Mike Cooper and Alan Clayson in concert

For the first time ever, Mike Cooper and Alan Clayson will be performing at the same venue on the same night! Pawn your watches!! Hock your rings!!! Sell your grandmothers!!!! This Clash of the Titans must not be missed under any circumstance!!!!!!

Mike Cooper

’Cooper was forging connections between folk and experimental musics long before America got New or Weird…’ (The Wire)

For the past 50 years Mike Cooper has been an international artistic explorer constantly pushing the boundaries. He plays lap steel guitar and sings, he is an improviser and composer, song-maker, a visual and installation artist; film and video maker and radio arts producer. Initially a folk-blues guitarist he is as responsible as anyone else — and more so than many — for ushering in the acoustic blues boom in the U.K. in the mid ’60s. He has, arguably, stretched the possibilities of that genre even more than his better known contemporaries Davy Graham, Bert Jansch, John Renbourne etc. by pursuing it into the more avant-garde musical areas occupied by guitar innovators such as Elliott Sharp, Keith Rowe, Fred Frith and Marc Ribot, with an eclectic mix of the many styles he has practiced over the years. Ranging freely through free improvisation, his own idiosyncratic original songs, electro-acoustic music, exotica, traditional country blues, folk, pop songs, and ‘sonic gestural’ playing utilising open tunings, extended guitar techniques and electronics.

Alan Clayson

'It is difficult to explain to the uninitiated quite what to expect' - The Independent (On Alan Clayson)

The sometime leader of the legendary Alan Clayson and the Argonauts performs solo too, delivering recitals that defy succinct description. Feedback from recent Clayson engagements on both sides of the Atlantic and the formation of a US fan club (stemming from a remarkable concert in Chicago) would suggest that he has become more than a mere cult celebrity who is still spoken of and written about in the same paragraphs as Wreckless Eric, John Otway, Tom Robinson and Elvis Costello. Moreover, 2012’s One Dover Soul – produced by Wreckless Eric - and This Cannot Go On…, a more recent might stand as Alan Clayson's artistic apotheosis were it not for the promise of surprises yet to come. His following grows still as well as demand for his talents as a record producer, and the number of versions of his compositions by such diverse acts as Dave Berry (in whose backing group, he played keyboards in the mid-1980s) and New Age outfit, Stairway. He has worked too with The Portsmouth Sinfonia, Wreckless Eric, Twinkle, The Yardbirds, The Pretty Things and the late Screaming Lord Sutch among many others.

Door time: 7:45pm
Start time: 8:00pm