LONDON: St Pancras Old Church

Wednesday 4th June, 2014

7:30pm

Event information

Blue Rose Code is not folk music. Or so he’s been told.

However, Ross Wilson, the Edinburgh-born songwriter's new album, 'The Ballads Of Peckham Rye', co produced with Alex Pilkington, features a remarkable roll call of musicians from the folk side of the fence, including Karine Polwart, Lau’s Aidan O’Rourke, Mattie Foulds, and Rachel Newton from The Furrow Collective.

To make it harder for our few remaining record shops to file Blue Rose Code in a rack, 'THE BALLADS OF PECKHAM RYE' also features two of the Scottish jazz scene’s supreme talents in trumpeter Colin Steele and pianist Dave Milligan and on bass, two bona-fide legends, the unclassifiable but unutterably classy Danny Thompson and prog-master John Wetton.

Coming off the back of a joint tour with BBC Radio 2 Folk Singer of the Year Bella Hardy as Hardy & Wilson Ross will take his band around the UK in May to celebrate the release of this extraordinary album. The first single, 'One Day At A Time' features the beautiful voice of Kathryn Williams.

Moving on from 2013's debut, Blue Rose Code's second offering is a richer, warmer album, influenced by Ross' time in Nashville with the estimable Bob Harris and the BBC and a yearning for reconciliation with the ghosts of his past in his hometown, Auld Reekie.

"I guess that I'm a crossover artist,” says Ross. “I'm just not sure from where I'm crossing over or where we're going to end up."

Or as David Kushar of Spiral Earth put it: “Blue Rose Code is as slippery as an eel; a genre dodger; a mess of influences and contradiction. This rare display of soul and emotion will not be boxed, a sign of something special”.

"This is simply beautiful, I am a folk convert." Emma Freud,
BBC Radio 4's Loose Ends

"An affirmation of love that links human relationships with the natural world. As sublimely paced as Astral Weeks-era Van Morrison."
Folk Radio UK

"Amazing, Julie is a very lucky lady."
Jo Whiley, BBC Radio 2

"Ross Wilson's mellifluous voice and fluid fingerpicking cast him as the natural successor to John Martyn."
Rick Pearson, The Evening Standard

“Imagine John Martyn meeting a young Van Morrison and being shipwrecked with bundle of Chet Baker records.”
Time Out

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