Double Award Winner /  by SPOTTISWOODE

The title track of my recent solo record BLAZE OF GLORY has just won two awards in a row. First it won the Mark Award in Los Angeles for Best Underscore In a Television Show. And then it won the Production Music Award in London in the same category. The whole song was used beautifully in an episode of the DirecTV mixed martial arts drama, Kingdom. You can watch the entire clip HERE. 

Many thanks to Thomas and Gregoire Kouzinier at the French label Super Pitch for commissioning the album. Thanks also to Riley McMahon, producer extraordinaire at New Warsaw Studio in Brooklyn. And further thanks to Carol Sue Baker at Ocean Park Music for pitching the song for the show. 

A Street Cat Named Bob /  by SPOTTISWOODE

There's a lot happening this Autumn.
On November 4th the lovely feature film A Street Cat Named Bob will be released in the UK. Two weeks after that, on November 18th, the film will be released in the US. Two of my songs are in the film. Indeed, one of my songs, Beautiful Monday, opens the picture. The second song, Still Small Voice Inside, turns into a bit of a singalong halfway through the story.
The film's star, Luke Treadaway, plays a drug-addicted London busker who ultimately gets "rescued" by a stray cat. He performs both songs along with a few by Charlie Fink of Noah and The Whale. The story is based on the international best-selling memoir by James Bowen. 
How did the songs end up in the film? 
Funny you should ask. Since the director's name is Roger Spottiswoode it may seem like an obvious case of nepotism. But we're not related. Roger - who has directed everything from James Bond to Tom Hanks and Sylvester Stallone movies - happened to read a couple of scripts of mine during the summer of 2015. At the time he was in the middle of pre-production for A Street Cat Named Bob. He contacted me and asked if I might have a few songs...
To celebrate the New York release, the band will play its only show of the season at Rockwood Music Hall in Manhattan on Saturday, November 19th.

Germany /  by SPOTTISWOODE

After five scintillating East Coast spring shows with my Enemies I've retreated to Europe. Next plan: invade Germany. Playing three gigs this July, two in Berlin and one in Hildesheim. Accomplices? Matti Muller, German gypsy gentleman guitarist; Jonny Gee, lunatic Anglo bassist; Angie Stricker, beauteous Berlin siren. A debut for the quartet. Makes me very curious. Particularly regarding backing vocal harmony textures. Matti and Jonny did an excellent job in London last Christmas. Who knows what the added dimension of Ms. Stricker's steely tones will bring. A German Emmylou Harris perchance? All to be discovered soon. Check the shows page for details... 

LONDON DEBUT! /  by SPOTTISWOODE

I'll be playing a show just before Christmas in my old home town at the fab and  beautiful club voted Best Music Venue in London in this year's Time Out. 

The Green Note
Thursday, December 17th
Doors 7pm / Show (two sets) at 8:30pm
Advance tickets here

The performance at The Green Note will be my London debut and also my first as a father!

I'll be backed up by two virtuoso friends. Matti Müller (gypsy guitar) comes all the way from Hildesheim, Germany. Jonny Gee (double bass) rolls down the hill from Archway, We promise an ecstatically mixed bag of folk, Americana, cabaret and neo-gospel songs touching liberally on themes of family and disfunction. We might even play the non-traditional singalong that I've performed many times at Christmas shows in New York with my Enemies. (Check this out for a practice.)

If you can't make it tell a London friend. And apologies in advance if there's a baby screaming several rows behind.

ANOTHER INDEPENDENT MUSIC AWARD NOMINATION /  by SPOTTISWOODE

ENGLISH DREAM, the band's 6th record, has been nominated for an Independent Music Award. Category: Best Adult Alternative Album of 2014. Judges this year included Suzanne Vega, Michelle Ndegeocello and Amanda Palmer.

It's the band's third nomination and Spottiswoode's sixth. In 2012 the band's ballad Chariot won the IMA for Best Adult Contemporary Song. That year the band's fifth record, Wild Goosechase Expedition, also won the Vox Populi Award for Best Eclectic Album of the year.

To vote for the band in this year's Vox Populi Awards PLEASE go to the link here and make it happen. Thank you!

Congratulations to the whole band and particularly to Riley McMahon, our guitarist and producer.

BLOODLINE /  by SPOTTISWOODE

I'm a wee bit chuffed about this. A song I wrote a while back will be the closing track of the closing episode of the new Netflix series, BLOODLINE, starring Kyle Chandler, Sissy Spacek, Chloe Sevigny and Sam Shepard. 

I first blurted out ALL IN THE PAST in my old East Village apartment in about 2007. To this day I can't tell if it's bitter or righteous. "I was young not so long ago but that was then and you'll never know…" I took it to the band and it turned into even more of a rocker than I imagined. 

A few years later we recorded it at Old Soul Studios and it became the fourth track of WILD GOOSECHASE EXPEDITION, our Independent Music Award-winning 2011 album produced by the incomparable Kenny Siegal and mixed by the sonically ingenious Tom Schick.

The band still plays the tune. In fact, it's one of the most liberating ditties in the repertoire for me to sing. I can't really explain why. I just still connect to it.

A couple of months ago Mark Wike, the BLOODLINE music supervisor, approached our LA rep Carol Sue Baker, and asked if she could find him "a dark song sung by an older dude about not being able to escape the past." Carol Sue kindly thought of me and supplied him with a few of my songs.

Completely coincidentally, one of the writers on the series is the remarkable novelist, Arthur Phillips. Arthur, a big fan of the band, had separately approached the show's producers recommending they use an Enemies track - thanks, Arthur! - but apparently by the time they were syncing the final episode they had completely forgotten his suggestion. 

