The Seam - Gareth Davies-Jones

Event information

Gareth will launch his new album of songs inspired by a residency at the Mining Institute's world renowned library at the heart of the Great North Coalfield in Newcastle. The world of mining is no stranger to song, but far from a retrospective look at mining ballads, Gareth's new collection is an approach to telling the story of the Library's mining and mechanical engineering collections through song and music. Gareth's masterful and thought provoking songwriting has been inspired by stories of subterranean banquets celebrating the winning of mines, by the lyricism of Victorian adverts from the first edition of the Mining Journal of 1836 and the flow and eloquence of writing in engineering manuals such as Practical Coal Mining, a technical manual known to generations of miners where Gareth has found a rhythm and metre in just the contents page and which forms the first song on the new album.