Win Tickets To Wood Festival

This year’s Wood Festival runs from 15th – 17th May and takes place at Braziers Park, Nr Wallingford, Oxfordshire.

One of the UK’s youngest and greenest music events, the festival is only in it’s second year but still has managed to secure Karine Polwart, Spiers & Boden and Jim Moray among the confirmed acts this year.

Read the full line-up and get more information about this peaceful, family-friendly festival by clicking their logo below.

Wood Festival 2009

To win a pair of full tickets to the festival, just answer this wood related question…

Which Wood won the award for best Folk singer at this year’s Folk Awards?

Was it…

a) Woody Woodpecker
b) Edward Woodward
c) Chris Wood

THIS COMPETITION IS NOW CLOSED…
Congratulations to Sarah Dunn of Banbury who’s won a pair of tickets!

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Win Tickets to the Acoustic Festival Of Great Britain

Boasting a line up of over 60 acts including Supertramp’s Roger Hodgson in his only UK appearance this year, plus Miles Hunt of The Wonder Stuff, Imelda May, Mawkin:Causley, Deacon Blue, The Animals, Mungo Jerry and loads more.

The festival runs on Spring bank holiday weekend (23rd – 25th May) at Catton Hall Park in Walton-On-Trent.

It is also probably the best value festival in the UK, as full tickets (including camping) are only £80.

For more information about the festival, click on the poster to the left.

We have a pair of full festival tickets to give away to one lucky person.

All you have to do is answer the following question…

Miles Hunt is the singer with indie pop group The Wonder Stuff, who surfed the charts in the 90s with their cover of the classic 60s song Dizzy.
What is the name of the comedian who shared vocals on the single?

Was it

a) Bernard Manning
b) Vic Reeves
c) The Pope

Email your answer by clicking this link.

The competition will close on Friday 10th April and we’ll announce the winner the following week.

Please only enter the competition if you are available to attend the festival!

 

The great Proper Rockabilly giveaway!

Hi folks.

Do you have a quiff?

Fond of twangy guitars?

Wish it was the 50s again?

Do you only like bass instruments when someone’s standing on them?

Then the chances are, you’re a Rockabilly fan.

The coolest cats in Japan contemplate the universal appeal of R&R, shortly before a ‘rumble’.

If so, today’s your lucky day, as we have an influx of promo R&R and Rockabilly material building up on the straining shelves here at Proper HQ.

We have 15 free, randomly selected CDs from our Rock’n'Roll selection to give away to the first 5 people to leave a comment below telling us why Rockabilly is so ace, hot dammit.

Good luck!

THIS COMPETITION IS NOW CLOSED!!

 

If It’s Too Lau, You’re Too Old…

Award winning folk supergroup Lau are all set to release their second studio album, Arc Light on 30th March 2008.

Having spent the last 2 years becoming one of the most popular live draws on the folk circuit – and picking up the coveted “Best Group” trophy at the BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards for 2008 and 2009 – the band have honed their skills to perfection.

Arc Light by Lau - Available soon.

Featuring the virtuoso skills of Kris Drever, Martin Green and Aidan O’Rourke, Lau’s reputation is rising fast. Arc Light will be the album that cements it.

Lau will be guests on the Mike Harding show BBC Radio 2 this Wednesday (March 18th). Click here for more info.

Fan website Bright Young Folk are currently running competitions to win copies of the album and gig tickets. They’re also offering you the chance to pose questions to the band on their forthcoming interview, as they did with Bellowhead frontman Jon Boden.

Click here for more details on Bright Young Folk’s Lau promotion.

The Spiral Earth website are also joining in with the special offers. A track from the album is available to download from their website right now. The’re also currently editing a music video for one of the album’s tracks… Watch this space for more info.

Click here to visit the Spiral Earth website for your free download!

Click here to pre-order the album on Amazon.co.uk

Lau and a hedge, yesterday - Photo by David Angel

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Win Tickets To The Gosport & Fareham Easter Festival!!!

The 2009 Gosport and Fareham Folk festival kicks off on Thursday April 9th, and features all the kinds of acts who you’d fully hope and expect to be booked at such an event.

The bill features showcase sets from Show Of Hands, The Ukulele Orchestra Of Great Britain, Eliza Carthy and loads more, plus a full range of workshops, sessions, dance displays, a craft fayre and a late night festival club.

As I type this, I’m beginning to wish I was there now.

Click this link to see full details of what they’ve got booked so far!

Gosport as it appears to seagulls

We have one pair of tickets to give away to the festival if you can answer the simple question posed below…

COMPETITION CLOSED – Congratulations to our winner, Bob from Winchester!!

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Cara Dillon – New album almost here!!

