country, acoustic, rock and blues, she has proven herself to be an artist for whom the conventional boundaries of the music business disappear; she has always professed a love for all kinds of music, and those influences come together in songs that speak to the most personal of life’s details as well as to the most universal.

Mary Chapin Carpenter's most successful album to date remains 1992's Come On Come On, which yielded seven charting country singles and was certified quadruple platinum in the U.S. for sales exceeding four million copies. She followed it with Stones in the Road (1994) and A Place in the World (1996), which both featured hit singles. In the 2000s, Carpenter's albums departed both thematically and musically from her early work, becoming less radio-friendly and more focused on societal and political issues. Her most acclaimed and most topical album to date, The Calling, was released in March 2007. She followed that with The Age of Miracles her 12th studio album.

In recent years, Mary Chapin Carpenter--once among the most promising stars of the folkie infiltration of Nashville ("Down at the Twist and Shout," "I Feel Lucky")--abandoned all desire to dot the country music charts. Free of that ill-fitting yoke she returned to being what she really was all along: A literate acoustic singer-songwriter.

TIFT MERRITT - Songstress Tift Merritt is a North Carolina native. Her father taught her guitar chords and Percy Sledge songs. With her longtime band, she has built a unique and critically acclaimed body of work of sonic short stories and poignant performances.

When Emmylou Harris saw Tift Merritt in a small club in Nashville, she said she “stood out like a diamond in a coal patch”

www.marychapincarpenter.com/
www.tiftmerritt.com/

THIS SHOW IS AT: THE NOTTINGHAM ARTS THEATRE 12 George Street, Nottingham. NG1 3BE

Doors open at 7.15pm - Box Office 0115 9476096 www.nottingham-theatre.co.uk

Raul will be accompanied by Michael Guerra (accordian & bajo sexto)

“The former Mavericks vocalist Raul Malo has an exceptional voice, a burnished tenor that harks back to Roy Orbison and the great Cuban singer Beny Moré” NEW YORK TIMES

Considered to be one of the finest singers in the world, Raul Malo has always crossed cultures and blurred musical boundaries, breaking new ground with his distinctive balance of vintage sound and contemporary attitude. Born in Miami of Cuban parents, Raul is best known as the founder and frontman of Grammy-winning, multi-platinum band the Mavericks. He made his mark in the country music world and then drifted into the Latin and jazz arenas via rock n roll. Charismatic and possessing a keen wit, Raul is larger than life. To hear him perform live is to be in the presence of greatness. Raul’s talent has proven over the years to be ever expanding--as a true fan of all kinds of music, he sees only a fine line between rock n roll, country and salsa rhythms.

Unusually charismatic and possessing a keen wit, Raul Malo wraps his husky vocals around everything like he owns the copyright on heartbreak. Raul’s far-reaching talent and adventurous attitude toward his music has often led to the pursuit of new creative endeavours, and in the last couple of years he has established himself as a solo artist, as a producer and television musical director, and as a member of the super-group Los Super Seven.

Raul has been making records now for a good 15 years. Not just any records, but really good records -- the kind discriminating fans, critics and especially fellow musicians rally behind and cherish regardless of fickle fashion and commercial success. It’s a body of work full of surprising stylistic quick turns and unexpected detours -- from country to Tex-Mex rock n roll to joyously kitschy 60s cocktail pop to strait-up, traditional Cuban and South American music -- but always executed with a degree of craft and ultra-confidence suggesting an artist who, far from fumbling around in the creative dark, always seems to know exactly what he’s doing and where he wants to go.

Raul Malo has a voice on par with the best: Sinatra, George Jones and Orbison. ROLLING STONE

www.raulmalo.com/
www.myspace.com/raulmalo

The Thing were in Charisma's famous 70's stable, with Genesis, Lindisfarne and Van Der Graaf Generator. Fronted by Chris & Pauline Adams, and featuring virtuoso violinist Graham Smith, they made three cult albums, culminating in 'The Machine That Cried', now accepted as one of the lost classics of the underground era. ‘The Machine That Cried’ was hailed at the time as a “staggering achievement” by the Guardian’s rock critic, Martin Walker. However commercial success proved elusive, and when Charisma began to exert editorial control, the Adams’s quit and returned to their native Glasgow. There were sporadic reunions in the 90's, [see '$uicide Live in Berlin']. While Chris' solo album ['The Damage'] resurfaced on the esoteric Ozit label. Then in 2007 came 'Moments of Truth', the first studio album in 30 years. Now comes another release, under the shortened name of String Driven. To find out why they dropped the Thing visit the new website, www.stringdriven.com.

In April 2009 String Driven Thing refounded as String Driven. With an Americana-inspired sound and still led by Chris Adams a new album, Songs from Another Country, was released in the United Kingdom on Backshop Records.

“ Songs From Another Country is a contender for my top ten of the year” Maverick – ***** Review

stringdriven.com/
www.myspace.com/chrisadamsstringdriventhing