Marry Waterson & Oliver Knight – New Album, New Single and Tour
aaamusic | On 04, Mar 2011
‘A brilliant new chaper in the family legend’ ****Nigel Williamson, Uncut
‘Enough imagination and originality to suggest they can write a substantial new chaper into the family history’ Colin Irwin, fRoots
Having inherited the famous musical legacy of one of Brit folk’s most revered families, the Watersons, a lot of people have been waiting a very long time for Marry Waterson and Oliver Knight to make music together. And with the release of their album ‘The Days That Shaped Me’ imminent (One Little Indian, 28th March) and a couple of warm-up shows supporting James Yorkston under their belts, Marry & Oliver are set to to play their first ever London date on Thurday 10th March at The Green Note, Parkway, Camden NW1.
A full UK tour follows:
24 March The Apex Bury St Edmunds
25 March Canterbury Cathedral Lodge
26 March EM Foster Theatre Tonbridge
9th April – The Coliseum, Whitby
5th May Royal Oak, Lewes, East Sussex
6th May – Bristol Folk House
13th May – M&O gig Kings Place
14th May – Mellor Brook Community Centre, Blackburn
19th May – The Forge At The Anvil, Basingstoke
21st May – Platform, Glasgow
Marry & Oliver release a single ‘Windy Day’ on 14th March LISTEN HERE
New album ‘The Days The Shaped Me’ out on 28th March
Marry & Oliver have an intuitive partnership but it was a long time in gestation before the sudden explosion of beautiful, evocative, mysterious songs which have blossomed on their debut album together, hence The Days That Shaped Me is an album born of circumstance rather than design. Lal Waterson’s death in 1998 initially scuppered any thoughts Marry may have had of singing seriously again, but the breakthrough came when the Waterson family were booked to appear at London’s Royal Albert Hall in 2007. When, accompanied by Olly, Marry stepped forward to sing one of her mum’s most celebrated songs, Fine Horseman, there wasn’t a dry eye in the house and a queue of people collared her afterwards to tell her she’d turned them into emotional wrecks (“how do you think I felt?” she muses). They all had a question too: when was she going to record an album? A Lal tribute show at London’s Cecil Sharp House later that year once more pitched Marry and Olly on stage together and the creative vein they’d both suppressed for so long was finally unlocked. New songs flooded out of them and they spent more and more time crafting them in Olly’s studio until one day, much to their own amazement, they realised they had an album of songs.
They include Curse The Day, which tackles the thorny subject of PMT, while the poetic vignettes of Secret Smile and The Gap encompass Perry Como, Doris Day and Jesus and the evocative imagery of Yolk Yellow Legged invokes a “buddleia day in the morning’s prime”, a “balletic Nureyev flair” and “beaded cobwebs on lollypop trees”. Yolk Yellow Legged was co-written by James Yorkston, who also duets with Marry on the track, while Kathryn Williams (who, like Yorkston, performed at the 2007 Lal tribute concert) co-wrote Father Us and Secret Smile, singing harmonies on both (repaying Marry’s favour of singing on the Lal-inspiredWinter Is Sharp on Kathryn’s album The Quickening). Marry and Olly’s cousin Eliza Carthy is also prominent, playing fiddle on a couple of tracks and singing lead onThe Loosened Arrow, while Reuben Taylor’s piano adds further textures, notably setting the winsome, McGarrigle-esque tone of Run To Catch A Kiss.