Cara Dillon by a fireplace yesterday

The brand new album by Cara Dillon is out on Monday 26th January!

Hill Of Thieves is the first collection of new material since 2006’s After The Morning, and finds Cara returning to traditional folk material with husband Sam Lakeman tickling the ivories and twiddling the knobs.

The album has already been picking up some quality reviews from the mainstream and folk press alike, with Word magazine calling it “easily her most gripping album yet”.

You can hear tracks from the album streaming on Cara’s myspace page here , or pre-order your copy of the album by clicking on the album sleeve below.

We’ll be hosting the extra-special guest-list only show at London’s Gibson Guitar Studio to launch the album on January 29th.

Tickets cannot be bought BUT, there are 10 pairs waiting to be won over at Spiral Earth’s website.

Click here to visit the site and find out how you can win!

Cara will be out and about on tour from this month onwards, so don’t forget to check out our tour listings here to see when she’s coming to your town!

 

Bellowhead Frontman – Timelord Or The Sheffield Mad Max?

Jon Boden, photographed in the not-too-distant future by David Angel.

Jon Boden must have some kind of time-warping machine, judging by the amount of activity he seems able to cram into his working days.

In the last twelve months, not only has the multi-talented singer & instrumentalist released albums and toured as half of Spiers & Boden AND as the spearhead of big-band Bellowhead, he’s also found time to knock out an entirely self-written, self-performed, post-apocalyptic Folk concept solo album(!)

Hardcore fans will no doubt remember the warped, Tom Waits-esque splendour of Jon’s under-the-radar solo debut Painted Lady
in 2006.

Songs From The Floodplain pushes the boat out even farther, as over the course of 12 songs the album relates the trials and tribulations of a fractured rural community coming to terms with life in a post apocalyptic future.

Songs For Swinging Lovers it ain’t.

Songs From The Floodplain

Even though he’ll be on the road with Bellowhead at the end of January, Jon has once again used his time machine to put together and rehearse with a band (the mysterious Remnant Kings) who’ll be embarking on a short UK tour at the beginning of March.

The Remnant Kings are:

Rob Harbron – Concertina (+ guitar + vox)
Sam Sweeney – Drums + fiddle (+vox)
Dave Angel – electric and acoustic guitar
Matt Grime – double bass
Jon Boden – vox, acoustic guitar (+ fiddle + melodeon)

(Click the dates below for ticket info)

1st March – Cannock, The Tackeroo
2nd March – Farnham Maltings
3rd March – The Cock Hotel, Stony Stratford
4th March – London, The Luminaire
5th March – Nottingham, The Maze
6th March – Leeds, Brudenell Social Club
7th March – Oxford, Jericho Tavern

Pretty intimate venues for someone who’s no stranger to rocking the Albert Hall, I’m sure you’ll agree. You also might worry that this could create a scarcity of tickets, but fear not…

We are your pals here at Proper, and we have nabbed 3 pairs of tickets to give away for every date on the tour (including the one that hasn’t even been booked yet).

All you need to do to win a pair is answer this simple question:

What’s the best concept album ever recorded (except for Songs From The Floodplain, of course)? Is it:

a) Jeff Wayne’s War Of The Worlds,

b) Jeff Wayne’s War Of The Worlds,

or c) Jeff Wayne’s War Of The Worlds

Good luck with that.

LINES ARE CLOSED…

Congratulations to the following lucky winners who’ll be going to one of Jon’s shows this March:

Kate Fincham, Liz Osman, Bob Henly, Hilary Ely, Maureen Musson, Pat Olver, Dave Wooldridge, Jane Roskilly, Jenny Parsons, Ian Titley, Alan Lowey, Jackie Evans, Rich Williams, Andy Turner and Duncan Belcher.

In related news

Jon Boden will soon reach the very zenith of his illustrious career as guest editor of the upcoming issue of Properganda magazine! Watch out for it in February at your local venue.

Stop Press

You can hear a track from Songs From The Floodplain online at Proper Music’s myspace page right now!

Click here to do it!

 

The Great Christmas Clearout

As the distributor for hundreds of record labels, with tens of thousands of CD titles residing in our warehouse, you can imagine that we often find ourselves with a deluge of excess promotional CDs.

Rather than mercilessly throw the whole lot in the skip, we’ve thought of a better solution.

Since you’re almost certainly reading this blog as someone with more than a passing interest in the kind of music we distribute, we thought you could help us decide what to do.

We’re offering 10 people the chance to win 50 (yes, 50! I told you we were swamped) randomly selected CDs, DVDs and other items from our office shelves!

One of our promo racks in the office

Some of them you may already own. Some of them might make ideal christmas gifts. Some of them you’ll probably wish we’d thrown in the skip, but who can argue with getting free music?