BLOODLINE will be released by Netflix in its entirety on Friday, March 20th. All thirteen episodes. And we're at the very end. A good excuse to binge-watch.

BLAZE OF GLORY /  by SPOTTISWOODE

A brand new collection of some of my solo Americana songs has just been released on iTunes by the French soundtrack label, Super Pitch. Yes, you read that right. An Englishman makes an Americana album for a French label.

Find it HERE.

BLAZE OF GLORY is a set of ten songs produced by none other than Enemies guitarist, Riley McMahon, and commissioned and curated by future Parisian media moguls, Gregoire and ThomasCouzinier.

Primarily acoustic and full of harmonies, this is not your typical Spottiswoode record. Still, it runs through a classic jumble of emotions: heartbreak, insanity, even some uncharacteristic moments of optimism.

Many of the songs are old ditties I'd hidden away in the basement. A couple, like my personal favorite So Much To Do, I only wrote a few weeks before tracking. There's also a country duet. The extraordinary chanteuse and former Enemies backing vocalist, Jennifer Middaugh, upstages me shamelessly on Off The Merry-Go-Round and then contrives to sing the closing track on her own.

How did I let this happen? I was following orders. In fact, I barely had to make any decisions at all. Bliss.

Plus it's always fun working with Riley. We tracked one song a day. I laid down acoustic guitar and layers of vocals and then watched Riley play everything else: banjo, electric and acoustic guitars, bass, keyboards, lap steel, glockenspiel, piano, drums, whatever a track required.

Thanks to Gregoire and Thomas of Super Pitch for commissioning these songs and sending them out into the universe. Their primary goal is to find placements in film and television and they've already had success. The title track was recently featured in a French television commercial for the charity, Fondation de France.

Fall Tours Recollected /  by SPOTTISWOODE

Glitter Gun at the Deej

Insanity, insanity, insanity. A trek through the vineyards of upstate New York to balmy Cleveland, Ohio where we share a basement dressing room at The Beachland with a zoftig burlesque troop and later serenade Glenn Tilbrook of Squeeze without knowing he's there till he introduces himself afterwards. Fall foliage twinkles and flutters and wishes us bon voyage. Columbus, Chicago, Milwaukee do the same. A blur of sets. Violently committing to songs whether the audience is enraptured, texting or simply absent. Invading the homes of friends and strangers and relying on my Enemies to charm them as I sleep and sniffle. Wonderful hosts everywhere! Angels, we call them. Angels! And somehow we have slalomed through the sun-addled cornfields to Minneapolis. A game of croquet with my brother and two of my nephews? How did that happen? No, we're in Dubuque Iowa wowing the sound man. Yes, sound men like us. And now a new motto: Not as bad as Des Moines. Not one I recommend for Presidential hopefuls. 

A brief respite and then a daring foray south of the Mason Dixon Line. Still too exhausted to remember any of it. A show without our bass player in Ashland Virginia earns a standing ovation. Another ovation in Charlotte with Mr. Young back in the fold. They would have ovated in Atlanta as well but there weren't enough people to do such a thing. But the fabulous sound guy raved, yes he did. Did I mention sound guys fancy us? Birmingham Alabama, thank you for nurturing our remarkable host Charles Essington Walton IV. Oh yes, we played a show too to a wonderful crowd, but who cares about the music really? That was written a long time ago. It's the meetings with remarkable men, the diamonds in the thicket, the random celestial collisions. And how did we contrive to get to Augusta, Georgia after James Brown left the building? Turns out his soul had migrated just a few hundred miles away and possessed the undimmable Danielle Howle. Two historic sets with the Duchess of South Carolina, one in Columbia, the  other in Charleston. Sandwiched between these two inexplicable events an encounter with a goat while on stage in Awendaw Green. Not as complimentary as I would have liked her to be but at least she didn't spend the song staring at her smart phone. Hello again, North Carolina. Goodbye again. A frozen night in Virginia, then swallowed up in the mid-November glow of the nation's capital. Friendly faces, raucous crowd, reinforcements from the Union in the shape of General McMahon and our bugler, Corporal Cordt. Turns out the English Dream never really materialized. The Wild Goosechase Expedition continues...

Late Summer /  by SPOTTISWOODE

Photo by Clare Elliott

Photo by Clare Elliott

Here I am in sunny London having my nineteenth nervous breakdown, wondering what the future holds. Looking forward to some shows with Matti Muller and Angi Stricker in Germany this September and then some tours with my Enemies in the States during the autumn. After that? Well, I suppose that's plenty to think about for the time being.

There's also this strange collection of basement "Americana" songs that a French soundtrack label will be releasing very soon. It's called BLAZE OF GLORY. Nine of my songs, each produced in one day by the genius Riley McMahon. I don't have much idea about what the label, Super Pitch, wants to do with the collection. They have complete control. I'm honestly very happy about that. Don't let the monkey think too much. 

What else? I've just completed the 8th draft of a thriller that has occupied me off an on for a few years. How many more drafts? Of all my deluded ambitions, being a novelist was never one of them. A New York agent put paid to that and craftily lured me into this most recent humiliation.

One of the blessings of trying to write: it's a good excuse to read. Have been on a David Mitchell binge recently. Someone who can write a sentence AND tell a story. It's so easy for him he makes things more complicated than perhaps they should be, but a master gets aways with it. I thought writing a novel might be easy. Like writing a long song. Hmm.

So, basically I'm floundering about with a wonky rudder, taking on water and not sure which way to steer. Perhaps one day we'll crash into each other?

Love from the Thames,

Spotty