NEW MUSIC UP ON YOUTUBE!

For those of you still not on my mailing list, you should be! I’m giving away free music to download every month. To sign up go to the homepage, enter your email and subscribe.

This month I gave away a 6-track live concert I recorded in Knoxville, Tennessee last summer.

I was a guest on a great show called The Blue Plate Special, filmed in front of a live studio audience, on WVDX. I was following in some hallowed footsteps playing here. Behind me on the stage were real plates engraved with the names and photos of previous performers, chief among them Rodney Crowell, Old Crow Medicine Show, Chris Stapleton, Sturgill Simpson – the finest of the fine in this genre of American Singer-Songwriter music.

And I was doubly blessed to have joining me (on fiddle, mandolin, banjo and guitar) a dear friend and mentor from Asheville, North Caroline, the mighty Josh Goforth. I know some of you will already be well aware of him, but for those who don’t, Josh is a musical force of nature. Only a few years my senior, he is already a true American musical master and legend in those parts – not to mention, a Grammy-nominee. One of the most wonderful things of my time in the US was connecting with great musicians and songwriters like Josh who took me under their wing and gave me so much encouragement in what I was doing.

You can listen to the whole thing here on YouTube:

‘SPIRIT AND ROOTS’ RADIO SHOW

Thanks so much to everyone who tuned in again, or listened retrospectively on MixCloud to the second episode of my monthly radio show, Spirit and Roots. It was a joy to have Trent Miller as my guest. We laughed a lot and he proved once again what a superb writer he is.

If you haven’t heard it yet, you can do so here:

I recently started a dedicated Facebook page for Spirit and Roots, which I hope to build into a vibrant online community. If you’d like to be part of that, please join by pressing the Blue  ‘Like’ button on the below link:

https://www.facebook.com/SpiritandRootsRadio/

Due to refurbishment in the K2K studios, May’s episode will not going to go out the 2nd Tuesday of the month as usual. Instead, our next show will be on Saturday the 25th May 3-4pm (GMT). I’m delighted to have as my guest then another superb London Singer-Songwriter, Simon Stanley Ward. It’s gonna be another good one.

UPCOMING SHOWS

I’m delighted to have a busy month ahead. Most notably, I will be touring the Baltic countries (Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia) for the very first time and I can’t wait to travel there next week and make lots of new friends.

I will also be playing several London shows, so come and say hello if you’re nearby!

For gig address details, please go to: http://www.danraza.com/gigs/

WHAT I’M LISTENING TO

The great JJ Cale has just had a new posthumous CD released, which I’m inevitably tapping my toes to every time I press play – it’s superb. I’ve also had the pleasure of discovering the music of Pierce Pettis recently – I’m now a convert and look forward to spinning him on my future radio shows.

QUOTE I’M PONDERING

These two quotes I’ve recently come across seem to compliment each other nicely:

“It’s a Folk-Singer’s job to comfort disturbed people and to disturb comfortable people.” – Woody Guthrie

“Art washes away from the soul the dust of every day life” – Pablo Picasso

Sometimes, as an artist, it’s good to question, and be reminded of, what you’re doing and why. People create for all kinds of reasons and different works can, and should, have different purposes. But some of my favourite pieces of art have, without a doubt, conformed powerfully to the above quotes.

Cutting through, and shining a torch beneath, social artifices to the core of nature and humanity is one of the most enduring and poignant duties art can offer to the world.

I wish you all a wonderful month ahead – good weather, good luck and good music to you all.

Till the next time x

PLEASE SIGN UP TO MY MONTHLY NEWSLETTER!

Hello folks, thanks for checking in here – I’ve had some website problems recently, which have prevented me from posting regularly – but hopefully all is back to normal now, so keep stopping by for more regular updates!

As posted on my Twitter and Facebook feeds, I have begun posting out a monthly newsletter and I’d love it if you signed up. Here I will post news of all gigs, radio performances, recording news – and I will also be giving away a free MP3 each month of an unreleased track. To sign up just click ‘Home’ at the top of the page and scroll down until you see the white box where you can enter your email address – and be sure to click ‘subscribe!’

Proof I’m still alive!

Apologies to those of you who have been checking the site looking for news. I hope going forwards to be more active here and give you a reason to come back : )

I have recently added a mailing list button to the home page. If you’d like to receive a newsletter, complete with a free song, every month, to your email address please sign up there!

A little bit of an update…

In 2019, I move back to London after a wonderfully rich year and a half living abroad in Europe and the US. I feel truly grateful and blessed for the friendships I’ve made, for the places I’ve got to see and the incredible experiences I’ve had over this time.

I’ll be coming back with a bag full of new songs and I’m looking forward to announcing some more shows and beginning work on a new album in the near future – I’m determined this third record won’t take as long to finish as the previous two!

I recently returned from a 5-week tour of Germany, the longest run of shows I’ve done up to this point. I will be back again soon – watch this space.

Thank you to all the amazing people who came out and supported me. I had such a great time, as I always do in Germany, and feels like family now  : )

While I was in the Baden-Württemberg region, I did an interview with the great DJ, Uwe Kemmer for Popstop Radio. That will be broadcast tonight (Wednesday) – so if you’d like to hear me on it, tune in here at 10pm GMT and 11pm Central European Time:

https://www.popstop.eu

With that, I will wish you all a wonderful Christmas period full, I hope, of good music and cheer. More news to follow soon!

Until then, I’ll leave you with one of my favourite festive songs x

Happy New Year to you all!

I am taking some down time from performing right now while I write some new material and work on some exciting new projects which I will be unveiling as 2018 unfolds.

The first, which links the two, is a project to write a new song every week of the year – that’s 52 new songs! Because of the fast nature in which these are written these will be essentially be demos, but I will be making these publicly available at the end of every month via my mailing list, which I will have set up here shortly.

More news to follow, but in the meantime you can enjoy a great new video of my song, Annie, uploaded by my friends in Germany Gudi, Hans Jörg, and René put together from the Jazz and Joy Festival from last summer.