Lines are closed!

Congratulations to our 10 lucky winners: Bonita Trimmer, Jackie O’Neill, Barney Barrett, Lee Wellbrook, James Thatcher, DJ Walker, Terry Mulvey, Alison Flood, Ian McDonald and Bob Corn. They’ll all be getting 50 randomly selected CDs from our shelves early next week!

(All winners are invited to leave comments about the goodies they receive for all to see by clicking on the comments bit below).

If you entered and didn’t win, don’t despair… it’s still pretty choc-a-bloc around here, I’m feeling Chritsmas-generous and the boss ain’t looking, so keep your eyes peeled for more give-aways between now and the 25th!

 

Annoyingly talented, and about to be famous!!

Congratulations to Megan & Joe Henwood, the winners of the 2009 Young Folk Awards.

The finals were held at the Queen Elizabeth Hall in London on Friday and featured performances from the six finalists plus a set by last year’s winners Jeanna Leslie & Siobbhan Miller.

Competition was stiff (click here for the complete list of nominees), but the guitar/sax/vocal, brother/sister duo scooped the gong  and the chance to record a session for Mike Harding’s Radio 2 Show, as well bagging slots at next year’s Fairport’s Cropredy Convention, Towersey Folk Festival and Cambridge Folk Festival.

Not only were the audience treated to a night of top notch acoustic music in the main hall, the free entertainment also extended into the QEH foyer, as London folk club The Magpie’s Nest hosted a programme of great bands before and after the main show.

Our mates Mawkin (sans Causley for one night only!) rocked the crowd post-show, while early-comers were treated to the gorgeous vocal stylings of Gaelic choir Rún, plus the spooky Tom-Waits-meets-Incredible-String-Band sound of The Magic Lantern.

You’ll be able to hear the astounding quality of all involved this Wednesday evening on Mike Harding’s Radio 2 show, or of course, when we release the BBC Folk Awards compilation, which will feature live recordings from the evening (listen out for the incredibly loud squeaky chair, if it hasn’t been edited out).

 

Jim Causley Reports From The Road

The Following was posted on the BBC Folk Forum by folk boyband heart-throb Jim Causley the day after the first date of the Under One Sky’ tour…

Jim Causley - In Trouble With The Folk Police! Pic by David Angel

Ooh what a busy boy I am! After a month of Mawkin and living on Dave Delarre’s sofa during touring/recording new album in October, I was blessed with a couple of weeks at home in surprisingly sunny Devon and then off on a Flybe from Exeter to Glasgow (I sat next to the rear gunner) for Under One Sky.

So here I am in chilly Scotland. We had two days of rehearsing and then the full on show last night in Ye Olde Fruity Market. It’s so good to be with all these guys again, I can’t believe it’s been 2 years since we were last up here together, nobody looks a day older than they already look! I’ve met some new groovy people this time around, namely Norman Blake from Teenage Fanclub (nee Folkclub) and Roy Dodds from Eddi Reader’s band. So we’re all having a lovely time in this happening city. I must confess, I find it a bit too big for my liking and managed to get myself lost yesterday but eventually found my way back to the hotel by following the crumbs from my Greggs Sausage & Bean Bake!

Man, I love those. I also love Christina Aguilera who has played a vital part in keeping me sane during these full on folky times. Everybody needs an antidote! Anyhoo, we’re all off to the Highlands tomorrow which I’m very excited about as apparently the tour bus has reclining seats, a DVD player and a toilet so if you see me on the motorway watching Bridget Jones on a reclining toilet, give me a wave.

Sightings of Mr Causley reclining were unreported at the time of press. The following was posted mid way through said tour…

So this is all very exciting for me. The best bit for me is that I’m getting the opportunity to work with musicians who I wouldn’t normally get that chance to. Especially the Scottish half of Under One Sky, why isn’t this sort of collaboration done more? (Because it’s expensive?)

Do be quiet Sensible Jim!

Next we shall have to do a Welsh Under One Sky and an Irish Under One Sky and to think of it why is the Transatlantic Sessions just Celtic artists on this side of the pond? Let’s open that one up too! And then there’s the pop stars. Mr Tams and myself were jesting that in rehearsals they get to swan in, do their bit and toddle off again and then with that Mr McCusker informed us that we were no longer needed that day so we joyfully popped back to the hotel and discussed Percy Grainger’s life over a bottle of Semilion, what a life!

Jim Causley

Hear a track from Under One Sky on the Mike Harding Show this coming Wednesday, 3 December from 7pm.

Click this link for info on Mike Harding’s BBC Radio Folk Show Page

Click this link for info on the Transatlantic Sessions

Click this link to hear Under One Sky