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Steve Wynn, leader and founder of the Dream Syndicate, will be touring the UK this September in support of I Wouldn’t Say It If It Wasn’t True – his debut book, a memoir for Jawbone Press – as well as Make It Right – his first solo album since 2010, to be released on Fire Records. Both the book and new record will come out on 30 August, just a few weeks ahead of the tour.The book details the winding path from growing up a music fan and pre-teen bandleader in Los Angeles through the formation and ultimate dissolution of the Dream Syndicate at the end of their first era in 1988. There are stops along the way for tales of cross-country greyhound trips to track down Alex Chilton to wild, off-the-rails tours with U2 and R.E.M. and the epic heart-of-darkness making of the band’s controversial second album Medicine Show and plenty more.
The album is a similarly, reflective and intimately revealing collection, written and recorded in tandem with the writing of I Wouldn’t Say It If It Wasn’t True.
Wynn promises a one-man show blending songs from and inspired by the book along with a narrative structure of readings from the book and storytelling, adjunctly extrapolated from those passages. Fans can expect a selection of evergreens and rarities from the Dream Syndicate’s 80s catalogue along with illuminating covers and reflective numbers from the new album as well, all adding up to one tall tale of a past revisited.
Steve says: ‘I don’t see this show as a stodgy reading or as a random selection of songs but rather a tiny play of sorts, a way of giving a flesh and blood companion to the book. I’m looking for that magic place where, say, Lenny Bruce and Spaulding Grey and Ray Davies and Bob Dylan and maybe Hedwig might meet in a dimly lit cabernet on the back streets of Hollywood. I’ve never done this kind of show before but if I can hit all those markers, I’ll be happy.’
Steve Wynn will be selling and signing copies of I Wouldn’t Say It If It Wasn’t True (book) and Make It Right (CD/LP) after every show.
Tour support comes from Our Man In The Field. ‘I think of Our Man In The Field as kind of a character and not really even me,’ says Alex Ellis. ‘Something like a Jack Kerouac or an Albert Camus. A writer and a correspondent, a roving reporter but more like a TV version in the ‘70s; Hunter S Thompson but less guns and LSD. Mostly, I don’t want the listener to think about the songs as being mine or about me, it’s more about the story and the characters in there. They’re always about real people and hopefully that makes them relatable.’
Last Dance, the first single to be released from Gold On the Horizon, harkens to the sonic aesthetic of early Johnny Flynn and Ondara while Ellis sings of friends who went through a traumatic breakup. In the song, one romantic partner asks for a quiet departure from the relationship (‘If you’re leaving in the morning / Go before the sun comes up’) while the other requests another chance at redemption (‘If you’re leaving in the morning / Can I have one last dance’). The emotional push and pull is offset by the band’s bright, upbeat, sophisticated indie-folk feel, crafted by a country fiddle melody, groovy backbeat, oscillating synth line, and Ellis’s warm and comforting vocal timbre.
Price: £17 adv
Info/tickets: https://www.heymanchester.com/steve-wynn
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Event Venue & Nearby Stays
Gullivers NQ, Vixen, Oldham Street, Manchester, M4 1LW, United Kingdom,Manchester, United Kingdom
Tickets
